The Human Touch contd...
The problem needs serious attention. And one ought to understand that at the centre of the thought for solutions has to be the belief that we cannot have unlimited desires on a limited planet. The earth, the land, the water and the resources are in limited supply. The need is to ensure their supply in a way that is sustainable. And like charity it should begin from self.
1. The first and the most important challenge is food. Studies have proved time and again the energy required to produce non-vegetarian food is much more than vegetarian food. This will also reduce stress upon our land resources. The surplus land can be used to increase the forest cover which act as lungs in our city life.
2. The second most important thing has to be green housing. A housing that reduces dependence upon electricity by optimally using sunlight, air and water.
3. ‘Life Infrastructure’ like drainage, water conservation facilities, parks and proper waste disposal and recycling facilities should be mandatory for those who can afford. The government should support these initiatives in irregular poor colonies.
4. A city like Delhi can draw a lot of its energy from renewable source like sunlight as it receives ample amount of it throughout the year. The use of solar water heater and solar cooker can save precious natural gas for our power houses. Energy can also be produced from waste and excreta. Proper recycling of the waste products will also solve the problem of hygiene. It would also employ a large number of people.
Beside these big things that have to be done at the policy level by the government, there are things each of us can do from today.
1. Early to bed and early to rise can save millions of unit of electricity.
2. Soak rice and lentils for some a few hours so that they can be cooked with less fuel.
3. Use sprouts and fruits in place of packaged junk food which consume huge amount of energy from processing to packaging to marketing.
4. Use soft copy to wish birthday to valentine. It can save millions of trees every year.
5. Take things out of refrigerator a few hours before use so that they warm to room temperature.
6. Switch off the iron before ironing the last cloth. The residual heat is enough to iron it.
7. Don’t smoke. This will give a few more days of life and a clean atmosphere to others.
9. Always carry a jute bag when going out to buy vegetable. Plastic is a great polluter and at the top of it takes thousands of painful years to degrade.
These are just some of the many possible ways that one can think about depending upon his or her circumstances.
Sustainable development is meaningless without sustainable consumption. The basic question is can our entire population consume at the level of the affluent nations without causing rapid depletion of our limited non-renewable resources? I wonder if such a happy state can ever be attained. The International Council for Science in its report to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002) underscored the need to encourage the development and sharing of new and existing patterns with due emphasis on local, culturally appropriate and low cost technologies.
To quote Stieglitz from his seminal work ‘Globalization and its Discontents’, we are a global community and like all communities have to follow certain rules so that we can live together. These rules must be seen to be- fair and just, must pay due attention to the poor as well as the powerful, must reflect a basic sense of decency and social justice.
To be contd...
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
What Next (Part III)
The Human Touch Contd...
Do we take notice of the degradation of our environment or keep hoping that someone will find some solution? Can we rely on hope?
NO
Hope is never rational.
My Delhi is one of the world’s most polluted cities. My Delhi is also one of the greenest capitals of the world. How come both these designations are associated with one city!
The fact is Delhi is a city of more than 10 million people. Thousands of trains and trucks and millions of human beings come to Delhi every day. In New Delhi-1 and a few other areas where our political masters and the multimillionaires live there are parks, there are drainage facilities, playgrounds and lawns. There are other places like Tughlaquabad, Okhla, Badarpur and so many others where life is but survival. The struggle for food, for land, for air, for water, for sunlight…continues every day and night.
The question one may ask is why blame the rich and the powerful when every next person wants to be one. The issue is when you have a four member family owning eight cars, four TV sets, four laptops, four freezes, and an air conditioned duplex beside innumerable electrical gadgets, there is a problem. The issue is when you become a party to increasing carbon footprints; you become responsible for every single problem that results out of ecological imbalance.
Let me explain the how and what factor. India basically is an agricultural country. Around two-third of people in India are directly or indirectly depend for their livelihood on agriculture. Even if India can provide jobs to all of them in other sectors, which is anyway an impossible assumption as it would require market equivalent to three worlds, it’s not something sustainable. A country of 1.1 billion cannot afford to survive without food security of its own.
What has been happening in India is just its reverse. Agriculture has lost its charm. Well the reasons are overpopulation; lack of agricultural research, credit availability etc. But the most important reason is that we are unable to provide the necessary irrigation facilities. And behind this apart from policy and implementation matters are global warming and the resultant imbalance in the weather cycle. The recent flood in Bihar, Tsunami in December 2004, floods in Mumbai and Rajasthan, draught in parts of Andhra, Tamilandu, and Maharashtra and UP are all results of the growing imbalance in the weather cycle.
The resultant is massive migration of people towards cities, putting stress on the available resources making life miserable for the poor masse. Delhi is just one typical example of this. This is the situation that prevails in most of the developing world from, Mumbai to Durban, from Dhaka to Brasilia. The climate change affects mostly the poor as they are the least equipped to face any catastrophe.
To be continued...
Do we take notice of the degradation of our environment or keep hoping that someone will find some solution? Can we rely on hope?
NO
Hope is never rational.
My Delhi is one of the world’s most polluted cities. My Delhi is also one of the greenest capitals of the world. How come both these designations are associated with one city!
The fact is Delhi is a city of more than 10 million people. Thousands of trains and trucks and millions of human beings come to Delhi every day. In New Delhi-1 and a few other areas where our political masters and the multimillionaires live there are parks, there are drainage facilities, playgrounds and lawns. There are other places like Tughlaquabad, Okhla, Badarpur and so many others where life is but survival. The struggle for food, for land, for air, for water, for sunlight…continues every day and night.
The question one may ask is why blame the rich and the powerful when every next person wants to be one. The issue is when you have a four member family owning eight cars, four TV sets, four laptops, four freezes, and an air conditioned duplex beside innumerable electrical gadgets, there is a problem. The issue is when you become a party to increasing carbon footprints; you become responsible for every single problem that results out of ecological imbalance.
Let me explain the how and what factor. India basically is an agricultural country. Around two-third of people in India are directly or indirectly depend for their livelihood on agriculture. Even if India can provide jobs to all of them in other sectors, which is anyway an impossible assumption as it would require market equivalent to three worlds, it’s not something sustainable. A country of 1.1 billion cannot afford to survive without food security of its own.
What has been happening in India is just its reverse. Agriculture has lost its charm. Well the reasons are overpopulation; lack of agricultural research, credit availability etc. But the most important reason is that we are unable to provide the necessary irrigation facilities. And behind this apart from policy and implementation matters are global warming and the resultant imbalance in the weather cycle. The recent flood in Bihar, Tsunami in December 2004, floods in Mumbai and Rajasthan, draught in parts of Andhra, Tamilandu, and Maharashtra and UP are all results of the growing imbalance in the weather cycle.
The resultant is massive migration of people towards cities, putting stress on the available resources making life miserable for the poor masse. Delhi is just one typical example of this. This is the situation that prevails in most of the developing world from, Mumbai to Durban, from Dhaka to Brasilia. The climate change affects mostly the poor as they are the least equipped to face any catastrophe.
To be continued...
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Competing With The Best: Managing Strategically
“If you can run your business in India successfully, you will definitely be better prepared to face any other economy in the world. If nothing, at least you will be able to learn once you are outside”, says Dr. Rajnish Karki, the author of “COMPETING WITH THE BEST”. He further adds, “The sheer scale of Indian market offers both opportunities and challenges. While the complex nature of Indian market makes it a difficult nut to crack but those who persisted has succeeded.”
In an open interaction today in the pristine premises of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi with Kiran Karnik, the former president of NASSCOM and currently Chairman, Satyam Computers, donning the role of anchor host, it was an evening worth it. Among industry bigwigs the session went beyond the immediate limits of the special session. Questions as wide as plummeting share market and corporate fraud and Tata’s acquisition were discussed. The market Czars discussed what constitutes the constraints now that India is no more a sellers market.
The book has the theme that global-focussed configuration was something unthinkable till 1990s. What followed has been an epoch making development for the Indian economy in general and Indian corporate world in particular. The credit for all this, said Dr Karnik in response to a question, definitely goes to the industry more than anything else.
Dr. Karki repeatedly talked about the unique Indianness about the way Indian companies work. He especially quoted the way Tatas carried out their execution. The IIM Alumni who has also taught strategic management there when asked for the reason behind the frustration of business school guys said that today’s youth lack the humility content. What a manager earlier expected after 20 years of service has begun to demand for more than that in just six months. Though the panel and the audience expressed confidence in the Indian entrepreneurs but confessed it could have been much better otherwise.
Detail abouth the author can be found at http://www.karkiassociates.com/
Monday, May 25, 2009
Art in the Capitalist World
‘Art’ and ‘market’ was never discussed so much within and outside the art circles. Traditionally art survived on ‘patronage’ of the ruling and the elite class? Today the whole concept of art making, display, circulation, and collecting has changed. Today value to art comes through so many factors; the major factors being financial, intellectual, historical and cultural. We explored the major art galleries in Delhi and NCR, the unknown and the famous artists, and the small villages of Madhubani and Darbhanga, the centres of the world famous MITHILA Painting. We talked to the people behind these galleries which pump millions and those artist who have created their mark with nothing but their skills.
There has been a noticeable expansion in the realm of art over last couple of years in India.
There has been a rise in the number of art fairs and biennales hosted across the globe in the last 7-8 years. They have created an altogether new platform for art to circulate and be sold. Indian artists and gallery’s participation has also grown steadily in these years.
With marketing came brand building; something never related to art. But with the emergence of a global art market, brand value pervades the field. New experiments, sensationalism and use of technology accompany an exponential rise in art price around the world. The proliferation of private galleries and auction homes within India points to a strong domestic as well as an international market. But the market is again only for those who have enough to do business. We tried to find people who search for a balance between monetary and artistic goals.
Since 2000 the art market has seen a steep rise. Contemporary art from India has gone global. The art fund, which is primarily concerned with art for its investment value has witnessed boom right till before the recession fears and the Lehman. The momentum generated during boom time is still pushing branded art galleries and the artists who became famous. But with business and marketing at the core of almost all these art galleries, the purpose of art as a medium to make man aware of his unconscious has taken a back seat in many cases.
The search might never be over. The search for purpose might be said to be biased one way or the other, but the art comes out of the creator in us. And a creator will create but with a purpose. What differentiates one from the other is the holiness, the impersonality, the purposefulness of the purpose.
However, how have all these shifts in the art world in general have and Indian art world in particular affected art? Does the expansion of the viewership effects an artist’s response towards audiences? In what way has the need to stand out impacted? In short, what has globalization brought to art?
Kavita Singh, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, writes, “Questions as large as these cannot be answered. One might even say that they should not be answered; the questions are more productive as they open up lines of inquiry that facile answers would foreclose. But these questions are certainly worth asking today as contemporary art from India is seen and sought elsewhere on the globe. Yet at home it remains at best confined, to a small audience of artists and art professionals, or less congenially, is ‘branded’ as an investment opportunity and traded as such; or at worst, is alienated, derided or under attack.”
The use of what Kavita calls ‘shock-aesthetics’, is the new phenomenon, to startle viewers into some form of response; raise consciousness about social issues; or to turn into a desirable commodity, or to resist commodification or anything else is the thing being tried the most these days.
Every age will have its art. Ours is not an exception. The art coming up these days has its own purpose. Simultaneously exists the struggle of traditional arts to be modern, to be relevant contemporarily. The efforts to create brand should not blind the creator.
Let us hope that the fundamentals of art will always remain the same.
There has been a noticeable expansion in the realm of art over last couple of years in India.
There has been a rise in the number of art fairs and biennales hosted across the globe in the last 7-8 years. They have created an altogether new platform for art to circulate and be sold. Indian artists and gallery’s participation has also grown steadily in these years.
With marketing came brand building; something never related to art. But with the emergence of a global art market, brand value pervades the field. New experiments, sensationalism and use of technology accompany an exponential rise in art price around the world. The proliferation of private galleries and auction homes within India points to a strong domestic as well as an international market. But the market is again only for those who have enough to do business. We tried to find people who search for a balance between monetary and artistic goals.
Since 2000 the art market has seen a steep rise. Contemporary art from India has gone global. The art fund, which is primarily concerned with art for its investment value has witnessed boom right till before the recession fears and the Lehman. The momentum generated during boom time is still pushing branded art galleries and the artists who became famous. But with business and marketing at the core of almost all these art galleries, the purpose of art as a medium to make man aware of his unconscious has taken a back seat in many cases.
The search might never be over. The search for purpose might be said to be biased one way or the other, but the art comes out of the creator in us. And a creator will create but with a purpose. What differentiates one from the other is the holiness, the impersonality, the purposefulness of the purpose.
However, how have all these shifts in the art world in general have and Indian art world in particular affected art? Does the expansion of the viewership effects an artist’s response towards audiences? In what way has the need to stand out impacted? In short, what has globalization brought to art?
Kavita Singh, Associate Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, writes, “Questions as large as these cannot be answered. One might even say that they should not be answered; the questions are more productive as they open up lines of inquiry that facile answers would foreclose. But these questions are certainly worth asking today as contemporary art from India is seen and sought elsewhere on the globe. Yet at home it remains at best confined, to a small audience of artists and art professionals, or less congenially, is ‘branded’ as an investment opportunity and traded as such; or at worst, is alienated, derided or under attack.”
The use of what Kavita calls ‘shock-aesthetics’, is the new phenomenon, to startle viewers into some form of response; raise consciousness about social issues; or to turn into a desirable commodity, or to resist commodification or anything else is the thing being tried the most these days.
Every age will have its art. Ours is not an exception. The art coming up these days has its own purpose. Simultaneously exists the struggle of traditional arts to be modern, to be relevant contemporarily. The efforts to create brand should not blind the creator.
Let us hope that the fundamentals of art will always remain the same.
The Threats (Part II)
(The Human Touch Contd...)
What they have done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her
and did her,
Stuck her with knives in the side of the
dawn,
And tied her with fences and dragged her
down.
(Sang Jim Morrison, American singer in his 1967 song ‘When the Music’s Over’)
-According to Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), in the year 2000, a total renewable water resource of Egypt was 58.3 cubic km. Its irrigation requirement was 28.43 cubic km or 53% of its renewable resources then. But the amount of water it withdrew was 53.85 cubic km which stands at 92% as a percentage of its renewable water resources.
- In April 2007, the National Geographic News reported early arrival of spring to the western slope of Colorado's Rocky Mountains. Recent studies suggest less of a temperature difference between winter and summer. Summer, fall, and winter have all started 1.7 days earlier this year. All these are signs of the world getting warmer at a faster pace.
-At the 2008 Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, from 15–19 December in San Francisco, scientists warned that, in California, extreme events such as heat-waves now occurring once every 100 years could be happening every year within a century.
-On February 3, 2009 National Geographic News reported volcanic smoke and gas from two new holes on Alaska's Redoubt Volcano—one of them (left) about the size of a football field. The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) confirms increasing volcanic unrest at Redoubt Volcano.
-- The Guardian reported on February 18, 2009 that IPCC’s computer models had calculated an average loss of 2.5% in sea ice extent per decade from 1953 to 2006. But in reality the Arctic sea ice had declined at a rate of about 7.8% per decade. New researches reveal that melt-water pooling on the Arctic sea ice is causing it to melt at a faster pace.
-India’s agricultural production has been consistently on the decline in recent years and is growing at less than a quarter the pace of the Indian economy. Annual per capita food grain production declined from 207 kilograms (455 pounds) in 1995 to 186 kilograms in 2006. The rate of agricultural growth has fallen from 5% in the mid-1980s to less than 2% (average) in the past half-decade. Despite building of huge dams it continues to be hostage to the vagaries of the monsoon. Not a happy sign for a country of every seventh human being.
-Climate change does not simply floods or droughts. It can cause epic devastation involving super cyclones, extreme weather, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond our imagination. It can pose existential threat to our coastal regions and ruin our agriculture by causing moisture -salinity imbalance in the soil. Projections show extinction of more than 5000 useful plant and animal species mainly due to the loss of suitable habitats.
- The Technical Paper on Climate Change of Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) shows substantial spatial and intensity variation in precipitation just in a matter of decades due to global warming. It is projected to increase the risks of flooding and drought in many areas, and in turn decreased food security. The quantity and even quality of water will be affected as a result of this. Already about 25% of the contemporary African population experiences water stress. By 2025, water availability in nine countries, mainly in eastern and southern Africa, is projected to be less than 1,000 cubic metre/person/yr. By 2020s there is an increased risk of winter flood in northern Europe and of flash flood in all of Europe.
- The same report says precipitation decline and droughts in deltas of Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and China have caused drying of wetlands and severe degradation of ecosystems. The recurrent droughts from 1999 to 2001, the construction of upstream reservoirs and improper use of groundwater have led to drying of the Momoge Wetland located in the Songnen Plain in north-eastern China.
The Nature says the warming caused by greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, is the main reason behind these changes. But the most worrying perhaps has been the surge in atmospheric concentrations of methane, a gas with a warming potential twenty-three times that of carbon dioxide. The extensive release of gaseous methane from formerly frozen deposits off the Siberian coast is of serious concern given this background.
What they have done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her
and did her,
Stuck her with knives in the side of the
dawn,
And tied her with fences and dragged her
down.
(Sang Jim Morrison, American singer in his 1967 song ‘When the Music’s Over’)
-According to Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), in the year 2000, a total renewable water resource of Egypt was 58.3 cubic km. Its irrigation requirement was 28.43 cubic km or 53% of its renewable resources then. But the amount of water it withdrew was 53.85 cubic km which stands at 92% as a percentage of its renewable water resources.
- In April 2007, the National Geographic News reported early arrival of spring to the western slope of Colorado's Rocky Mountains. Recent studies suggest less of a temperature difference between winter and summer. Summer, fall, and winter have all started 1.7 days earlier this year. All these are signs of the world getting warmer at a faster pace.
-At the 2008 Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, from 15–19 December in San Francisco, scientists warned that, in California, extreme events such as heat-waves now occurring once every 100 years could be happening every year within a century.
-On February 3, 2009 National Geographic News reported volcanic smoke and gas from two new holes on Alaska's Redoubt Volcano—one of them (left) about the size of a football field. The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) confirms increasing volcanic unrest at Redoubt Volcano.
-- The Guardian reported on February 18, 2009 that IPCC’s computer models had calculated an average loss of 2.5% in sea ice extent per decade from 1953 to 2006. But in reality the Arctic sea ice had declined at a rate of about 7.8% per decade. New researches reveal that melt-water pooling on the Arctic sea ice is causing it to melt at a faster pace.
-India’s agricultural production has been consistently on the decline in recent years and is growing at less than a quarter the pace of the Indian economy. Annual per capita food grain production declined from 207 kilograms (455 pounds) in 1995 to 186 kilograms in 2006. The rate of agricultural growth has fallen from 5% in the mid-1980s to less than 2% (average) in the past half-decade. Despite building of huge dams it continues to be hostage to the vagaries of the monsoon. Not a happy sign for a country of every seventh human being.
-Climate change does not simply floods or droughts. It can cause epic devastation involving super cyclones, extreme weather, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond our imagination. It can pose existential threat to our coastal regions and ruin our agriculture by causing moisture -salinity imbalance in the soil. Projections show extinction of more than 5000 useful plant and animal species mainly due to the loss of suitable habitats.
- The Technical Paper on Climate Change of Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) shows substantial spatial and intensity variation in precipitation just in a matter of decades due to global warming. It is projected to increase the risks of flooding and drought in many areas, and in turn decreased food security. The quantity and even quality of water will be affected as a result of this. Already about 25% of the contemporary African population experiences water stress. By 2025, water availability in nine countries, mainly in eastern and southern Africa, is projected to be less than 1,000 cubic metre/person/yr. By 2020s there is an increased risk of winter flood in northern Europe and of flash flood in all of Europe.
- The same report says precipitation decline and droughts in deltas of Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and China have caused drying of wetlands and severe degradation of ecosystems. The recurrent droughts from 1999 to 2001, the construction of upstream reservoirs and improper use of groundwater have led to drying of the Momoge Wetland located in the Songnen Plain in north-eastern China.
The Nature says the warming caused by greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, is the main reason behind these changes. But the most worrying perhaps has been the surge in atmospheric concentrations of methane, a gas with a warming potential twenty-three times that of carbon dioxide. The extensive release of gaseous methane from formerly frozen deposits off the Siberian coast is of serious concern given this background.
The Human Touch…(Part I)
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life’s has become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
-Anton Chekhov , Uncle Vanya ( 1967)
A life is worth it if it has the opportunity to explore all its potentialities. A life is worthier if the opportunities are available and the fight is for potential. But a life is worthiest if there are avenues to expand potentialities and opportunity is not an issue but only the challenge to better your best.
When a child drinks water, it never knows what it is, nor does it matter for an injured surviving on saline. When a cow consumes a plastic bag, and dies of the entanglements it causes to its digestive mechanism, she never knows, it will take her life, so painfully. When a plant dies due to logging of water or drought or because of a storm uprooting it, it never knows why every next storm is more powerful and frequent than it used to be. But there is one thing that even many of us don’t know: ‘that we men are the single most important denominator behind all this’.
Rabindranath Tagore , said, ‘Man’s civilization is built upon his surplus.’
Truly man has intelligence and ingenuity beyond the limit of bare necessity and usefulness. There lies the power of creating ‘New’. There lies our test to give our next generations a happier, cleaner and greener home to live: Mother Earth.
Can we ensure a better future for our forthcoming generations and the generations of our plants, our animals, our surroundings? Can we turn the greatest threat to man’s existence into the greatest opportunity? Can we go beyond the limits and set a new standard of a sustainable growth?
This time we don’t have an option.
The answer must be YES.
To be contd...
-Anton Chekhov , Uncle Vanya ( 1967)
A life is worth it if it has the opportunity to explore all its potentialities. A life is worthier if the opportunities are available and the fight is for potential. But a life is worthiest if there are avenues to expand potentialities and opportunity is not an issue but only the challenge to better your best.
When a child drinks water, it never knows what it is, nor does it matter for an injured surviving on saline. When a cow consumes a plastic bag, and dies of the entanglements it causes to its digestive mechanism, she never knows, it will take her life, so painfully. When a plant dies due to logging of water or drought or because of a storm uprooting it, it never knows why every next storm is more powerful and frequent than it used to be. But there is one thing that even many of us don’t know: ‘that we men are the single most important denominator behind all this’.
Rabindranath Tagore , said, ‘Man’s civilization is built upon his surplus.’
Truly man has intelligence and ingenuity beyond the limit of bare necessity and usefulness. There lies the power of creating ‘New’. There lies our test to give our next generations a happier, cleaner and greener home to live: Mother Earth.
Can we ensure a better future for our forthcoming generations and the generations of our plants, our animals, our surroundings? Can we turn the greatest threat to man’s existence into the greatest opportunity? Can we go beyond the limits and set a new standard of a sustainable growth?
This time we don’t have an option.
The answer must be YES.
To be contd...
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