During a general election, the rest of the country gets to taste the political heat that Delhiites must endure all year round. It’s a blessed break for us capital citizens — and as if in pathetic fallacy, the weather has been pleasantly temperate this year. In April Delhi ought to be sizzling, but lo, it’s been hotter this week in Bangalore.
Climate change appears to have treated Delhi reasonably well so far. More “western disturbances” may visit more rain and snow and misery on the mountains, but down here in the plains they mean less heat. Average temperatures may be rising, making each successive year one of the hottest in history, but the intolerableness of the summer feels reduced.
If unseasonable rain brings relief to the city, it’s not welcomed in the farming hinterland. Domestic workers tell of friends and family back home who have lost crops and income in the recent rains across North India; first onions, now wheat. And they are not speaking of subsistence farmers.
Parliamentarians are no doubt keenly aware of this damage in their constituencies. Where there is major loss, monetary relief packages are often worked out. But election manifestos are written at party headquarters, so issues of environment and sustainability — basic issues that underlie agricultural stress — get little space and attention. To be sure the words are used, and paragraphs on ecology follow sections on development and decentralisation in the major-party manifestos. But the policy content looks small and vague, if not dishonest: sentences like “Set up fool proof mechanisms for protection and preservation of wild life,” in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto, to take an egregious example.
It’s all terribly short-term thinking. One does not expect much from election manifestos; what’s terrible is that they showcase exactly how peripheral to the major policy discourse issues of environment and sustainability are, when they ought to be absolutely central.
Take Delhi. It has weathered the 21st-century climate so far, but wait till change really kicks in, as climate scientists fear it may. It will not be just more heat to worry about: it is predictability altogether. If the south-west monsoon weakens, which is a possibility, India beyond the Western Ghats will run even drier. Perhaps the only comfortable place left to live will be on the west coast, which will still get rain. Imagine the slow-burning chaos implicit in such scenarios.
The only way to forestall drastic change is global, in more ways than one. It’s not just governments that must correct course, it is every aspect of the economy. If government doesn’t wish its citizens robbed of their aspirations and quality-of-life, it is time to encode change in every sector. And the way to sell such change is as an economic opportunity.
The fact is that in most sectors, like agriculture, power, urbanisation, education, health, what should be done is more or less well-known, and has been for years. Hardly any actions involve radical human withdrawal from the natural environment, and all of them appear to offer great opportunities for business as well as citizenship.
One place, one very good place, to begin to acquaint yourself with both problems and solutions is the inaugural annual of the excellent “science and environment” magazine Down to Earth. It is called State of India’s Environment 2014 (Centre for Science and Environment, Rs 450). This edition has chapters on water, people and governance (new rights, food, land acquisition, NREGA and laws), forests and wildlife, land and agriculture, industry and mining, air pollution (which this time focused on the dire impact of the car, and on transport alternatives), climate change (not a satisfying chapter), and — mild surprise — Elections 2014, which is about the effect of growing inclusiveness on our democracy and the need for “green party” thinking.
The book is neither depressing nor strident. It is reassuring, rather, because in every sector the reader can cleanly see some way forward. And the view is not dark.
rraote@yahoo.com
