Let us start by cleaning up the Holy Ganga!

This is my first post in the year 2009, and here I want to return to my favourite theme: cleaning up the Holy Ganges. The more I think about it, such a cleansing would be symbolic of the cleansing of Indian, especially Hindu, society. Mother Ganges has become a super-drain of the Gangetic plain, and no one really cares about it. The so-called secular leaders who govern this country would have no reason to care and so would the many pseudo-holy men in the country. But if India and Vedic dharma have to be revitalized, I have a feeling it needs to start from the Holy Ganges.
Such a massive exercise cannot but affect the lives of every human being and animal in the Gangetic plain and, by extension, a major part of India. It will, automatically, turn into a cleansing process for our society and body politic.
Which is exactly why none of the powers that be want Holy Ganges cleaned up.
Apart from the need for hygiene and cleanliness, cleaning up Mother Ganges would also be a washing away our accumulated bad karma, cleaning up Hindustan for higher achievements in the grand scheme of things.
I hope I can contribute something towards the cleaning up of Mother Ganges this year.

VHP to Wash Away Sins in Holy Ganga

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad is teaming up with godmen again. But wait, before you say what is new, these are not the bunch of rabble rousers and ultra-conservative set of ochre-clads who had dominated the VHP's ranks all these years. And this time it is for an environmental cause - clean up the Ganga. And these godmen are some of the most influential personalities in today's moderate Hindu society - Ravi Shankar, Baba Ramdev, Asaramji Bapu and Morari Bapu. They are not exactly pushing a religious agenda in today's Indian society either. (Read story in Mint)

The VHP's agenda is, of course, to reach out to moderate Hindus and thus remove the "untouchable" status it has acquired over the Babri Masjid demolition and riots. But the godmen say they are in the tie-up because it is for enviornmental causes that need immediate attention.

I wish the VHP's agenda fails and the godmen's agenda wins!The Ganga or Ganges needs urgent cleaning up - no doubt about that. The river has nurtured Indians for thousands of years, and now we repay that by polluting and destroying it. The government, and various political parties, with their votebank agenda, are squarely responsible for this state of affairs. If they had any concern about the well being of India, its culture and heritage, and its environment things would not have come to such a pass. What I am saying is if India had a Hindu religious government it could not have allowed the Ganga to be destroyed this way. But I am also saying you don't need any religious affiliations to keep the Ganga clean. Any government which has genuine concerns about its people and country would not have let this happen.

I am really happy this is happening. Of course, there will be people who will try to find an alliance between the VHP and these godmen worrisome for national harmony. And given the VHP's track record they shouldn't be blamed either. But I am sure these godmen, who have proven over the years that they are more humanitarians than religious fanatics would keep the VHP firmly on track and won't let them hijack the movement for narrow political gains. If they manage to do that, the whole nation will be thankful to them and they will get the blessings of Mother Ganges. And the blessings of Mother Ganges could go a long way in washing away the VHP's sins, too.

Cracking the cheap energy puzzle, finally!

Is this the future? Yes, MIT professor Daniel G. Nocera has found a way to replicate the photosynthesis reaction used by plants to make oxygen and hydrogen, to work in the real world - cheaply.
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/07/30/nocera-solar-power-biz-energy-cz_jf_0731solar.html. Here is the article in Science journal
The experiments are still in their early stage, but Nocera's team has cracked the toughest part of it - the oxygen and hydrogen generation. This should be a landmark in mankind's quest for alternative energy. And if it really takes off, then we are in for an era of cheap and clean energy. Unbelievable but true!
Still the question remains. This won't be the end to all our environmental problems. With no more need to worry about greenhouse gases humans are going to increase their plundering of earth's riches and the pollution of its bounty to life. I am talking about the many chemicals and other stuff we create, use and release into the ecosystem in a day. Well, Nocera has helped us take a giant leap forward. Now each of use need to evaluate what we really need, and separate the need from the greed for building a really sustainable civilisation.

When we dumped those wood-fired stoves ...

The energy crisis made me think of how we used to live in our village - the women used firewood collected from the trees, especially the dried leaves and other matter from coconut trees, to cook food. As I grew up and the country progressed economically, the ease of getting a cooking gas connection increased and at the same time such a connection became affordable to more people. And then, people stopped using firewood - entirely. The results were immediately visible. The dried leaves and stubs from the coconut palms, and even the dried husks, suddenly had no takers. Earlier, people used to run to grab the dried coconut palm leaf or other parts that fell on the ground. Now those were left to rot on the ground. The immediate effect was the coconut groves became untidy and as soon as rain fell the decaying biomatter led to an increase in the number of millipedes and other such insects. More importantly, useful biofuels were being left to rot while the people were paying money to pay for LPG.
Of course, buring those firewoods is never a clean solution but they could easily have been turned into biogas. In fact, some people in my village were considering setting up biofuel plants when the whole thing was made irrelevant by the easy availability of cheap cooking gas.
And now, we have a problem - there is suddenly not enough of that gas and its price is climbing!
Who will we blame here? I don't know.
Maybe we should never have gone to exploiting natural gas reserves, considering the long-term and as yet unknown dangers that could create to life on earth. Does sucking out all that oil and gas make the earth prone more to earthquakes? I have heard such arguments and scientists dismiss them as baseless. But can we really say that? As more and more oil and gas is sucked out, wouldn't it create imbalances in the earth's crust? Isn't that simple logic?
And buring fossil fuels and petroleum products are adding so much of toxic substances to the air and water around, I am not sure what kind of consequences they would bring to life on earth in, say, 50 years. In fact, no one is sure.
Makes me think the simple village life that we had a couple of hundred years back was preferable to the toxic environment we have now, despite all the comforts of the modern life!

Needed - A New Paradigm Of Development

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced human civilisation cannot continue on our present path of development for too long. The paradigm of development we have, which encourages and is sustained by limitless and conspicous consumption of everything - including the animals that co-exist with us on this planet - is inherently flawed. We are leaving too much toxic debris around for us to continue far this way.We may invest in cleaner fuels, we may shun plastics... but all that is not going to do much other than postpone the inevitable for a few more years or, maybe, decades.
There needs to a new paradigm of development, and there needs to be strong political will to enforce it. Enforce it because there is no way a people bred on a culture of greed and self-aggrandisement can be made to wilfully adapt such a new paradigm for the common good.
There are several obstacles to achieving this. First, the new paradigm need to be drawn up by someone with enough foresight and perspicacity. Second, the political will cannot come from our current political system, with the leaders who rely on appeasement of the masses and who have mutualistic relations with businesses, which would be highly interested in continuing with the current paradigm.
If we can overcome these obstacles, then we can say with confidence that human civilisation will survive the crisis it is creating for itself. But it is a tall order, and if we fail, we are eternally doomed.

The Challenge We Face

A recent report says the huge amounts of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere due to human activity is making the ocean waters acidic. While that was known for some time, what is causing concern is that those waters, hitherto restricted to the depths of the big oceans, are now finding their way to the coastal shelves. And these acidic waters are thinning the shells of corals and other animals.
We have gone on polluting our air, water and other resources regardless of the fact that pollution is never confined to the area of pollution. We live in a connected eco-system and the pollutants and other toxins we add to one part of the earth will, sooner or later, find its way around the globe.
If we look at the pollution in some of our industrial cities and compare that with the serene air of the Himalayas or the Amazon, we may think only those living in highly polluted areas need to worry about the problem. Not so. Those pollutants are going to find their way to you, and affect to coming generations all over the earth.
We have been so short-sighted about this problem; and polluting and greedy businesses have glossed over it. But I read in a book about Swami Rama that the Himalayan sages were aware of it even at the beginning of the last century!
We had gone on polluting merrily and now we really do have a problem on our hands: we can continue to do what we do and condemn ourselves, the coming generations, and the whole ecosystem itself; or we can stop this madness and try to mend our ways.
But the second option would mean we change the way we live, and put an end to this conspicuous consumption we had taken for granted in the last 100 years. Are we up to the challenge?

The Positive Side of $130 Oil

Oil hitting $130 a barrel may be worrying for the economy but I think there is a silver lining there. This would surely spur the big corporations and governments to act faster on alternative energy sources - and with the current expanding consciousness about the environment, we can confidently hope those alternative energy sources will also be greener. That last 100-150 years of development - powered mostly by fossil fuels - has already burdened nature with toxins that may take hundreds of years to clean up. We need to make a start somewhere to reduce and roll back the amount of those toxins. At the very worst, this kind of galloping oil prices can push the world's economy into a recession, and cut down on the huge amount of pollution we create daily.

At the same time, I have read reports of US politicians threatening to punish China and India over over-use of dirty fuels. I agree that what India and China are doing is a bad thing, but that is because these Asian nations are now following the crassly materialist path of development shown by the West. And man for man, people in these countries pollute less and consume less -- at least four fith less than the average American. So who should be punished?!