A Citizen's Contribution to a Sustainable Planet

The reality of human caused climate change has passed the stage when denying its presence would give any real solace. It's happening and humans are responsible for whatever will unfold upon our future generations because of it. The lasting solutions to these problems – if they ever come – must be spearheaded by governments. However, governments are constrained by other more immediate problems to deal with: economic development, education, health, national security, not to mention elections and vote banks. Individuals, on the other hand, are free to apply practices of sustainability quite directly. For them, the problem is that of replicating the benefits: how do I convince people around me to adapt these methods? Or how's it going to help if only I do it while most others continue living callously? Many of us have the tenacity to work towards a sustainable model of life at an individual level, but can't find the will to spread the word.

Anyway, parking the above very real and difficult issues, let's see what changes an urban citizen can bring about in his life to approach a more sustainable lifestyle. It turns out the steps are concrete, doable, have multiple benenfits, cost little or nothing, and immediately becomes examples for willing others to replicate – eschewing the need for explicit activism.

Reduce Vehicular Pollution. Vehicles contribute significantly to atmospheric pollution. Individuals can reassess their part in this major evil. Office commute is probably the single biggest reason why we travel on road everyday. We should ask ourselves if we are being considerate to sustainability in our choice of our mode of daily commute. For example, cars are a good choice if you have to travel a long distance, and there are at least 3-4 people travelling the same way. However, if our workplace is within a few kilometres of our residence, if we are reasonably fit, and if there is no one else to travel along with us, there seems to be no justification to travel by car. There are several other alternatives: car pooling, public transport, 2-wheeler and so on. For those willing to go a step further, walking and bicycling are not just eco-friendly, but also good for your health. For longer journeys, consider travelling on land instead of air if possible.

Water conservation. Water tables are plummetting around us. Water bodies which used to be a pride of our city's landscape have been gradually consumed by greed and corruption of the real-estate sector. Most apartment complexes in the city are now at the mercy of water tanker suppliers – which is much less a business than a ferocious mafia. Unavailability of pottable water has been quoted as one of prime reasons for possibly turning Bangalore into an uninhabitable city in the next one decade, as predicted by some experts. There are a hundred things through the day that we can do to conserve water. Bathing from a bucket instead of shower. Using RO filter reject water for mopping, cleaning and flush. Immediately repairing tap leaks. Ask your apartment management to ensure perfect maintenance of the sewage treatement plant (STP), organic waste converter (OWC) and rainwater harvesting system. Also, working towards having a centralised RO plant for supplying drinking water to the whole apartment complex would result in thousands of litres of water being saved everyday.

Waste management. Our cities are drowning in filth. Choked drains. Overflowing landfills. Polluted lakes and rivers. Contaminated ground water. Much of this filth emerges from our homes. What can we do to stop contributing to this hellish affair? Following the well-known mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle is a good starting point. We should start segregating waste at its source, so that only the most unprocessable of domestic waste ends up in landfills. Avoid plastic use (e.g. carry your own bag to grocery shops). Use printing judiciously at office. Encourage your apartment complex management to spend resources in keeping their STP and OWC in working condition.

Cut Down on Consumption. There's a lot of stigma around the topic of leading a simple life, these days. Never have people shown such fierce unity in anything as in voicing their right to consume blindly. However, the arithmetic of consumption and pollution is a straightforward one. Binge shopping, eating or any type of consumption has an environmental cost which we are not paying, but somebody else surely is, or will. Our addiction to electronic devices, AC and other electrical appliances are feeding off the thermal power plants, which are major contributors to carbon emission. Our seers and visionaries have cautioned against a life of greed and consumption for thousands of years. Our generation has now enough evidences to know that our seers were never as correct in any other matter. Cutting down on blind consumerism is no more a moral stand in our age; realities of climate change have turned this into plain common sense.

Debates on how governments and leaders should play a central role in shaping an environmentally sustainable society will continue. But consider the following: every bill or law enforced by government bodies will have to be implemented on the ground by citizens through daily practices and processes, whether willingly or under the whip. With a bit of awareness, it's not difficult to understand what those practices should be. Why can't we not go ahead and do them ourselves? At our apartment complex, we have implemented waste segregation entirely as a voluntary initiative; and it has worked. At an individual level, I and my family have been following most, if not all, of the above practices. And I am there to testify that this hasn't dealt a blow on the quality of our lives. These are not sacrifices, but just the right things to do. That 'nobody understands' is honestly a very lame excuse to keep following the herd marching towards the precipice. Let's get rid of our resistance to change, and embrace sustainability as the way of life. Let's not just leave a liveable planet for our children; but also teach them how to leave one for their children in turn.

The article was published in Deccan Herald on April 21, 2017. Here's the link.

We on Our Roads

I just went through this article, and I couldn't agree more.

The article points towards some research findings that being rich robs you of your empathetic nature.

It's really true according to me. Recently, I was discussing on a related matter with a friend of mine about the behaviour of people residing in posh apartment complexes. Particularly on how they find it perfectly justified for them to waste resources like water, electricity and food, just because they have paid for it. It seems when my friend suggested in one of the casual conversations to one of his acquaintances that we should be considerate on such matters, the other person there said, 'that's not life!'

Can anything be any more degrading than to believe that being considerate is no more an option for humans?!

Before this article gets dismissed as another social bitching piece, I want to bring to your notice another issue: about how we look at our right to use public infrastructure, particularly roads. We have no order on our roads. They are polluted and dangerous. But above all, our roads are excessively crowded. The road cries out in pain when yet another car gets added to this mayhem, even if that car is yours or mine! Cars are the main reason why our roads are so dangerous, not the other vehicles like autos, 2-wheelers and buses, however much we might like to blame them for the chaos, and to take pride in our awareness of the mannerisms of more orderly roads of other countries. And that's simply because cars are so inefficient in terms of everything: fuel, space, maneuverability. Once we give up for good all the other more efficient and compassionate modes of travel for a car, what's this we are trying to convey by criticising those other people who scramble around for that little space we have left them with on the roads?

Please consider using public transport sometimes. Please use a 2-wheeler instead of a car if you can. Please take out your rusty bicycle for little personal excursions in and around your locality. It's good for your health. It doesn't pollute. It glides smoothly and noiselessly on the roads and quickly gets you to your destination. It burns up that fat in your body which you struggle to burn on the treadmill in your air-conditioned gym.

I have seen people going further than not accepting the nobility in minimalism. By calling such acts vanity in the disguise of simplicity.

Start by taking the first step: by accepting that it is good to be considerate and compassionate on the road and elsewhere. Please have the courage to accept that the people who have chosen not to crowd and pollute have done an act of integrity. They deserve your respect and admiration; not ignorance and definitely not scorn. And accept that if you aren't able to do the same thing, it's not a happy choice, but has got to do with some limitation on your part: distance, lack of fitness, or -- as is most probably the case  -- mere laziness, or even worse, vanity.

Please stop giving the lame excuses about pollution. Adding to litter just because there's already a heap of it lying there isn't justified. Same applies to corruption. Why doesn't that apply to pollution and crowding? Just because you hate inhaling polluted air, you decide to contribute to this state by pumping in loads of CO everyday by preferring a car to a two-wheeler or public transport? Isn't that selfish and inconsiderate?

I have been driving a 2-wheeler for 25 years (a dozen of them in Bangalore). I have been riding a bicycle for even longer (a dozen of them in Bangalore again). I can't say anything about tomorrow. But I am alive today. I haven't been knocked down so far by any rogue driver. And I can vouch for the fact that I am less unhealthy than I have always been in large part due to my on and off (progressively more on than off) bicycling. I believe that, despite the dangerous conditions of our roads (which I don't fully deny), a lot of your own safety depends on you. Being a bit cautious, and not depending on the same from others, does the trick. It may slow you down, frustrate you a bit. But that's a lot better than risking your life or not cycling at all.

I am sorry to see that while many of the people of my age group are finding their way back to healthier and fitter lifestyles, younger people find it their prerogative to desire cars as a necessary luxury as soon as possible to mark the fact that they are doing well in their lives. What a pity! Isn't it the same mentality as that of thinking that you have every right to consume as much resources as you wish as long as you are paying for it? Wake up guys! Learn that the need to show off one's achievements is already bad enough. To think it one's entitlement to potentially disastrous modes of vanity is nothing less than criminal.

The happiness of doing well in life comes with a bunch of responsibilities. Achievement devoid of commensurate awareness, knowledge, thinking, compassion and wisdom is not worth a farthing to anything including yourself. Simply because any such happiness simply can't exist. Consider not searching happiness by inflating your ego endlessly. There are other more direct and less disastrous ways to seek happiness. And they don't eventually end in a naught.

Well, before I turn too acidic and digress, let me conclude with a wish list:

1. That we all had behaved better on our roads. 
2. That we had been more respectful to the people who built it, and to those who laid down rules and directives for good driving.
3. That we followed rules without having to be watched over all the time.
4. That we showed some respect to our fellow users of the road by keeping distance, by not overtaking too much, by not driving non-linearly, by not honking too much. 
5. And finally, that we had respected the fact that the space on the road and breathable air in our atmosphere are both exhaustible resources, and had taken to less polluting and less crowding modes of transport wherever possible.

Welcome to BMTC

After 11 years of evading it, I am getting to explore BMTC buses in all their glory. AC volvos with 55 rupees tickets for 25 kms. Arterial roads: Electronic City, Majestic, Malleswaram, Whitefield... Rattling blue ones joining far-flung rural nooks and crannies crawling on bumpy pot-holed roads with 10 rupees tickets for 30 kms. Attibele, Jigni, Hoskote, Kodi-Farm, Uttarahalli... Upscale, ear-plugged, perfumed, nose-upturned co-passengers. Talkative, noisy co-passengers, smelling of sweat and dust, eager to help. I salute BMTC for creating this burgeoning network of buses. It's an experience! They have continued to make it possible to travel long distances without spending half your salary on petrol.

I find the drivers and conductors extremely polite and helpful in general. I never knew that there are so many buses in Bangalore, and that there are so many people to travel in them. The enormity of this crowd is humbling! Everyone working so hard! Trying to get somewhere. Millions. And yet, everyone struggling to keep his head above the sea of insignificance which seems to keep rising all the time.

Once you figure out the routes, it seems to be a very economical and eco-friendly way of commuting. It takes a bit longer. Well, much longer in many cases. But city driving is stressful, a time wasted completely. Owning a car isn't a big deal anymore; but being chauffeur driven isn't affordable now, nor ever is going to be, for most of us. Not to mention the fatigue driving creates affecting the quality of the time after the drive. On the contrary, the time in a bus is a time to unplug yourself, work, think, rest, catch up with friends over phone, mail, chat...

I seem to have conquered my fear of buses after a long struggle. And I am profiting from it. I don't have anything to say to those who have given up on public transport like they have given up on voting, or on the whole concept of 'a greater good'. But if anyone has been hesitating to take his or her first step, waiting for a positive word to come from somewhere, here you have it from me. Try BMTC (or whichever is the local bus service of your city). It may turn out to be practical in your case too!