A couple of weeks ago, an article in the International Herald Tribune caught my attention.
The piece deals with the huge shortfall between capacity and demand for power in Growing India and the hugely inequitable supply that results from this.
I've been reading things like this for a while - as will anyone who reads the news - but I thought it was interesting that the article was carried by a non-Indian newspaper. Says something about the scale of the problem, I thought. So, as is my wont, I sent the article out to a bunch of my Indian friends and asked them what they thought.
A question that subsequently arose in one of the responses was: Is halting economic growth really the answer?
Great question. I thought it'd be great practice at debating, communicating and thinking, to respond. Below is the email I sent in return. I'd love some constructive criticism on the points I made:
__________________________________________
Hey,
Thank you for asking the hard question. (If you were simply asking it in passing, forgive me the spiel below, but simply cannot resist debate and practice. So spiel below I will, please.)
My Response, off the top of my head and not relying on any 'party line', this is just me talking back:
It was a while ago that I read this article, so I don't remember the subtler messages, but if it did imply that halting economic growth is the solution then no, I don't agree either. Obviously though, there must be room for subtler solutions: it can't be either zero-growth or unbridled growth at any and all costs.
A couple of points I would make off the top of my head:
1. Inclusive growth seems impossible in trickle-down perspectives. This assumes that if we have a large amount of wealth, the benefits of this will trickle downwards to those who need it, ultimately. The inherent paradox is: Economics assumes the Perfectly Rational Man, but trickle-down requires a certain degree of altruism. Perfectly Rational Men are, (at the risk of vast oversimplification) opportunistic, relatively short-sighted and basically out to get the largest slice of the pie. (Obviously. I am not implying that rationality is evil, but this is what it entails - do everything in your power to be on top, push, struggle, get there. And I am like that too, I don't deny it. Why else have I accumulated a carbon footprint large enough for some small nations, trying to get a PhD.)
2. Lets not forget that this model of economic growth also assumes infinite resources. Our economy - even when it switches from manufacturing to services (as economies in the process of becoming 'developed' do), is powered by coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro- power. Two things stem from this:
2a.) The power of these resources flows from resource-rich but economically marginalized areas (the countryside) to resource-poor economically integrated areas (cites and industrial centres). This inherently furthers the marginalization of large sections of our population.
2b.) The resources themselves, managed as they are at present, will either run out or become unfeasibly expensive to harvest within the next two generations (an oversimplification based on some theory and some observation, but you can change the numbers from 2 generations to 5 to 10 - the ultimate answer is not less alarming for it). After that, technologically developed 'alternatives', so far untested for the scale and depth at which they will have to be employed, are assumed to 'take over'. For the concerned environmentalist and social scientist, this reads (much to my alarm) as follows: An over-heating economy marked by inequity and resource-poverty is about to explode into absolute chaos.
The underlying theme in all of this: Inclusivity does not come with increased growth, it comes with effective distribution. Right now I see lots of growth, but where is it going? Is anyone consciously putting in as much effort into distributing the benefits as they are into powering even more growth? (In pockets, they are. Great. More power to the people driving the process, and long may it continue. But overall, I think the balance is still skewed in favour of more, more MORE.) If overall economic well being were the aim, I would see a balance between growth, sustainability and equity.
I do not see this. If you do, let me know - it would lift some of my blackness to find that no problems exist where I think they do.
If I sound Marxist, worry not, I'm not calling for that - I'm in no place to offer a solution like that. All I can say is that: grow as much as you want, the problems will grow in lockstep if growth does not assume a radically different face, because the paradoxes are built in.
Right. So I've done worse than the article by now: brought in lots of theory, sounded alarmist and not offered a concrete way out. Great. At least it's practice in how (not to) communicate. Blah. Honestly, what is the point, no one is going to listen to a dolly-haired girl wearing Miss Selfridge shorts and red nailpolish. Humph.
Rambling incoherently now,
Zareen.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Monday, May 28, 2007
White Noise
It happened again the other night.
There was a trance-night on campus and I was so keen on going that I went ahead to the party even though I didn't know anyone who was going and my boyfriend categorically refused to go. (Understandably, anyone who does not like to dance as much as I do is bored when they go out with me, since I get so immersed in my dancing.)
It took a while for me to get 'into it', several times I thought myself silly for being so compelled to go and walked to the door. Several times I just stood in the smoking section of the club and lit up, because I thought people would think me incredibly silly, just standing around alone on the dancefloor, too shy to dance. (Me. Too shy to dance. God, what's happening to me!!)
The music wasn't helping. Trance is wonderful stuff, I think, when it's not trampled all over my mind-numbingly boring, repetitive beats. I like variation. I like unpredictability. I like drama, crescendos, random ribbons of flute music tying heavy rhythm into featherweight packages. I like flying on undulating currents, so that it feels like my body is somehow having to predict the music. The thrill is entirely lost when the music is so predictable that my bodymind has to do no thinking whatsoever.
But I digress: this was not meant to be an exposition on 'What is good trance?'
So. Picture me: alone, dolled-up, feeling silly, feeling alone. I really wanted to dance. I really wanted to know some people - dancing is more fun, and more of a challenge, when you have an audience, I think. Friends who can also dance, who can out-dance you. Even though it is such an intensely personal inner journey, my best dancing has always happened when there are people watching you, clapping encouragement as you fly higher and higher.
Suddenly, there was a shift in the music, in the light. I put out my cigarette. I took a sip of water out of the glass I was holding. I suddenly forgot to feel alone. The music had changed, and it had struck something in me. I shut my eyes, leaned against a pillar and listened. And then,
magic:
In the moment of silence between two beats, I suddenly woke up. If sacred trance was a well-known genre, I would call this music that and you would know what I meant by it. The unmistakable feeling, for those of us lucky enough to know it, of music that sounds like a prayer of the body. The beats entirely in tune with what your feet, hands, legs want to do. I shut my eyes and danced. At first, it was very strange: I haven't danced alone at a party for months, it takes some getting used to. There was a rush of things in my head. I remember them as clearly as if I had thought them all a second ago. I remember every movement, every flicker of light shining through my closed eyes:
I should go home.. I should go home, what if Mark goes away and I can't get in to my flat! I should go home. I have to study tomorrow, God, what am I doing here. The music is so wonderful, one track more, and I will go home.
And then -
I can't leave just yet. One track more.
My hands rise far, far above my head. My eyes close. My head tilts upward toward the stars. I can't leave, I won't stop. I'm thirsty. I won't stop. This sounds like a prayer, this music. But a prayer to what? To Nature, to movement, to myself, to what, what, what? What is the thing that is keeping me connected to this music? My body feels bound to it, I'm thinking with my feet and dancing with my mind. I want to fly. What is keeping me tied to this music?
I can see, behind my closed eyes, out there but inside me:
Treetops. Stars, exploding brilliance, diamonds against a pulsing black sky. Wind, waves, water crashing, cascading. The music throbs out there, above me, below me, inside me. What is keeping me connected to it. I move effortlessly. I feel no pain anywhere, I can breathe as deeply as I want to, and yet I'm moving as fast as the music and I can't - won't stop. All my fears flash past my eyes: Mark will leave. I am alone. I should be studying. What if I never get my thesis. Noise, noise, against the music. The music pushes through: that flute, piping it's way through the music, past that noise. I am riveted by it, transfixed, bewitched, enraptured. There is no way out of that music, it is everywhere. And I am everywhere. And then --
Nothing. Suddenly, those images become blackness, that noise becomes wordless. There is only movement, Being. Truth, wrapped in flute song and throbbing under it's grasp to the beat of my heart.
I walk back to my room hours later. My hunger and thirst have gone. I feel no pain anywhere. My feet hardly touch the ground. Silence.
And in that darkness, star-rise.
There was a trance-night on campus and I was so keen on going that I went ahead to the party even though I didn't know anyone who was going and my boyfriend categorically refused to go. (Understandably, anyone who does not like to dance as much as I do is bored when they go out with me, since I get so immersed in my dancing.)
It took a while for me to get 'into it', several times I thought myself silly for being so compelled to go and walked to the door. Several times I just stood in the smoking section of the club and lit up, because I thought people would think me incredibly silly, just standing around alone on the dancefloor, too shy to dance. (Me. Too shy to dance. God, what's happening to me!!)
The music wasn't helping. Trance is wonderful stuff, I think, when it's not trampled all over my mind-numbingly boring, repetitive beats. I like variation. I like unpredictability. I like drama, crescendos, random ribbons of flute music tying heavy rhythm into featherweight packages. I like flying on undulating currents, so that it feels like my body is somehow having to predict the music. The thrill is entirely lost when the music is so predictable that my bodymind has to do no thinking whatsoever.
But I digress: this was not meant to be an exposition on 'What is good trance?'
So. Picture me: alone, dolled-up, feeling silly, feeling alone. I really wanted to dance. I really wanted to know some people - dancing is more fun, and more of a challenge, when you have an audience, I think. Friends who can also dance, who can out-dance you. Even though it is such an intensely personal inner journey, my best dancing has always happened when there are people watching you, clapping encouragement as you fly higher and higher.
Suddenly, there was a shift in the music, in the light. I put out my cigarette. I took a sip of water out of the glass I was holding. I suddenly forgot to feel alone. The music had changed, and it had struck something in me. I shut my eyes, leaned against a pillar and listened. And then,
magic:
In the moment of silence between two beats, I suddenly woke up. If sacred trance was a well-known genre, I would call this music that and you would know what I meant by it. The unmistakable feeling, for those of us lucky enough to know it, of music that sounds like a prayer of the body. The beats entirely in tune with what your feet, hands, legs want to do. I shut my eyes and danced. At first, it was very strange: I haven't danced alone at a party for months, it takes some getting used to. There was a rush of things in my head. I remember them as clearly as if I had thought them all a second ago. I remember every movement, every flicker of light shining through my closed eyes:
I should go home.. I should go home, what if Mark goes away and I can't get in to my flat! I should go home. I have to study tomorrow, God, what am I doing here. The music is so wonderful, one track more, and I will go home.
And then -
I can't leave just yet. One track more.
My hands rise far, far above my head. My eyes close. My head tilts upward toward the stars. I can't leave, I won't stop. I'm thirsty. I won't stop. This sounds like a prayer, this music. But a prayer to what? To Nature, to movement, to myself, to what, what, what? What is the thing that is keeping me connected to this music? My body feels bound to it, I'm thinking with my feet and dancing with my mind. I want to fly. What is keeping me tied to this music?
I can see, behind my closed eyes, out there but inside me:
Treetops. Stars, exploding brilliance, diamonds against a pulsing black sky. Wind, waves, water crashing, cascading. The music throbs out there, above me, below me, inside me. What is keeping me connected to it. I move effortlessly. I feel no pain anywhere, I can breathe as deeply as I want to, and yet I'm moving as fast as the music and I can't - won't stop. All my fears flash past my eyes: Mark will leave. I am alone. I should be studying. What if I never get my thesis. Noise, noise, against the music. The music pushes through: that flute, piping it's way through the music, past that noise. I am riveted by it, transfixed, bewitched, enraptured. There is no way out of that music, it is everywhere. And I am everywhere. And then --
Nothing. Suddenly, those images become blackness, that noise becomes wordless. There is only movement, Being. Truth, wrapped in flute song and throbbing under it's grasp to the beat of my heart.
I walk back to my room hours later. My hunger and thirst have gone. I feel no pain anywhere. My feet hardly touch the ground. Silence.
And in that darkness, star-rise.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
My Reasons
Browsing Google during an extended study break this evening, I found out about the earthfireice campaign to collect a million pledges from individuals and businesses to to take simple steps to cut their carbon emissions. As I took my (six) pledges, I created a small profile and stuck it up to a google map. I'm now a small green dot in Colchester (the only green dot in Colchester up on that particular map - if anyone'd like to make some promises and keep me company, it'd be great!)
Anyway - as I created the profile, I came to the 'spieling' part that usually annoys me senseless. But today, I realised something that's been at the back of my mind, wordless, for quite a while. A large part of my reasons for taking personal action against global climate change has less to do with the misery I know it will inflict on my own children (should I choose to have any) than on the misery I know it is already inflicting on 'other' species. I don't want to go into the myriad statistics on the numbers of species we can expect to lose from the direct and indirect effects of a drastically changed world. Instead, these are my reasons:
The feel of monsoon rain on hot Indian earth, smelling like gardens in heaven will smell like.
The feel of cold breeze, laden with the scent of lemon trees. The splash of a polar bear, the water running off its fur. Butterflies. Hedegehogs waking up on time. Seals. Forest peace. The dance and war of ocean storms. The sight of fields ripening under an autumn afternoon.
All of these are my reasons.
At the end of the day, the only reason I need is to look out of my window and find the sun shining off the leaves of spring trees to Know that it is the 'right' thing to do to bleed to death, trying.
Anyway - as I created the profile, I came to the 'spieling' part that usually annoys me senseless. But today, I realised something that's been at the back of my mind, wordless, for quite a while. A large part of my reasons for taking personal action against global climate change has less to do with the misery I know it will inflict on my own children (should I choose to have any) than on the misery I know it is already inflicting on 'other' species. I don't want to go into the myriad statistics on the numbers of species we can expect to lose from the direct and indirect effects of a drastically changed world. Instead, these are my reasons:
The feel of monsoon rain on hot Indian earth, smelling like gardens in heaven will smell like.
The feel of cold breeze, laden with the scent of lemon trees. The splash of a polar bear, the water running off its fur. Butterflies. Hedegehogs waking up on time. Seals. Forest peace. The dance and war of ocean storms. The sight of fields ripening under an autumn afternoon.
All of these are my reasons.
At the end of the day, the only reason I need is to look out of my window and find the sun shining off the leaves of spring trees to Know that it is the 'right' thing to do to bleed to death, trying.
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