Talking Shop: For fleeting gains

“Someone is sitting in

the shade today because

someone (else) planted

a tree a long time ago.”

—Warren Buffett

Lutyen’s Delhi and Chandigarh stand out as shining examples, in stark contrast to Lajpat Nagar and Rajender Nagar; for those familiar with North India. While the first two were designed keeping a distant future in mind, the latter two were resettlement colonies conceived of after the partition without a second thought to what may transpire tomorrow. I mean no disrespect and am using the above example only as an analogy to drive home the point in a manner that we can relate to. This is the story seen all around us in today’s bright, new world. Here, even the most powerful, those with the wherewithal to impact lives and the future, are focussed only on the gains they can make today, thumbing their nose at their very reason for being—to bring about long-term change for their people and the world.

Speaking of the world, let’s look at today’s economic superpowers, the so-called ‘Developed World’. It was the Industrial Revolution that saw the United States and much of Europe take off economically at breakneck speeds, but the same phenomenon caused their towns to turn into cities, while existing cities swelled, both in population and geographical footprint, home to factories and other buildings required in manufacturing. While job opportunities were the draw for the newly-generated urbanites, this left them with the miasma of finding someplace to live. For many, this meant moving into cramped tenements, some of which were old, while others were hastily thrown together. Over time, rampant and unplanned development led to the chaos we see today, with much of the Americas and Europe having personas similar to our own Lajpat Nagars and Rajender Nagars. Fleeting gains indeed...

Much else to mention

I am just stirring the cusp of the proverbial pot and shall move on to medical infrastructure and healthcare, a terrible mess worldwide. For those who disagree and write back that we can now perform any surgery but a head transplant to save lives, let me remind you of this tiny menace called COVID-19, which drove home just how ill-equipped we actually are to deal with a crisis when it hits us in the nuts. The entire world gasped for oxygen even as we scampered to create a vaccine to stem the pandemic. That vaccine, inside most of the world’s 8 billion people, is being studied only now—on whether it has long-term side effects and impacts immunity on other fronts.

Right from the US to Europe, from Africa to Tunisia, from Russia to Australia and from India to Sri Lanka, healthcare facilities were a disaster that COVID-19 exposed. Healthcare has faced challenges even during ‘normal’ times, with various complexities impacting the quality and accessibility of care provided to patients, varying widely from country to country. One major challenge is a shortage of healthcare professionals, be it doctors, nurses or other medical staff. This is particularly true in rural or other underserved communities and many a time prevents patients from receiving the care they desperately need. Another challenge is that in places like large parts of Africa, healthcare just doesn’t exist.

Where it does exist, the cost of treatment is a near-insurmountable hurdle, though the importance of this issue varies greatly across countries. While people in European markets with universal healthcare don’t find this a problem, it is the number one issue in the United States, which has the most expensive healthcare system and where many Americans struggle to pay their medical bills. Indians face this too. Fleeting gains indeed...

Climate Change

Mankind didn’t plan for Global Warming and Climate Change and the fallout, in fact we created it. Incessant exploitation of natural resources, rampant deforestation without a care for tomorrow, the creation of plastic, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, vehicular and industrial pollution, the near-planned destruction of coral reefs, and even something as simple as disappearing bees and other insects—it is almost as if we planned for a disaster in the future. Well, that future is here.

In this future, we are staring at a drinking water crisis even as an oxygen crisis lurks around the corner. The world’s celebrated cities have AQIs (Air Quality Index) bordering on the deadly and our children are growing up with respiratory ailments. Elsewhere, glaciers are melting and spewing precious fresh water resources into salty ocean waters, leading to a rise in ocean levels. Closer home, our mountains are crumbling and people are scampering out of their familial homes to save their lives as roads and houses totter around them. This environmental degradation has not happened just over the last few years or even decades; its sinister rise was ignored for nearly half a century. Sure, we held numerous ‘high-level’ global meets (is there something called a ‘low-level’ meet?) and then our leaders rushed home to continue to plough on with excavators and earth-movers to become the next superpower.

We are now pushing Electric Vehicles (EVs) with a vehemence unseen anywhere except inside Congress and Houses of Parliament. Will someone speak up on the dangers from lithium? Mining is already causing water shortages, indigenous land grabs and ecosystem destruction. Unless our dependence on cars falls, the transition to lithium battery-powered electric vehicles will (by 2050) deepen global environmental and social inequalities linked to mining, perhaps even jeopardizing the Global Warming target. Fleeting gains indeed...

Religion, education, people

I could go on and I will. We created religions; we all know where that is headed now. Creating is fun, for it behoves learned Gurus and sages. The problem is that once they move on, sewer rats take over—this is happening all around the world. We created education systems; we all know that it only spews out degrees, with little or no real ‘education’. Take a look at the US, presumably armed with the best education infrastructure in the world. There are hilarious instances where 40 per cent of High School-pass-outs gaped in bewilderment when asked about India. “India? What is India? Is that a new state in the US?”

The average Joe on the road is to blame too, for he is only running after his next car, a new air-conditioner, washing machine or a fancy holiday. No one is thinking about tomorrow, even at the grassroots level, and that is cause for chagrin. Most reading this column were brought up in a pristine environment without mobile phones, health issues, religious spats or verbal vitriol. Afternoons were spent in maidans or under shady trees, while evenings were spent with the family or with friends discussing future prospects. Those days are gone.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish,” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, and he did hit the nail on the head. We need a plan and we need to think tomorrow, as only a few of our forefathers did. Else, the headache we are already facing will turn into a migraine and more. Remember what happened to France because it tried to architect its cities on the grounds that Julius Caesar’s Rome did—we all see the results today. Fleeting gains indeed...

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal