Development is fine, but at what cost?

Eminent senior journalist, social activist and editor of Samadrushti, Shri Sudhir Patnaik has said: “Democracy in our country is weak, as we have never fought for democracy; it has evolved through a number of stages. Our model of democracy is growth-oriented and the emphasis is on resource exploitation”. [source: wikipedia]

Well, there is no doubt that in today’s world, the majority of literate mass who are driven by social media education, hardly understand the word “Development” in its entirety. To most of them it equates with malls, latest gadgets, feature rich automobiles, choking industries and the freedom to be least bothered about the higher values of life that requires compassion, brotherhood, selflessness and listening to the mother earth and father nature. INo doubt, that technological advancements have led to a comfortable life for many, but it has come at a cost for which we have not yet been billed. These unpaid bills of ours are being borne by those who are marginalized and whose voices can be easily ignored – because most of us believe in push notifications – if something is not in our computer/mobile screen, those do not exist !!

We are so much reliant on someone else to take care of the garbage, to clean a polluting mess and work for the deprived sections in inhospitable conditions and so on. We hardly give a damn to this reality. To the people who are loving development it is all about “affordability”. And so, it is a fair game as long as they are not impacted. If today, the world’s biggest corporations are affected by certain policies, one would hear the loudest noise across news rooms and eye grabbing headlines. Otherwise who would bother for people who are sustaining the weight of the pyramid at the bottom. With a myopic propaganda in place the literate society also majorly believes that the tribals and indegenous people are the dumbest and poorest of all. They are projected to be in dire need of modern development and everytime these people have protested they are painted as the evils of the society hindering progress – thereby justifying some of the brutal use of power and force against them. What we fail to understand is, when someone doesn’t speak the language (of profit and loss) in the way we are aware of, it never implies that they are ignorant. It can be vice versa. With years of experience of staying in harmony with Nature and their natural instincts to perceive the changes to it – the indigenous peoole may exactly have the answer to overall harmony and peace.

Today, the horrible misuse of the word “Development” could not have been exemplified better. Consider the below terrifying observations and data (published in The Atlantic), with respect to the recent Amazonian fires – the Amazon being considered as the lungs of the planet.

1. The Amazon is burning.
2. Toxic smoke from the fires is so intense that darkness now falls hours before the sun sets in São Paulo
3. The Amazon, with millions of species and billions of trees stores vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide and produces 6 percent of the planet’s oxygen.
4. The Amazonian fires — which have been blazing for weeks, notoriously received less coverage than Notre Dame’s burning roof.
5. The Amazonian fires are not wildfires at all. These fires did not start by lightning strike or power line: They were ignited.
6. There are 80 percent more fires this year. More than 1,330 square miles of the Amazon rainforest have been lost since January, a 39 percent increase.
7. Why are these figures so important? Because Brazil’s political leadership has changed in the past year. On January 1, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist who has openly pined for his country’s authoritarian past, was sworn in as president. During his campaign, he promised to weaken the Amazon’s environmental protections and open up the rainforest to economic #development – now he is making good on that promise.
8. If destroyed or degraded, the Amazon, as a system, is simply beyond humanity’s ability to get back: the diversity of creatures across Amazonia, once lost, will not be replenished for roughly 10 million years. And that is 33 times longer than Homo sapiens, as a species, has existed.

[Source: The Atlantic]

This unprecedented demand for more, generating from a minority of World’s population, is fueled by our greed to own more than what we would actually need. For majority of people “development” today means a “pretext” for growth which is short term and materialistic. What they fail to notice is, it has generally been the “context” towards annihilation of everything that defines peace, harmony, humanity and life on this planet. Remember, money can’t buy nature, it can only help sustain it, if used wisely. Yes, we all will perish one day. But some people are accelerating the process in the most brutal way today.