Let us build Temples

LET US BUILD TEMPLES!

Hats off to the technological man out to conquer the whole planet! Hats off to technology bent upon redirecting energy and material flows towards human beings!! What grander achievement can there be when we command and consume more than 40 p.c. of the total terrestrial biomass of the world? Let us push the proportion to 60 to overcome poverty and hunger! With genetically engineered foods and biotechnology, this is already within our reach. Why? Even creating Superman and Super races is not difficult. Let us enslave every living being on the earth and realize God's dream of giving birth to a Supreme Being that will ultimately rule the Universe! Or is it a Satan's dream?


Those of us who have such visions and confidence in our scientific ability, what do we call them? Scientists? Visionaries? or Doomsayers? They are not scientists for they hardly understand the basic laws of science. They are not visionaries for their over-riding ambition inflicts incalculable harm on non-human beings. They can well be doomsayers because their blind faith in technology is fetching them ever near the abyss of self-destruction!


How? Simply because ecological science tells us that humans can never totally separate themselves from principles and cyclical processes of nature. If they attempt to enslave others in their greed, they will destroy the very web of life and foundations on which their own survival depends. If technology attempts to perform natures' services, the costs will escalate so much that only a lucky few can afford them and that too will be possible only by enslaving fellow human beings.


The supreme triumph of technology forebodes utter disaster, strife and violence among human societies!!


Who is to blame? Technology or the use of technology by human beings? To make a telephone call is perfectly benign. But to tap the call may be sinister and illegal. Technology is power and power is likely to corrupt. With the help of machines and technology, we have produced a system which has forced the people forget all the good things in life. In the last over 300 years our training, culture and civilization have failed to produce a human being, morally sound, socially responsible and materially a conscientious consumer. Liberty, equality and fraternity are corrupted to lack of restraint, disequalising progress, and a disintegrating society.


Let us understand science correctly and not through the sunglasses of technology. Let us find out what science has to tell us about natural evolution: how a weak, diffuse energy source is utilised to create innumerable life-forms fabricating a web of life manifesting distributive justice, no human society has ever been able to match. A simple principle underlies this wonderful biodiversity. Species with high metabolism have large populations but short life cycles while species with low metabolism have small populations but longer life cycles. This has enabled species to look for and cultivate a variety of habitats containing a mind-boggling variety of niches. As habitat is the address and niche the profession of a species, evolution progresses through distribution of energy and resources towards diverse life-forms. Technology however, progresses through uniformity and mass production. It has no formulae to bring about distributive justice. The call of the saints:

"सर्वे s त्र सुखिनः सन्तु| सर्वे सन्तु निरामयः | सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु| मा कश्चित् दु:खमानुयात||”

is muted in the age of technology!

While the march of evolution is ordained by the basic laws of science, technology has marched by perverting these laws. It was able to do this because human beings evolved in tandem an economic system, a perfect hand-maiden to its powerful mistress! The collaboration between technology and economy has produced all the strife and stress that afflict human societies today.


Our economy is based on the assumption that consumer is sovereign and his/her free choice is always right. But the consumer is trained to obey and cultivate a technology bent upon redirecting flows of energy and resources to human beings by denying them to non-human beings and nature. Technology confers power that nurtures greed and avarice among consumers and flaws their choice. To redirect flows of energy and resources, technology has to convert resources by using energy. Each conversion brings about losses of energy and creation of waste matter, the latter increasing entropy in nature. Like evolution technology cannot use sun's diffuse energy at ambient temperature. It has to use energy of fossil fuels. The economy has to invest large sums in exploring, extracting and processing the fossils before energy is produced. Any loss of energy in conversion means a negative return on investment made to facilitate use of fossil fuels. If these losses are internalised in the cost of production, the cost becomes higher than the value of the product. If the social and environmental costs of the entropy are internalized, cost escalates so much as to make all manufacturing impossible to continue! The system is a contradiction in itself!!



In such a scenario profits can never be possible. Then how are colossal profits made by individuals, companies and the corporate sector? In the past developed nations made profits by acquiring political control over raw materials from their colonies and importing cheap labour and even using slave labour. Profits were made by denying adequate wages to labour and prices to raw materials. Costs of entropy were never internalized causing immense pollution. These devices are still used to amass profits today. India cannot have colonies so in the name of development, we are exploiting our own resources keeping down their prices. As labour cannot be exploited easily, industry and commerce have to depend increasingly on government subsidies which take various forms. The amount of subsidies to industry, commerce and modern agriculture runs into thousands of crores. These really are concealed profits sanctioned by the government in the name of employment and economic growth. The expenditure on subsidies also means less expenditure on health, education and denial of support to necessities of life on which the survival of the poor depends. Government support to industry and modern agriculture ultimately results in production of goods needed by the rich while production of necessities of life goes a-begging.



The gap between the rich and the poor becomes wider and wider in such an economy.



Who is to blame? I squarely blame the wrong use of technology by us. Most of us are ecologically illiterate simply because the importance of this subject is utterly unknown to our educational system. No one is aware of the ecology of technology. Priority should be given to technology that strengthens our natural resource base. Natural resources are the foundation of our life, especially of that of the rural population which still forms more than 60 p.c. of our people. City people too must understand that cities are primarily supported by natural resources. If they degrade we have to depend on imports, of food, water, timber and many other products. Total dependence on imports will make the cost of living in the city exhorbitant. Today we are simply directing more and more resources to the cities without providing anything for their maintenance, revival and enhancement of quality and quantity. Restoration of natural resources is today's primary need. Unfortunately very few people are aware of the significance, techniques and how to involve rural India in this vital job. Everyone including rural people is taught to believe that technology is a perfect substitute to nature. Nature can be safely ignored, because it is technology that is going to provide everything to human beings.



This is not only wrong but it is extremely costly too! Ecologically speaking indiscriminate use of technology is destroying many natural linkages that go to make our atmosphere, the quantity and quality of our water, the quality of our soil, the waste assimilating capacity in nature, the work of pollinating insects that enrich our crops and horticulture, and lastly maintenance of biodiversity, a wonderful reservoir for our future needs of food, medicine and raw materials. Moreover, this indiscriminate use is destroying not only the wherewithals of our own life those of our children and grandchildren too!!



These linkages are the arteries of our life support systems. Nature provides us life support free of cost. But when these arteries are harmed technology has no alternative but to try providing these wherewithals of life. Technological services based as they are on costly energy, are expensive and cause pollution too. Technologically produced drinking water is almost as costly as milk. Insecticides is a terribly costly substitute for natural pest control. Biotechnology is many times costlier than biodiversity.



Our experiments in restoration and revival of nature around Pune have demonstrated their cost effectiveness in comparison to technological and engineering solutions. Moreover they tend to establish natural linkages which confer on them the quality of sustainability and obviate the need to spend on repair and care of restored systems. It is the vital need of our country that we start restoring our soil, restore our streams and water-courses, restore vegetation on hill-tops and hill slopes, along stream banks and in-stream habitats, revive wetlands and wastelands and lands that are degraded and industrially made derelict, saline and water-logged lands, deciduous and evergreen forests, savanna and grasslands and littoral and seashore areas. Restoration techniques for all these are available. One only has to understand and practise them. These can be combined with our traditional wisdom to involve villages and communities.



In a former era, Jawaharlal Nehru had called our irrigation and power dams as temples of newly-independent India. That era is long past. The new temples of India, if I may venture to say so, are our Restoration Projects, though they are as yet too few. Let us build these temples all over India to make our lives materially and spiritually richer. Let all the NGOs gathered here build such a temple, start a restoration project in their area to make the foundations of our country strong and bring prosperity to all those millions who have been denied fruits of development so far. Let us unite to restore the glories of Mother India.


Prakash Gole.