The effluent society by Gautam Bhatia 15 July 08 (http://www.indianexpress.com/story/335558._.html
My sister is a ragpicker in New Jersey. Every evening she sorts the family garbage into designated bins: biodegradables in the green bin — picked up by the municipal truck on Wednesdays, recycled glass in the blue bin, for Thursdays, and all other items for Fridays. After 12 years of the routine she is a natural Greenie. Her counterparts in Delhi have a harder task. Everyday 300,000 rag-pickers work overtime, sifting through dumps and massive landfills outside the city, pulling out reusable waste out of maggot-filled slime. In a casteless society in New Jersey such sorting can be accomplished efficiently and without a bruising of social status. But in
India, the task does not match a middle class job description. The ineptitude and humiliation of the Delhi operation marks it as one of the many scourges of a 'modern' society incapable of parting with its traditional truths (That rag-picking provides employment is another matter).
Today, every move up a notch on the social ladder is an ecological step in the wrong direction. For years a mug of water sufficed for the elimination of early morning bodily waste. The toilet roll dispenser was a decorative English anomaly. Today it is filled regularly with 230 yards of soft tissue culled from an Uttarakhand forest. In a middle-class house five air-conditioners hum to the tune of eight kilowatts of power — enough juice to light two villages. A driver picks up a fifteen rupee loaf of bread by driving a 3000 cc Pajero to the local market, using up two litres of fossil fuel that took three million years to form deep below the earth crust.
In places around the world a consciousness of environment is prompting many cities into ecologically friendly measures. In Copenhagan, with cycles available for free, most Copenhageners happily choose the non-polluting option. An ingenious system of cycle tracks grids the entire town, connecting every major landmark and district. You merely feed 10-kroner into a public cycle slot machine, and the 2-wheeler is yours for the day. Ride around the city, gliding along waterways, through parks, into shopping districts, and when you've had enough, just return the cycle to a nearby cycle lot and get your 10-kroner back. No charge. In the morning while Indian roads create a gridlock of stationary traffic in rush hour, a business executive in Copenhagan is cycling along a duck pond on his way to office.
Naturally, in a country with a per capita income less than the US per capita expenditure on cola, it is hard to justify a lifestyle change on ecological grounds. The Indian city may be overrun by cars, but no respectable Indian is about to give up his shiny piece of metal, just because the five tons of carbon dioxide it produces every year, is the indirect cause of his daughter's asthma, his son's eye infection. Having spent a lifetime of savings on the car, a bicycle substitute is a slur on his roadmap to success.
A recent estimate on global energy distribution stated that 40 per cent of the world's energy is consumed by buildings — both for construction and subsequent use. An alarming statistic such as this should be enough to get the government to adopt a rational policy on green architecture. Yet little effort is being made in that direction. Many recent buildings follow Western models of 'green architecture' and make perfunctory overtures to ecology. An adaptation of American standards of 'greenness' in India is as good as using the American family as a reliable benchmark for world consumption.
A recent Gurgaon structure cited as India's first intelligent building is a case in point: Its makers call it intelligent user-friendly architecture. Shining grey, with so much glass exposed to the noon-day sun, the structure could be anywhere - New York, Lima or Manila. Built of materials imported from Italy and erected with American and French technologies under South Korean supervision it is truly global architecture; even though eight times more expensive than the most expensive building in India, its sheer glassiness is impressive. As I neared the entrance one evening, a remote sensor detected my approach and alerted the mechanism in the glass door, connected to the Electronic Identification and Control Center (EICC), that I should be allowed to pass. Sure enough, the plate glass opened and let me in. An e-device and central command panel (CCP), worth Rs 46 lakh had eliminated the need for a Haryanvi guard at Rs 5000 per month.
Inside the lobby, as soon as I stopped near the lift, light flooded in all around. And I heard the white noise of six lifts racing down to pick me up. Activated again by floor sensors, the complicated circuitry, costing some 28 lakhs, was worth it because it defrayed the cost of a 60 watt bulb of light left on throughout the night, and paid for itself in a mere 1200 years. Upstairs, I was in for more surprises. I was told that the double-glass wall had micro-louvers and heat sensors inserted in the glass. At the ridiculously low cost of 2.8 crore. On hot-days, the entire south wall was thus protected without any expenditure of human energy. Outside, on the road below, virtually free human energy floated around and left me wondering how Mahatma Gandhi's mud house in Wardha would stand up to such sophistication. Would it even qualify as green architecture?
The issue about who owns the air, the forests, the rivers and the glaciers is now beyond the scope of national boundaries. A dam in southern China can cause flooding in India. A brown haze over south-east Asia affects plant life in the Himalayas. Every time a tsunami hits the coast of Indonesia, I know it is the result of my own wasteful middle-class habits. If only I had not used an aerosol deodorant that morning, many lives would have been saved in Jogjakarta. Every time a cyclone hits Bangladesh and leaves a million homeless, I am filled with guilt. Could it be the consequence of the Freon gas released into the sky by the new Samsung fridge in the study, that saves a 20 foot walk to the kitchen fridge for a cold beer?
India's protests that regulations to curb climate change are first the responsibility of the West ring hollow when viewed in the larger context of a carbon-free world. The idea of taking action only after we have reached an American level of consumption and pollution is as farcical as allowing a bank robber to completely empty the vault before making the arrest. A 10 per cent growth rate can hardly be a matter of national pride when the country's rivers, air, and cities are some of the most polluted in the world, and lifestyle indices all place India at the bottom of the list. An altered way of life can only be a small part of the solution. However, an imaginative policy can transfer ecological accountability where it hurts least: amongst the high profit businesses and industrial houses, who are the cause of climate change in the first place. Expenses for waste water treatment, fumigation of industrial and vehicular pollutants, and the management of garbage should be the primary duty of those who manufacture cars, trucks, plastics, rubber products etc., and not merely the job of the irresponsible end user. Without the active participation of people who create - and enjoy the benefits of — India's 10 per cent GDP, the green revolution will remain a hokey and unattainable ideal, and a mere talking point of international seminars.
The writer, a Delhi-based architect, is author of 'Punjabi Baroque and Other Memories of Architecture'
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