The bond that threatens?
By Shashi Tharoor
"The Hindu", Online edition of India's National Newspaper
September 25, 2005

Is the Indian commitment to family a threat to the environment?

FAMILY: The quintessential Indian social unit. PHOTO: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR

AMIDST the many transformations of globalisation overtaking our society today, I sometimes wonder if our traditions conspire with modernity against our general well being. For instance, is the Indian commitment to family a threat to the environment? If the question seems preposterous, let me explain.

For all the individualism wrought by our love affair with liberalisation, the family remains the quintessential Indian social unit. We are neither individualists in the Western mode nor are we capable of the self-sacrificing ecumenism that socialist ideals demand. Instead, we operate within the cocoon of a family unit, not necessarily nuclear, which generates our most vital support (practical, material, psychological) and the most important of our social duties and obligations.

Sometimes the notion of "family" extends more broadly to a clan or a sub-caste or even to friends and neighbours in a village. I cannot remember a time during my childhood when there wasn't a young man from either of my parents' villages in Kerala, some very distantly related to us, living in our flat, sometimes sharing my room, while my father arranged for him to have some professional training and got him a job. That was in the nature of things in our society; it was expected that my father, as one who had done well, would help others to get their start in life. India is not a welfare state in that the government provides little to its unfortunates, but it is a welfare society in which people constantly help each other out, provided they feel a connection that justifies their help.

Lack of a civic culture

Unfortunately, our sense of community largely stops there. Very few Indians have a broader sense of community than that circumscribed by ties of blood, caste affiliation or village. We take care of those we consider near and dear, and remain largely indifferent to the rest.

At a more trivial level, it is common to find sumptuous luxury apartments in buildings that are filthy, rotting and stained, whose common areas, walls and staircases have not been cleaned or painted in generations. Each apartment owner is proud of his own immediate habitat but is unwilling to incur responsiblity or expense for the areas shared with others, even in the same building. My mother once asked her "sweeper-woman" in Delhi to sweep the stairs of her building as well. The woman, who would have been paid extra for the chore, was astonished at the request. "But why should you, madam?" she asked. "The stairs don't belong to you."

Unemployment, greater political danger

This attitude is also visible in the lack of a civic culture in both rural and urban India, which leaves public spaces dirty and garbage-strewn, streets potholed and neglected, civic amenities vandalised or not functioning. The Indian wades through dirt and filth, past open sewers and fly-specked waste, to an immaculate home where he proudly bathes twice a day. An acute consciousness of personal hygiene co-exists with an astonishing disregard for public sanitation.

Not surprisingly, India is home to many of the world's most polluted cities. The air in Kolkata or Delhi is all-but-unbreathable in winter, when car-exhaust fumes, unchecked industrial emissions and smoke from countless charcoal braziers in the street rise to be trapped by descending mist and fog. A French diplomat friend, undergoing a routine medical check after serving three years in Kolkata, was asked how many packs of cigarettes he smoked a day. When he protested that he had never smoked in his life, his doctor couldn't believe him: three years of breathing Kolkata's air had given him lungs resembling a habitual smoker's. Delhi is hardly better. When the Australian cricket team played there in November 1996, the manager said the air was so unfit to breathe that his players' performance was affected.

As a result of such unchecked pollution, respiratory diseases are rife in urban India. Factories belch forth noxious black clouds; effluents pour untreated into rivers; sewage systems reek and overflow. Despite the tree-huggers of the Chipko Andolan, deforestation and over-cultivation take their own environmental toll of rural India. Environmental consciousness remains limited. Governments pass regulations, then regularly ignore them. Meanwhile, more and more cars reach the congested roads, more poisons and toxins flow into our water and air, and more small factories open up that do not meet pollution-control standards. But they will never be closed down, because unemployment is a greater political danger than lung cancer.

With respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular diseases and lung ailments rife, the total health costs for the country resulting from illnesses caused by pollution are estimated at some 4.5 per cent of India's gross domestic product. In other words, more than half our country's annual economic growth is being wiped out by pollution, and development is taking place largely at the expense of the environment.

This dismal picture, coupled with corrupt enforcement of environmental regulations, reflects the sad state of the Indian ecology in the first years of the 21st Century. If the choice is between living poor in a "green society" and being prosperous in the midst of general pollution, I have no doubt that most Indians would be happy to choke and splutter all the way to the bank.