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The Rediff Business Special / P V Narasimha Rao

How to harmonise technology, consumerism and environment

Part I: The way to globalisation

Socially-conscious thinkers from all over the world, at all times, as well as far-sighted institutions, have forced us all, particularly in recent years, to reconsider the goals of development.

The most recent irresistible force that has hit every eye everywhere has brought home the responsibility to preserve the environment and the finite resources of this planet. Nevertheless, the original sin endures, namely, of consumerising happiness, which translates, in plain terms, as equating the quantum of happiness with the quantum of consumption.

Professor Galbraith and several others have written of the wisdom and need to perceive the difference between luxury and necessity, a topic that was considered elementary in our economic text books long ago.

It seems to have been practically given up in recent years and everything is seen as necessity today -- or caused to be seen so. I am inclined to think that the Indian housewife, at least until very recently and even now in many cases, is the best judge of this very real distinction.

Disquieting revelation about iron ore deposits

Environment cannot any longer be dismissed as a fad of some leaders or a mere platform for some political parties. A few years ago, for instance, I read in an authentic document of our Planning Commission the disquieting revelation that India's high-grade iron ore deposits would get exhausted in about forty-five years.

The story of oil deposits in some countries where that seems to be the only commodity that sustains the people there, is now well-known. These are indeed facts that need mature thinking. So is the fact that it is only this wasteful and harmful mode of industrialisation of the past two centuries or so, which still elicits admiration and generates national power, making the past achievement of the developed nations, the future goal of the developing ones. As a result, no developing country is proceeding on a path different from the profligate one on which the developed countries have travelled earlier and perhaps doing serious rethinking now.

The critical collision

This proves the need to formulate viable and consistent parameters of development which take into account the critical collision towards which the diminishing resources of the planet and its increasing needs triggered by its burgeoning population are headed.... And since we have decided to go well beyond 2005, all these vital considerations become compelling. Indeed our time-frame is just hereafter, beginning this moment, and for ever after. That needs to be our real millennial vision.

Gandhi's voice is coming from different throats

Towards the end of the 20th century, a galaxy of thinkers were saying things which sometimes made us happy, but sometimes also made us see how Mahatma Gandhi was almost a century ahead of his time. He said those very things but no one listened to him including ourselves. Today, Gandhi's voice is coming from different throats. He is no more. But the same voice is coming from different people who count, whose opinions count, who are trend-setters.

If I read one of these comments and do not tell you who has said this, all will say this is Mahatma Gandhi himself. But this was said in the last two or three years of the 20th century. The exact words are: ''We allowed our wants to grow unchecked and are now at a loss where to direct them and with the obliging assistance of commercial enterprises, newer and yet newer wants are being created, being concocted, some of them are wholly artificial and we chase them en masse but find no fulfillment."

At least beyond 2005, I have no manner of doubt that this one sentence is going to assume enormous importance and relevance in India.

Intellectual and innovational challenge

Even being aware of what our institutions of industrial development are doing at present, I think this country -- whether you like it or not -- will have to face this intellectual and innovational challenge. And you the builders of the artha edifice being trend-setters, cannot run away from it either. I attach great importance to this because no society can act in the absence of a trend. Speaking for India, I submit that we have to find equilibrium among three factors:

• The level of material benefit necessary for a human being to attain his full creative potential.
• The level of exploitation of Nature consistent with its own needs to replenish itself.
• The need to ensure comparable benefit to the vast masses of people and lift the social pyramid as a whole.

This approach is not a mechanical compromise or an idealistic package. It is a responsible approach, which accepts the realities of the present day world, the values of liberal democracy and the limits which different processes of globalisation will inexorably impose on the hitherto overarching position of the state.

India has never been unaware of the position of the market for the simple reason that in our age-old assignment of social duties, a very important section of the society is ordained to specialise on the market, trade and economic aspects of life. So we accept the necessity and the efficiency of the market.

However, the roles of the state and the market are pretty distinct and any usurpation of roles between the two, or subordination of one to the other, can lead to disaster. Neither will wither away, nor should be made to wither away. We also insist on an appropriate balance among the ends of economic development that a country can and should pursue.

Economy is one of the four pillars of society

In our hoary tradition of the four-pillar society, artha or the economy occupies an important place. Yet it is one of the four, and does not try to destroy the other three. So we have to redefine today, to the extent possible, what the word "good" means, when we are seeking to achieve the greatest "good" of the greatest number.

Consumer satisfaction undoubtedly gives pleasure, and pleasure is an essential ingredient of "good", but pleasure and "good" cannot be taken as identical. There must surely be a social, psychological and perhaps spiritual content of the "good," which is highly intangible but equally an experienceable phenomenon, though it is not purely market-determined. And I believe there is.

Further, when Mahatma Gandhi substituted the good of all for the greatest good of the greatest number, as per the Indian ethos, the task of economic development obviously becomes more complicated. I am convinced that this aspect needs to be emphasised in the Indian context.

Population, the economy and the 'conspiracy of silence' among politicians

In India, her very large population looms larger than anything else. I find from Assocham literature that you (Assocham) are very disappointed with the government's family limitation programme. Some friends have complained that there is a 'conspiracy of silence' among politicians in making the small family norm an open subject of discussion at rallies.

The figures say that the rate of birth per thousand population at present is about 27 and your target for 2005 is 20. As Health Minister of Andhra Pradesh in 1968, I remember that the birth rate at that time was about 42 per thousand and the death rate around 22. Comparing the figures, the thirty-year progress does not appear to be inconsiderable, although it could have been better, limited only by one's imagination.

Nor is it possible to assert that the claim of our programme having prevented 100 million births in these decades, as phoney. In 1946, in my own village with around 3,000 population, 600 persons died of a virulent type of small pox within 15 days. Believe me, I have no explanation of why I was not one of them, since I was present in the village. And it wasn't in one village, nor one epidemic. Cholera accounted for numberless deaths, not to speak of malaria.

After Independence, our health schemes mounted all over the country did bring the death rate considerably down; the net increase of population inevitably followed, at least partly because of this welcome progress in controlling the main causes of mass deaths. I can testify to this as one who struggled almost round the clock in some seasons to battle with those monsters. In any event, since it is now axiomatic that government's effort alone cannot completely solve our problems, one would naturally expect more positive programmes from the private sector.

More advice to the government is of course very welcome. But something that Assocham itself plans to do in this regard would be still more welcome. For the rest, being a politician myself, I cannot break the conspiracy of silence that we are supposed to have entered into amongst ourselves. I would earnestly request all those who are not part of this conspiracy, to project the problem and create the necessary consciousness for planned parenthood in the country.

The technology conundrum

I now come to another allied matter. When we take employment as an economic activity, the conundrum of the right technology confronts us. If we take to gigantism to obtain economies of scale, we accept large congregations of human beings mostly living in sub-human conditions, particularly in poor countries. This imposes heavy social costs that are hardly taken into account in any assessment of costs and benefits. On the other hand, if we inevitably accept the route of large-scale employment, with old technology and low wages, the large mass of people, as well as their economic activity, including the product thereof, remain at a primitive level in quality.

Obviously, both these positions are unacceptable. There are six factors involved here: size, environmental acceptability, cost, quality, technology and employment potential.

Environmental acceptability and quality are obviously a sine qua non (Latin for prerequisite, an indispensable condition, element, or factor; something essential). If the objective is to maximize employment potential and minimize the per unit size at more or less the same cost, the only imponderable that remains to be determined is technology. I see no alternative for populous developing countries but to develop these technologies of the future. One may call them the "Laptop" models, which possess all the six attributes I have just mentioned. The sometimes derided idea of appropriate technologies is now to be replaced by sustainable technologies, which, I think is all to the good.

In course of time, this has to be the pattern of industrialisation in the entire developing world. And in populous countries where millions of jobs are involved, it needs to be accorded higher priority. If the developed countries, with their huge research and development establishment, could work in tandem with developing countries, that could be the ideal form of North-South cooperation.

Moreover, developed countries themselves would have to jettison their polluting technologies and the culture of gigantism earlier than later, for compelling environmental reasons. That would make the interests of all mankind coincide, regardless of developed or developing. The rich and the poor of the whole world are thus locked in a three-legged race and simply cannot break free from each other. Continued

Will the developed countries see the writing on the wall?

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