Vyas | August, 2002

Man is alone and he is related at the same time. His happiness depends on the solidarity he feels with his fellowmen, with past and future generations. - Erich Fromm

	The poor are many in India

Indian civilization is wounded à la Naipaul. Its wounds are both physical and metaphysical insofar as the present condition of the Ganga is concerned. She is a spiritually wealthy river abused by her children and made to flow 'below the poverty line'. The phrase 'poverty line' has a special significance for India, where more than fifty per cent of its people live below it...

Poverty is a kind of pollution in a waterless river of humanity. Just as pollution in the river removes its vitality and leaves it wounded, perpetual poverty tends to dehumanize human beings, eschewing their very urge to live as free individuals capable of giving meaning to life.

In either case, pure, free flow towards the destination is under attack. Despite so much filth and pollution, the mother Ganga seems to exhort her children to take dips in her to shed poverty, which is not unlike a sin. Shed your poverty, which is a sin, come up, do not keep yourself submerged below the poverty line, she would say - almost echoing the World Environment theme of 1993 - 'Poverty and the Environment: Breaking the Vicious Circle'.

Every year the world over we celebrate 22nd of April as Earth Summit Day. About a decade ago the Rio Earth Summit created a stir in the hearts and minds of mankind. As a result, more and more people regard environmental destruction and poverty as interlinked issues. This year, once again on 5th June, the world celebrated Environment Day. This year's theme 'Give Earth a Chance' calls on each of us to contribute to the healing of the ailing planet; and for us in the Campaign for a Clean Ganga to heal the wounded river, to give a human face to the environmental issues and empower people to make sustainable efforts to clean up the Ganga.

Like the 'poverty line', another catchy phrase in vogue among the pundits of development is 'sustainable development'. It encompasses both (i) our efforts to remove all that causes environmental destruction and (ii) our efforts to remove poverty. Thus it covers ways and means of removing both kinds of pollution i.e., the environmental and as well as the figurative that affects humanity in the shape of poverty. In the environmental context, we talk about 'sustainable development' to highlight our ethical concern towards future generations. We should practice development in such a manner that our environment is kept clean. Our present development should not deprive future generations of their scope of development. Most of the time our industrial, agricultural and urban development does not seem to embrace ethics and tends to make even the survival of future generations difficult, if not checked by environmental activists.

In the domain of poverty-removal, 'sustainable development' means making the poor self-reliant by inculcating in them a sense of urgency that it is they alone who can remove their poverty. What is required is pooling their resources-moral, social, political and economic, thus becoming a part of active civil society. This calls for social mobilization. The poor's sustainable development hinges on their urge to stand up, take control over what they work with, to do things in their own search for life's values, to move forward supporting each other. As the leader of The Campaign for a Clean Ganga, the Sankat Mochan Foundation in Varanasi in association with the Asia Foundation has launched an unique Civil Society Partnership Programme to mobilize and develop various groups and individuals along the Ganga, so that all can pool their resources and energies for a clean waterway.

People should be weaned away from depending on others. Unless they develop themselves in their own generation and cross over the various poverty lines they would be condemning their future generations to the debilitating pollution that poverty is. Without imbibing the sense of values-like self-esteem, self-reliance, mutual help and ethical concern for the future generations - we cannot chart out a sustainable programme of removing any kind of pollution.

For more information, do visit these sites:
Asia Foundation: www.asiafoundation.org
Campaign for a Clean Ganga: www.cleanganga.com
Earth Summit Day: www.earthday.net
Environment Day: http://www.un.org/events/environment/
Erich Fromm: www.erich-fromm.de
Ganga: http://www.cs.albany.edu/~amit/ganges.html
Give Earth a Chance: http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/environment/
Poverty and the Environment: Breaking the Vicious Circle: www.sustainable-cities.org/news/current/UV.pdf
Poverty Line: www.developmentgateway.org
India: www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/in.html
Rio Earth Summit: http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html
Sankat Mochan Foundation: http://www.cleanganga.com/cleanganga/smf.php
Sustainable Development: www.iisd.org
V S Naipaul: http://65.107.211.208/caribbean/naipaul/naipaulov.html