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The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth.
-- Arthur Rimbaud, Soleil
et Chair, Collected Poems, 1962
Presently, the people of our society--be they villagers or urban people; be they highly educated or illiterate are influenced with the quick buck or fast food syndrome in every sphere of life and activities. Thus, in the blind race of modernization we have forgotten the value of our way of living--living the natural way--with restrain and in harmony with the nature. We have let us influenced ourselves to the most of the ills of modern societies. The killer diseases like cancer; AIDS and other newly acquired viruses is the offshoot of this inappropriate modernization because we are not using scientific advancement to our precise needs and requirements and the borrowed model is not meant for us; neither it is designed for!
Industrialization on the western pattern has proven to be a mixed blessing-- it has increased GNP but at the cost of huge backlog of air and water pollution and land degradation. It is proved now that development model of the industrialized world was essentially based on the premise that raw materials would continue to be available in plenty and in perpetuity at a cheap cost either from their own reserves or from their colonies. Natural resource optimization was, therefore, not of much concern as long as profits kept piling.
Adoption of this model in India, coupled with dependence on cheap but wasteful and outmoded imported technologies, has naturally created a backlog of pollution, which is truly staggering. Adverse impact of air and water pollution on living beings and biomass is well documented. A study in 1995 estimated the economic loss due to air pollution alone in 36 cities of India at $2,102 million per year and consequent premature deaths at 40,351 per year. Major environmental costs from all sources have been estimated to be $9,715 million per year in our country.
Pollution is nothing but a wasted resource and wastage of the scarce natural resources as pollutants in the gaseous, liquid or solid form bodes well neither for the economy nor for the environment. Indeed, prosperity of a nation depends upon how skillfully and optimally are its natural resources harnessed and utilized especially because we are in no position to manufacture them. Equally critical is the need to institutionalize the concept of Equity and Social Justice so that the control of natural resources and the outputs of development programs do not get cornered by "vested interests" thereby depriving an ever increasing proportion of the population of its basic means of sustenance. Otherwise, the impoverished segment of the society is then likely to attack the natural resources in the crudest manner possible for mere survival thereby further destroying the resource base. Such a situation is obviously not tenable even in a resource rich country.
Maintenance of ecological balance is synonymous with natural resource conservation and optimization -a prescription equally valid for rapid economic development.
Evidently, a major chunk of precious natural resources is going waste rather than contributing to the well being and prosperity of the people. Indeed, the environmental degradation and pollution are already posing a threat to such natural gifts of nature as fresh air and clean water. And yet, there seems to be no respite and the situation is likely to worsen if the resource use trend is not reversed through structural economic change to achieve sustainable development.
This is the challenge we have to counter effectively. And, the way we tackle this challenge will shape our future either as a vibrant economy ensuring our due place in the comity of nations or, imperil our very survival.
The development
process of the country has resulted in serious socio-economic as well as
environmental implications, the more important of which include:
Low economic growth rate with the population below the poverty line on the increase;
Inequity and social injustice creating a deprived segment of the society,
Accelerated destruction of Bio-diversity and the Genetic Stock which can pose a threat to food security; and
Pollution of air & water, and Extensive land degradation
The models
like Bharat Gram are an integrated solution to the global social
and ecological crisis, and as appropriate to the industrialized world,
both urban and rural, as to the remaining two-thirds of the world. This
type of eco-villages is in essence a modern attempt by humankind to live
in harmony with nature and with each other. They represent a "leading edge"
in the movement towards developing sustainable human settlements and provide
a testing ground for new ideas, techniques and technologies that can then
be integrated into the mainstream.
The need for developing sustainable human settlements relates directly to the commitment --Declaration by the world leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio (1992) to programs that will move humanity to sustainability in the 21st century (Agenda 21).
To make the
transition toward a sustainable society it is imperative that we take responsibility
for our own lives and meet our basic needs for food, shelter, energy, gainful
employment and supportive community. The purpose of the model which Bharat
Gram represents offer the practical training and skills in ecological design
principles so that one can begin the application of these skills within
his/her own home grounds, a finite environment. That was the spirit of
the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.
We, at Bharat Gram are not trying to do something very new or innovative; alien or outstanding through this Bharat Gram eco-village project. We need not, because of our rich heritage and civilizations. We are merely trying to aware people, becoming their friends, guide and well wisher as well as the society and the planet at last.
The enormous reserve of creativity and innovation at grassroots level has been the mainstay of our entire theme. How can innovations, in conserving biodiversity and other natural resources, along with the associated knowledge systems help in linking ethics, efficiency, excellence, equity, and the environment around us? Our work aims at generating practical approaches of sustainable development through a major emphasis on linking innovations, investments and enterprise where possible. Non-market options are also given special attention particularly to strengthen the propensity to experiment and innovate.
We will like to do some value addition work-- with the rich experience of similar type of efforts like On-farm and on-station trials on farmers innovations; Indigenous herbal insecticides; Indigenous veterinary medicines; Plant extracts for bacteriostatic and bactericidal activity; Agricultural implements. Its focus will also be at identifying and documenting ecological indicators; pesticides residue analysis; soil microbial diversity and monitoring the health of ecosystems etc. besides
Some on the site studies on indigenous soil and water conservation practices; on local initiatives for tree and forest management and germplasm conservation; institution building, ecological economics; Study and assimilation of folkloric traditions of the conservation ethic too.
The Bharat
Gram stands for embedding local ecological knowledge into the real
life situation, suggest it for inclusion into the curriculum, stemming dropouts
and improving learning achievement through informal network of teacher
innovators.
Write to :
PRATIDAN,
A-801, La-place, Shahnazaf Road,
Lucknow-226001 (INDIA)
Phone: 00-91-522-217875
Email:-
[email protected]
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