There is nothing worse
than giving a "Symbolic response to a serious problem". If global warming is
the issue then "Earth Hour" is the symbolic response. The
substantive action involves "Reduce - Shrink -
Reuse - Recycle".
Ask yourself if you can
buy a smaller car or use public transport or reduce the usage of plastics? The
answer from a majority of us is a firm NO for the above questions. If that's the case then let’s not
pretend concern and sensitivity to ecology with symbolic responses. Without
reducing the carbon footprint, without shrinking our actual requirements if we
believe switching off lights once a year would solve our problems then even the
gods can't save us.
If there is a terrorist
attack having a candle light march is one of the symbolic responses we have
mastered. There has been a campaign to encourage DRY HOLI without any wastage
of water in certain media houses. I have been part of some of the
discussion groups in Twitter and blogs on this topic. In some of the groups it
takes a communal angle but I want to focus on some facts which many of us are
not aware of.
Do you know?"
1. It takes 2487 gallons
of water (one gallon is 3.75L approx.) to produce a 40g chocolate.
2. It takes about 1800
gallons of water to make a jeans pant.
3. It takes about 7
litres of water make one litre of beer.
4. It takes about 10
litres of water to make one litre of petrol.
More interesting facts on
high water consumption is seen in this link:
It is very important to
be ecologically prudent and conserve water, but we should not give a
symbolic response for a serious problem. There can be nothing worse
than that.
Let us see few more
examples:
1. It takes about 40000
litres of water to manufacture one car. If you fill 50 litres of Petrol every
month then we use 500 litres / month and 6000 litres / annum of water. Have we
stopped buying cars?
2. It takes about 45.4
litres to manufacture a computer chip. If you work for a telecom company or
bank with 1000 employees, the data center equipment and personal
computing requirements would consume upwards of 500000 computer chips. That's
about 22.7 million litres. This is just to create and not sustain it. If
we assume it’s the same amount of water Consumption is required to sustain it for
3 years then we are taking about 45 million litres being used for every 3
years. Should we stop all the data centers and personal computing usages?
Responses to water
conservation and ecological protection have to be individual, community and
government levels. I can suggest the following ways to conserve water at an
individual and community levels which are substantive actions instead
of symbolic responses.
1. How about foregoing
washing our cars for 1 day a week periodically?
2. How about closing the
swimming pool for few days this summer to conserve water?
3. How about a free
maintenance on all the leaky pipes in your apartment complex?
4. How about installing
water levelers with auto switch off in all the pipe outlets.
5. Well, how about
cutting consumption of chocolates, wine, hamburgers, meat etc...
6. How about buying less
cars, jeans etc...
And the list can go on.
At a macro level we have
seen governments like Delhi drained INR 1700+ Cr for cleaning rivers yet have
achieved nothing. Subsequent governments in Maharastra has systematically
looted to the extent of INR 70000 Cr on irrigation projects and delivered nothing.
In the same measure governments like Gujarat, Tamil Nadu have successfully
improved water management and increased the ground water levels in the last
decade.
"Pluralistic
uniqueness is nature's own manifestation..." Nature manifests itself in innumerable ways - colors, shades and
hues. Each one of us is the product of this manifestation. If nature did not
wanted us to be so, it would not have created and sustained us.
Each of us is inalienable
and inseparable part of the cosmic whole, linked to the unmanifested
interconnections. We should just don't talk of tolerance and acceptance, but
move beyond and celebrate the pluralistic uniqueness.
For me, HOLI is a very
colorful festival that highlights the pluralistic manifestation of nature that every color and hue we see essentially asks a
child to celebrate that plurality. It cuts across age, gender, caste
and creed and one of the socially inclusive festivals that we can
ever see across the world. Look at the joy on every child’s face
celebrating this festival.
Let’s celebrate the
plurality in the individuality and do that when you see the colors of different
hues and shade on a HOLI day. Let’s celebrate HOLI with full JOSH.
Happy HOLI to all my
friends and relativesJ ...
Happy reading!
