thoughts while traveling

I'm sitting on the coast of Gujarat, surrounded by two of the largest oil refineries in India. Working with fellow environment lovers is always a pleasure because I get to discuss so many things that I love to talk about, and rant about, and hear other people rant about and agree with them. Sitting with my colleagues, we discussed the great growth that Gujarat has witnessed, and of course, any talk about Gujarat today is incomplete without Narendra Modi.

Before I move onto other things, I think a lot of my conversations on politics with a lot of people involve some very similar undercurrents, or so I feel. Nobody is denying that under Modi, the state of Gujarat has emerged as a poster child of a successful (which itself is relative) third world capitalist state. Yes everybody mentioned Godhra and says that that will forever haunt his legacy and always stand in his way at the national stage. So I am beginning to realize that a lot of people perhaps feel guilty in acknowledging the fact that a leader that functions and behaves like Narendra Modi could be the very task master that this country needs at the helm. So if everybody can see Gujarat run so successfully under Modi, what is stopping other Chief Ministers to adapt some of Modi's concepts? I suppose adapting good governance practices is just not a national habit, so I will leave it at that. 

Coming back to talking environment, I once again, as much as I try not to, rant against the global trade imbalances and the economic bullying that the third world has had to face from the developed west, and now increasingly China. In the end, I realized, that no matter how much the world seems unfair and how much we seem to be at a disadvantage or no matter how much we have lost or not done well, it has always been in our hands. I personally feel it is more so in the past one decade. Till 2008, the world grew at an amazing pace. The banks were doing well, industries were doing well, and the belief was that the world was becoming more affluent. India of course was part of the growth story and everybody was gung ho about the great way the RBI ran the economy, how the UPeeA government was run by such learned and experienced economists and technocrats and how the government was determined to take the Indian growth story to the real Bharat. 

Unfortunately, now the consensus is forming that India grew because the world was growing, and we are beginning to finally open our eyes to the fact that our policies are way way behind and very outdated. The politicians in power at the center have used up the India growth story to completely squander the advantage in trying to establish Rahul Gandhi as the next Prime Minister. For a poor country, we are a very generous democracy. We tax a tiny minority to subsidize a vast majority, and we try to make up for our lack of balls in expanding direct taxes by increasing our indirect taxes. Why don't the media and economists and sensible people raise this issue? Why don't they show how unfair indirect taxes are? A poor man pays the same amount of tax as the richest person on the same commodity that he or she buys from the market. 

Have we hit the bottom of the barrel yet? I asked my friends. Both were of the consensus that we haven't. Its good in many ways, in my opinion. I told them that I am really keen that the ambitious, and supposedly over 300 million strong, middle class of India get out of that hubris that the money train is running full speed and that they too are very, very affected by the bad economic and social policies of an ever-conniving government. 

Perhaps slow growth is the new normal. Infrastructure bottlenecks, red tape, an unresponsive political system, caste and regional divisions, these have been around since we gained independence, and show no signs of abating. In fact, they have only grown worse because now they are mixed with expectations, ambitions, and unnecessary hubris. A foreign business leader or a western politician praises us and we smile from ear to ear with our chest sticking out like a robin. I am really hoping some of this hubris is crushed and we are really forced to re look at the way things are done in this country. 

Looking at the big picture, this world is becoming an increasingly difficult place to survive and succeed. In my opinion, the inability of most of the world to govern itself, manage its resources and tame its consumption is leading to a planet which will simply just stop responding. In a way we will bring ourselves to a state where there might simply be nothing left to exploit. I do like to think on something like, how long can say, the global steel industry consume thousands of tonnes of iron ore and produce thousands of tonne of steel into producing cars and bridges and cities and what not. If we are consuming our forests at a rate faster than we can regrow them, surely a time will come when it will catch up, right? Oil for example. Just how much is there? Just how much can we continue refining and consuming? 

I don't know, and I really don't want to think either. We live in very interesting times. It will be very interesting to see where the world is heading now. Modern civilization has demonstrated that we cannot see eye to eye on absolutely any issue, and as we realize that the world is increasingly becoming an unresponsive place, both literally and figuratively, both in body and spirit. For somebody like me, a weeping philosopher,  it's going to get even tougher being a modern citizen of the world, and of India, I can tell you that!