A potential panacea for the development problems of power, and clean water supply to rural India (and indeed the whole world) is lean and green! Treatment of Waste water and power generation accomplished in one shot! Granted – the technology is still immature, costly (I’ll come to this a little later), and more work has to be done to substitute laboratory solutions for sewage water, field run-offs, industrial effluents, saline wells/marine water and the like; but the crux of the matter is that the technology is simple.
‘Simple’ almost always emerges triumphant.
First the image that’s worth most of the words in the article
However, this, unfortunately, is one of the hordes of new ideas that are sentenced never to bask in the light of day; condemned to remaining conceptual (or if lucky, as working laboratory prototypes) due to their “economic non-viability”. That, ladies and gentlemen is always a fault of our policies (in this case, those that deal with capital allocation for energy and resources); and NEVER that of the technology involved. Think about this for a minute.
If all supermarkets started levying a surcharge of Rs. 5/- for every plastic bag that you used to pack your shopping, then those cloth and jute bags (which cost about Rs. 50/- maximum) wouldn’t seem all that costly, inconvenient or remain as easily forgotten at home now, would they? Special Economic Zones (SEZs) - sharpening of political sabres, incrementing the backlog of the judiciary by a couple more PILs, sparks careening among the government, opposition and the people. Instead of burdening the state exchequer with the responsibility of covering the sops given to a new coal plant on an SEZ, subsidizing a newer, leaner, greener and grassroots technology provider is definitely a better path to both development, as well as tackling climate change. Best of all, being grassroots technologies, they involve those that they are going to help – inspiring them to care. The scientists and us engineers have been, are, and will do everything – squeezing every drop of ingenuity to come up with solutions to mop up what is the people’s and our mess; but it’s time that business and political establishments and ideologies gave us some backing.
The GREEN IDOL campaign is a concrete start – to equipping ourselves with the necessary tools to bring about change. A relatively conflict-free past, and the best environs the earth has to offer has probably seduced us, as a nation, into protecting ourselves, and our pale, blue, fragile and the most important of our interests through the drafting of impotent laws. 26/11 brought home the erstwhile far away struggles with terrorism. Thankfully, we seem to have woken up to that danger. But climate change won’t affect only Mumbai, Kashmir, India, the world, or even just humans. It’s targeting life itself. A la Bill Pullman, from the movie ‘Independence Day’ – “We’re fighting for our right to live, to exist.” WE need to adapt, not Earth, because we’re the only species on the planet with the power to save all others.
Our nation is evidence of people power – from the fight for independence, up until today – the largest functioning democracy in the world. The sons of India have always been big boys – but now it’s time to act tough as well. Join the campaign and petition for some measurable changes, and tougher legislation.
American humourist Frank McKinney Hubard said, ‘I haven’t heard of anybody who wants to stop living on account of the cost’, and he’d definitely be surprised at how close he is to being wrong.
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This was the fourth post I wrote for my blog at http://greenidol.in/blog/50422, as part of the Green Idol campaign. (The third post was just - "What you can do to minimise your adverse effect on the climate" - Reducing your vehicles' carbon footprint - http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Reduce_your_vehicle%27s_carbon_footprint )
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