Turning 54 on a Rainy Day !

A few years back, a brilliant artist friend of mine, Dhanaraj Keezhara did a celestially beautiful painting series. He called it “I shall die in a heavy rain”. It’s a metaphor, but things could get literal, the way it has been raining in Kerala, and especially in Karakulam, where I have my earthly little jail, I am locked in, most of these days, voluntarily, in fear of a tiny little non-living piece of a creature. 
And here, today, I turned 54. That fortunately is not a metaphor. I did, and have crawled my way into the mid 50’s.  The morning got me a few good birthday wishes, almost all virtually. Thanks to everybody. I am wishing for more of them. It gives me that feeling of “you are still remembered”. Even I was reminded by facebook, and so owe my birthday to Zuckerberg (no offence meant to my parents, my father is no more, and my mother does not read english!). One friend called me all the way from somewhere in America. I apologise for not remembering where he called from. Most of my friends who live in America live there, and that’s all. Remembering where friends actually live shouldn’t anymore be expected from us, mid-fiftians (English Profs, pardon me),  especially when the last 20 months of pandemic and the 6 months of spread-out monsoons, or to be more precise, just heavy rains, have numbed that part of the brain, and perhaps the heart! So, one is left with a little less of remembering and less of empathy! We are detached! At 54, in these times, expect that from us!
So, before I go about completing this journal note on my own birthday, here is a caveat, please, please do not consider this as self-indulgence. It looks like it. It is not, I vouch, it’s serious.
So, what’s the bleak picture all about- the metaphor of dying? The virus that is on us has evolved x number of times. Yes, the scientists are clueless, the numbers they throw around is because they dont have a time machine. We, engineers have one. So, when we don’t know, we use ‘x”, which in the colloquial “is a number” (for mallus this translates to “oru number aanu”). Meanwhile, forget “x”, we human beings have not evolved in these times, even once. We were expected to- ecologically, economically, socially, politically, responsibly, even reproductively - evolve and fit sensibly into the earth. But, after 20 months of a pandemic, 3 peaks done, more than 266 million affected, 5.2 million dead, we are “business as usual”. Extract more, produce more, exploit more, buy more, travel more, dump more, pollute more and possibly even reproduce more! 
And then in my little state, Kerala, at the deep south end of the Indian peninsula, which has the sea on both sides and the Indian ocean below, with the only land across Srilanka happens to be Antartica; it’s oceans all around. We live on the edge. And it’s rains all through. We have had unprecedented, erratic and strange rains, that have no time borders. Scientists say the Arabian sea is heating up,and like never before. We had atleast eight cyclonic activities there, where we never had even one. And whenever the Bay of Bengal gets a cyclonic activity, we in Kerala get rains, deluge and landslides. Infact, some of those cyclones even crossed the peninsula. Climate Lunacy,I call that.  
I actually feel the oceans traversing over the peninsula like an atmospheric river, that breaks the dam over our heads, every now and then and drenches us in flashes. It’s not cats and dogs anymore! Looks like the dinosaur is here. Talking of metaphors, that is a better one. Climate Change is a dinosaur, we better don’t have in our rooms!
And what’s the rossy picture? I turned 54. I did not die in the heavy rain, nor by the virus. I could have. I have turned dark brown in the face, white on my head and peppered in the beard. I still have most of my friends intact, though I lost some of my family! I am still of adequate irritant value to those who don’t have the time machine, and hence continue to read the signs wrong, or so I believe. I have grown more passionate over time, but less of grit and energy. Yes, exactly like that Norwegian study that was reported in “The Guardian” last year of people at, guess where, 54!. I have less to do with the public nowadays. I sleep more, watch movies, eat better and love things that have no value for others. I try writing articles and most of them never get finished. The lucky ones get published.  Among the non-living things, the antique excite me, the new is boring. And for the living, it’s the other way round ! I don’t pick up all my calls. I wait and see whether the ring stops, and then I pick it up. This gives me a sadist delight. Some lucky ones get my call back. Most lucky ones don’t. 
But the young ones, surely get back my call. Because, they make me feel old and grand. Like one of those 20-something brand new friend of mine from Mumbai greets me today , “Happy Birthday unclelish grandfather”. Let me reply to that grand daughter of mine, says me!
Happy Birthday to the 54! On a rainy day!

The post-Covid world needs a New Economy!- Day #20 (13 April 2020) 21 day #Covid19 Lock down

Day #20 (13 April 2020)

The post-Covid world needs a New Economy!

“where is the rich society that says: ‘Halt! We have enough’?”

― Ernst F. Schumacher,

Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered

A Virus has crashed the economy of the world! Even the last global financial crisis of 2008 would be an ant before this elephant of a crash. The many orthodoxies of the global economic order is out of the window, probably for ever. The learned economists are going back to the books. But the books are as old as the Jules Verne classic Around the World in Eighty Days, where the protagonist Phileas Fogg, when challenged with the possibility of a single accident causing delay and hence the loss of his bet of travelling the world in eighty days, says, “The unforeseen does not exist”. Those days of certainty or as Fogg himself says, “I will jump – mathematically” is finished or probably was just fiction.

Governments and Corporations are no longer perturbed by the weight of public debts nor about budget deficits. They are spending on an unforeseen crisis. Every nation has broken the regulations that maintain a healthy economy and spending, to pay large populations of workers, casual employees, households, businesses and markets, money worth trillions of dollars to help them tide over the crisis. US, Canada, India...are all forced to do this. Large amounts are also being spent on subsidies and even free supplies to affected people - poverty-stricken families, unorganised workers and migrant labourers to keep them running their homes. Corporations are no more looking at their growth lines and are paying their employees to stay safe at home, and sometimes even cutting down salaries of senior management to do this. The true-blue economist has also been, theoretically speaking, quarantined!

Can there be a rebound? Economists have different opinions on the route the global recession is taking, but is certain that the world will go into a deeper economic crisis, as days go by. They are even predicting a depression. This is because even with a high level of economic stimulus, the market with it’s unprecedented crash down, will not be able to gain the confidence to help a rebound. The investments into it will, nevertheless, have to keep going. It is a pandemic, and make no mistake, it demands immediate, assertive response.

I believe the virus attack episode will be remembered in history for the collapse of the economy, more than the number of people that it infected or killed. It will also be remembered for the great act of humanity, to give up on the health of the economy so as to protect the lives of the people.

But there is something sinister to the current economic model, we seem to be so obsessed with, that many nations even waited to take decisive action in fear of hurting it. This economic model thrives on extraction, production, consumption, denudation, pollution, contamination and eventually even extinction or the collapse. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the measuring stick for the health of an economy is singularly based on the value of production, and every nation strives for it’s exponential growth, notwithstanding it’s impacts on human life and ecological sustainability .

But Covid19 turned out to be an eye-opener. I always thought the climate change would do the job. Covid outsmarted it. It told us what a crisis of the future looks like. Covid was like a 2-minute eerie trailor of what is to come. It attempts to tell us, emphatically, that we have crossed the planetary boundaries. It attempts to tell us that handling a crisis such as this will be beyond the capacity of present human societal systems – our governments, our economic models, our political organising.

Two important reports need to be brought back to light here. One of them is the 1972 report - Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jørgen Randers. The second book by the same authors is the 1992 report – Beyond the Limits to Growth. Why I bring these two reports into discussion here is to tell that these reports were much ahead of their time. For instance, the Limits to Growth alerted the world to the limits of the present economic model and recommended that in 1972 if the growth trends could be altered, we could achieve sustainable ecological and economic stability. Both the books were highly influential ones, and got caught into a number of controversies for obvious reasons. Since then, we have had innumerable scientists and authors alerting and warning us of the “Limits” story and later on the “Collapse” story in various ways. The fact is we did not have enough economists, bureaucrats or politicians who could be bothered about it.

Now, it’s time. It is crisis, one after the other. The Climate crisis manifests itself every year in hundreds of places across the world - destroying property, killing people and wiping out livelihoods. Human activities are denuding ecosystems, forests and depleting natural resources at a pace that nature cannot replenish. Deforestation and habitat manipulations are causing biodiversity loss, species collapse and even pandemics like the SARS, MERS, Ebola, Nipha and so on.

The Covid crisis has shown that even a balance between ecology and economy as proposed in the Limits to Growth is probably no more possible. Soon as the health crisis is over, nations will go back to repairing their economies in the only way they seem to know, guided by fossilised economists and financial experts.

So, does the future have a better deal? I believe, yes. I don’t think we would have a choice.

Atleast some proposals for a total re-look at the economy is in circulation in some countries and regions. The Green New Deal,  a package proposed by a few progressive representatives of the US Congress attempts to tackle the twin crisis of inequality and climate change in the US. Though the resolution was defeated in the Senate, it has wide public support and is expected to come back to limelight in the wake of the Covid crisis. Another promising policy draft with a much more potential is the European Green Deal, which is a road-map for making EU’s economy sustainable. It talks about moving to a clean, circular economy, restoring biodiversity, cutting pollution, de-carbonising the energy sector and many more.

It’s also interesting to note that many smaller but significant efforts are being taken all over the world, by various states, cities, villages and even communities to move towards a carbon-neutral or a climate-resilient one. One instance, which I am closely aware of is the Carbon Neutral Villages project of the Government of Kerala which is technically supported by Thanal, the organisation I have an association with.

Another fall out of the Covid19 crisis with a positive turn is the decision by the Dutch Government to embrace the very interesting “Doughnut Economics” model for Amsterdam. This model, developed by British economist Kate Raworth from Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute was described in detail in her book Doughnut Economics: Seven ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. This model proposes a visual framework for sustainable development – shaped like a doughnut or an uzhunnuvada ( for us!) – combining the concept of planetary boundaries with the complementary concept of social boundaries. I would encourage you to read more about this.

While these are good efforts, I would believe that in a post-Covid world, the new economic proposal should be founded on a deep respect towards nature and a deep commitment to the public good. The fine print would have to address phasing out of fossil fuels, adopting renewable efficient energy technologies and systems, phasing out industrial agriculture, adopting a more regenerative, community and agro-ecology based food systems, eliminating non-renewable extractive, high carbon economic activities such as in constructions, other infrastructure, work culture etc and adopt green investments that fosters a regenerative low-carbon and circular economy.

But, above all this is my absolute faith in the young generation of people, especially the Millenials and the Generation-Z. These are the ones, in their teens and early-20’s. Many of them are already shaking up the present paradigm with their Friday For Futures and the XR protests. But, what is exciting is that many of them are also turning themselves to simplifying their needs and de-clutering their lives, some even becoming Minimalists. That too is something worth watching out for and encouraging. If the Covid and the lock down throws up more such minimalists, then I will gladly live for the change!

“I certainly never feel discouraged. I can’t myself raise the winds that might blow us or this ship into a better world. But I can at least put up the sail so that when the winds comes, I can catch it”.”

― E.F. Schumacher

Half the Earth for Nature and the Wild!- Day #17 (10 April 2020) 21 day #Covid19 Lock down

Day #17 (10 April 2020)

Half the Earth for Nature and the Wild!

“The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.”

― Edward O. Wilson in Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life

To many of us, the world is where we live, and we make the best of what we get, and we strive to get more of it, if possible all of it, every nook and corner of it. This broadly defines every one of us, whether it’s the material aspirant, or the spiritual aspirant, almost everyone of us.

Till we were locked down, we never thought we will ever be locked down, for such long days, and even more perhaps; one of the tiniest creatures in the world, a virus, that we are not yet sure whether it’s a living form or not, caught us in it’s mire, and forced every nation to stop everything that it does for it’s own growth. Even as I write this, the virus has infected 17, 55,313 people and killed 1,07,030 people in 210 countries and territories across the world. Every single growth index, every sector that kept the economy running is now down. Some sectors, like the Tourism sector, even with a relief package, could take three years to be back and running. A virus just taught us that it can stop our growth! Many scientists who study viruses, especially those who study the ecology of diseases caused from the wild, say, this has happened before, it can happen again, and that this can happen in worse forms.

“Pathogens do not respect species boundaries,” says disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie, an associate professor in Emory University’s department of environmental sciences, who studies how shrinking natural habitats and changing behaviour add to the risk of diseases spilling over from animals to humans. He adds that human beings are to be blamed for this, as they create the conditions for the spread of diseases by reducing the natural barriers between host animals and themselves. “Major landscape changes are causing animals to lose habitats, which means species become crowded together and also come into greater contact with humans. Species that survive change are now moving and mixing with different animals and with humans”, he says. (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/18/tip-of-the-iceberg-is-our-destruction-of-nature-responsible-for-covid-19-aoe )

The SARS-CoV2 virus that caused the Covid19 pandemic is believed to have originated from bats, moved into the pangolins, and then possibly infected humans in a wet meat market in China. The Ebola, another dreaded disease that killed nearly 12,000 people, has it’s origin on a supposedly freak spill over incident. It’s traced back to a little boy, the first case, who was playing near a tree, where the bats lived. Even the “monkey fever” which springs up, now and then, in some parts of the Western Ghats has its roots in deforestation activities.

But, we continue to plunder the wild.

The Amazon rain forests is one of the largest rain forests on the Earth, and occupies 4% of the Earth’s surface. It contains 33% of the world’s plant and animal diversity. With such diversity and other contributions that it makes to the local ecosystems, including towards land, water, climate, livelihood, it also absorbs approximately 5% of global emissions of CO2 (2 billion tons of CO2 every year). It’s existence is absolutely essential for our survival on this Earth. But it continues to be one of the most plundered and abused piece of pristine land on Earth, by the who-is-who among the global corporates. A recent report from the Amazon Watch (https://amazonwatch.org/news/2020/0312-investing-in-amazon-crude ) exposes how 5 major global banks are financing major crude oil extraction projects in the Amazon, with serious impact on the rainforests, the indigenous people and the climate. I am sure many of us have funded this unknowingly, and even if we know it, we may prefer to be helpless.

Back home, it’s a scandalous story. These are examples, and they are acts of politicians, officials and some dangerous individuals, and I would appeal to those who are politically polarised to keep the political aspect out for some time. We are not talking about that. We are talking about survival, with Covid in the air. During the pandemic, even as the whole nation was locked down, some heinous activities went on, as has never stopped for decades. Kerala, the state that handled the Covid crisis in a commendable manner, dubiously cleared an order that allows landowners to chop down trees in plantations, that were earlier protected. “At stake is about five million trees, many of them over 300 years old” says Adv Meera Rajesh, who works on conserving tree diversity. Inspite of the high level of environmental consciousness, it’s deep democratic roots and it’s intricate dependence on the diverse ecosystems, the State has been in the forefront, destroying some of its most pristine ecosystems, for the sake of development demands. Luxurious projects, that the State’s ecosystems cannot sustain are dreamt up by most Governments, eventually making the state a disaster hotspot as well.

The National Government is as worse. Even during these dark days, we saw some of the worst actions from the Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change. Goa’s highly controversial new airport project at Mopa has been given environmental clearance. This is supposed to have serious impacts on the ecologically sensitive zones of the Western Ghats. In the city of Bangalore, already starved of water and open spaces, and growing into a pollution hot spot, the same ministry approved the clearing of the Eco-Sensitive Zone of Bannerghatta National Park by 100 sq km to accommodate mining and real estate interests. Meanwhile the State Government in Karnataka has cleared the Hubballi-Ankola railway line that will cut through the Western Ghats. The worst then happened on April 7^th, when the Standing Committee of the National Board of Wildlife cleared a number of very destructive projects that would amount to a loss of 185 acres of forests from the national parks and sanctuaries. This includes a highway project through Goa that will cut across a wildlife corridor; a railway line cutting through tiger corridors of three tiger reserves in Telangana, Maharashtra, and Chhattisgarh; and a hydroelectric project that will submerge about 900 hectares of pristine forests and endemic myristica swamps of Karnataka.

Our last patches of wild, reservoirs of biodiversity, known and unknown is being plundered. Covid or not, pandemic deaths or not, some agencies of the human species, just don’t seem to care. The insults on nature and the wild life continues in the form of reclamation of forests, habitat loss, deforestation, unprecedented loss of biodiversity, invasive species, pollution, poaching, over fishing, and finally climate change.

Where and How do we put a full stop to this?

I am sure biologists, with a heart, have spent sleepless nights, grappling with this question, because they know something about life, that we Engineers do not know, and have never been taught. By Engineers, I mean the rest of us, the attitude, that keeps aspiring for the never-ending upward growth curve.

Edward O. Wilson, a master biologist and author of a number of books is some one I would turn to to show us the way forward. His warnings are a biologists bible to the apocalypse. He writes, “Despite all of our pretences and fantasies, we always have been and will remain a biological species tied to this particular biological world. Millions of years of evolution are indelibly encoded in our genes. History without the wild lands is no history at all.”

I wish to introduce to my readers his classic, “Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life". He writes, “I propose that only by committing half of the planet's surface to nature can we hope to save the immensity of life-forms that compose it."

Our intrusive, manipulative, engineering, builder brain is undoubtedly in conflict with this reality. But we have hit the end of choices!

Half the Earth for nature and the wild, is for our sake as well! Let’s give it up!

Afternote:

If you still find it difficult to agree to this, and want a factual justification, let me try giving you one. The human population is 7.6 billion, and the population of all animals, though difficult to estimate, the best studies put it at 20 quintillion. That makes the human to animal ratio at 0.000000038 to 1. Inspite of this overwhelming disadvantage, we get half! Convinced?

A Crisis and the Mad Max future! - Day #13 (6 April 2020) - 21 day #Covid19 Lock down

Day #13 (6 April 2020)

A Crisis and the Mad Max future!

Who did not know that the Covid19 like pandemic was coming? Trump? Yea! He seem to be the only one who actually never saw it coming. Here are a few of his quotes, to prove my point and enliven up the blog!

(For a complete appreciation, imagine him saying this, when you read.)

“I would view it as something that just surprised the whole world.” “Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion.” “So there’s never been anything like this in history. There’s never been. And nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”

(My comment - The Spanish Flu, for instance happened before he was born, and so probably, “nobody’s ever seen anything like this!”, and the H1N1 happened in 2009-10, but then he wasn’t President at that time, and so, “nobody’s ever seen anything like this!”)

“Nobody ever saw numbers like this even with regard to testing.”

(My comment - The Spanish flu.....blah, blah, blah...!)

“I just think this is something … that you can never really think is going to happen,” “It’s an unforeseen problem.” “What a problem. Came out of nowhere.”

(My comment – That was lie. Earlier, he called it a Chinese virus, then he says it “came out of nowhere”, that’s when he realised he needed Chinese masks and ventilators!)

These statements were like the usual, on various occasions, even as the virus was infecting and killing American people. His more recent sneers (the rest of us tweet!) are of another league!

How many of us watch English movies, especially Hollywood movies? I grew up watching some amazing, technically sound, but preposterously apocalyptic movies. I remember, it probably started with the 1979 Australian bloc-buster, the “Mad Max”. It is set in a distopian Australia, post-apocalyptic, where there is an oil crisis and violent gangs take control. And then comes Max to establish some semblance of law and order. The James Bond series, some of which came before the Mad Max, I presume, where mostly revolving around the Cold War, and there was always either nuclear bombs involved or sometimes oil pipelines or some very special invention that could either control the world, or destroy it. And it was James Bond 007, the British lover-spy and his love-interest scientist or a sensual co-spy, who would stop the attempt in an ever-improvised dare-devil operation. The movies always ended with M, the head of the secret service appreciating 007, and he leaves off to some lovely destination with his love-interest.

From then on, there has been hundreds of such movies, with scores of all sorts of threats- from such things as cyborgs, asteroids, comets, aliens, viruses, zombies, genetically modified creatures, biological weapons, bacteria, and then some very real stuff like earthquakes, volcanoes, gigantic storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, deadly winds and finally even climate change. And most of these films ended with the hero, usually an ex-corporal turned convict called back to service, and the heroine, a scientist who studies the subject of the threat, accomplishing their mission to save the American President, America and hence the World, in that order, from the threat! They get to salute the President, they get a full hand-shake (oops! Covid!) and then they kiss each other! The end.

Before I wrote this blog, I asked my son to pick me details of some films that deal with various kinds of disasters to the world. He googled for just 30 minutes or so, and gave me a sample list of 67 movies! There must be thousands. I will tell you, just this much should have been enough for Trump to have expected the crisis. The Hollywood expected this, why not the American President!

In this list are some mind-blowing ones. Children of men(2006), Day after tomorrow(2004), 12 Monkeys(1996), 2012(2009), War of the Worlds(2005), 28 days later(2002), 28 weeks later(2007), The Mist(2007), The Happening(2008), Reign of fire(2002), The Wave(2015), The Quake(2018), Volcano(1997), Geostorm(2017), Independence Day(1996) are some of them. And for current interests, those with viruses and zombies - Flu(2013), Quarantine(2008), Doomsday(2008), Slither(2006), The Last man on Earth, World war Z(2013), Warm Bodies(2013), Contagion and so on. But, I am immensely tempted with these two - Sunshine(2007) and the Wandering Earth(2019). Sunshine is a story where Sun is the main culprit! It’s drying up, and a group of scientists go on a space mission to try and re-ignite it with a bomb! The Wandering Earth(2019) is an end-of-the-world movie from China. It chronicles a group of scientists who seek to physically move the Earth to get it away from the ever-expanding sun, while avoiding collision with Jupiter! I prefer the Covid19 from China, seriously!

Welcome to the world of “Designed Reality”. This is where a lot of us live. This is where we bring up most of our children. This is where we are slowly manipulated, moment by moment, scene by scene, plot by plot, to a new reality of life. This is where, without as much of a realisation, our IQ’s go down point by point, with each scene, each screening, individually first and then collectively. This never happens when we read the written word. What has been read will either be washed out soon after it’s read, or would transform into our own visual construct. There is a creativity in it, and we would create it within our known reality! The Visual, the animated, the games, movies, especially the fictional ones, aren’t like that. They give you the past, present and future, visually, as they want you to see it!

And as visual technology improves, the difference between the real and the designed gets narrower, and hence more difficult to differentiate over time.

For instance, how much do we see the history of let’s say a million years or even as recent as a thousand years, which is very important to retain and process, for learning, future responses and eventually for survival; versus the designed virtual world, that we have unwittingly substituted for reality. How different would be the responses to, lets say catastrophes, in these two scenarios? How shallow would be our response, were we to simply be a generation that grew up on a designed reality, and not the historically retained and processed one? The digital world, internet and the social media, for instance is just a few years old, and is a technological construct, with a retention time of anything from a few seconds to a few hours. And it’s not a living entity. The Virus is, and it carries like us, a real life history of millions of years, and may be more. Our constructs of response cannot be separated from this history, and the farther we get back to such retained knowledge, and the evolved science, the better we will as a society charter the solutions of today and the needs of the future. Even a normal progress of life on earth needs this; a crisis like the Covid19 or the more complex crisis of climate change should certainly be based on this.

To build profoundness and sanity in leaderships, the stories that we tell our children will also need to change. If not, a crisis such as Covid19 will only have such limited options as to turn us into the violent gangs as in the Mad Max(1979), or turn us into depressed characters that rejoice the doom as in Melancholia(2011), or turn us into vampires that feed on other humans as in Daybreakers(2009), even as our leaders will look on as infected zombies.