India Ink Shares My Concerns About the Environment

I found this piece on the very informative India Ink site. It reflects one of my ongoing concerns as wafts of burning garbage pass by me and cause me fear for my lungs: 

Time Magazine’s special report on India, carried a series of articles that focused on the overarching theme—“can the nation recover its magic?” One of the articles, by the author Akash Kapur, argues that the entire country “has been reduced to a giant dumping yard,” with plastic bags, bottles and rubber tires strewn around and the air polluted with chemicals. He writes that the “garbage crisis” is symptomatic of the “nation’s troubled engagement with modern capitalism — reflecting a new prosperity and consumer boom, yet a reminder too of the terrible price often expected by that boom.”

 I have few complaints about India, as the people we've met have been friendly and knowledgeable, the food excellent, and the culture & scenery something to behold. But all of the garbage everywhere continually riles me. Not only an eyesore, it seems symptomatic of a widely held mindset that seems not to give a damn about the world around us. I don't think that this phenomenon is unique to India, but India has so much going for it in terms of what it has and can accomplish so that the disjunction strikes me more strongly. It also strikes me that those who realize this shortcoming don't have the numbers or the willpower to correct it. 

I must admit that the other day I saw a woman emptying plastic garbage bags in the garbage dump outside our compound, obviously looking for anything of value that might be salvaged. I do not want to rob that woman of anything that might prove valuable to her given her manifest need. But there must be a better way. 

Is Jaipur unique? While this problem was not nearly as apparent in the capital city of Delhi, at least in the parts that we visited, check out this piece on the Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore. Here's a quote, but I recommend the article in full: 

Yash Enclave is a walled community in a new north Bangalore neighborhood called Hennur Road. Inside, the streets are squeaky clean, homes have lush gardens, and there is seldom a honk heard from the cars as they cruise through, stopping to make way for kids riding bicycles, gliding by on rollerblades or chasing after cricket balls.

It is a place where children also leave bicycles and skateboards outdoors without fear of theft – a situation unthinkable in any Indian city.

Beyond Yash Enclave’s manned gates is India’s urban reality: slums, potholed and traffic-choked roads, piles of garbage on street corners, traffic fumes, and a cacophonous din from the revving motors and incessant honking of the cars, buses and motorcycles. [Emphasis added.]

This last sentence describes the scene outside of our more modest, but gated, compound. Where's the outrage of an even modest middle class? Can the middle class, which I believe relatively small but nonetheless real, survive in enclaves of refuge from the blight around them? This may have been the life of elites throughout virtually all of world history, but can a functioning democratic, market society function in such a manner? Maybe it can, maybe this is an equilibrium that will maintain itself indefinitely, but I doubt it.