Let’s talk about climate change

That climate change affects us all is a reality middle-class India continues to dodge

July 20, 2019 04:37 pm | Updated July 21, 2019 10:31 am IST

Getty images/ istock

Getty images/ istock

Something dramatic was happening in India in the 80s. Old India was breaking down. Most of our experiments as a new democracy were failing but no new models were to be seen. In politics, a new generation was growing up after the Emergency but there was no leader of eminence that India could boast of. The economy was hollow but the worst was yet to come. Popular culture was constantly propping up heroes who were angry, disillusioned and fighting the “system”.

At the peak of fighting and surviving against all odds came the era of liberalisation. Suddenly, as a nation and as an individual, one could be all that one wanted to be. Families became nuclear, firing the booster rocket and getting rid of deadweight, all in search of a prosperity that was now ready to be grabbed. Among the children from that era there was immense stress on the smartest kid to achieve wealth and pull the rest of the family up. Trickle-down theory was being practised in every Indian family. The smart child was the achiever and the saviour. If there was ever a set-up ripe for heady individualism, this was it.

Moral arrogance

Today, this is the generation that leads and populates our corporates and industries. Growing up as admired individuals that left the rest behind, this generation is marked by moral arrogance, righteous scoffing at society, and indifference towards the larger community. The feeling is that they rose despite the conditions around them and they could rise only by being apathetic and maintaining a distance from those conditions. They saw age-old practices of frugality as poverty, and consumption as an expression of power.

It is in this context that we are now trying to create dialogues around climate change, food security and environmental awareness. This generation is also the reason why these conversations have rarely found any resonance. Business leaders today, used to relegating social issues to the CSR team, find themselves on the back foot when asked about climate change. Thankfully, many younger leaders are talking about the climate these days and there is a change at the institutional level.

The problem, however, is that the ownership and intent of making a change has not percolated to the individual employee or citizen level. Departments across corporates are full of highly educated and globally travelled Indians who think of the environment as a topic from their children’s textbooks or something the NGOs work on. Despite Delhi topping the list of most polluted cities in the world many times, talk of clean air is something that comes and goes with the winter. Last year, I heard people discussing brands of face mask as if they were buying a new fashion accessory.

Getty images/ istock

Getty images/ istock

Eight countries in the EU have proposed spending 25% of the EU budget on climate change. The African Development Bank has announced the tripling of its climate financing to reach nearly $5 billion annually by 2020; similar numbers for the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank are $6 billion and $16 billion a year, respectively.

Slow to wake up

While a rare few sectors and corporates have seen business value in climate change, most others have been slow to wake up. More than the leaders, we need the middle rung to be engaged in such conversations.

The challenge is how to sensitise people across strata and roles. Every time I tell people that we compost all of our kitchen waste, they wonder if the house stinks. The conversation usually ends there. Every time I suggest that parents should take their children to farmlands to play with plants and earth, I am told that nobody wants their children to become a farmer. Many people want to buy organic, but they think it is just a fashion label, understanding little of what the process entails. Many talk about farmer distress and how they deserve a better life, but are neither aware nor interested in knowing how our lifestyle choices negatively impacts farmers.

Severed roots

The wealth and good life that today’s middle-class enjoys has made them strangely selfish and righteous at the same time. The roots that were torn decades ago are completely severed now. Being the first generation to enjoy New India’s wealth, middle-class India carries apathy and arrogance from drawing room to boardroom. The world to them is a binary — they are on the side of development and wealth, while NGOs and development folks are the ‘others’ who needlessly worry about soil, water, air and poverty.

But we need to persist. There is a small but growing number of people who are becoming aware, responsible and appropriately alarmed. We need to take these conversations to the spaces where no one wants them. We need to talk about traceability and slow food at posh dining tables, and about earth and water in corporate boardrooms. We need to talk about microbiomes when we discuss new toys for children and we need to talk about sacred groves when people ask about the business book we are now reading. At the next cocktail party, we need to talk about climate change.

The writer farms in the balcony, complains vocally about issues that bother him and eats his way across the world.

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