Before September 1994, I had never imagined the link between India's garbage disposal system and its export & tourism performance. The inter-relationship of poverty and garbage of Mumbai's slums with the occupancy levels of Hotel Taj and the passenger loads of both Indian & foreign flights to Mumbai never occured to me.
It all happened in 1994 immediately after the monsoon. Pleague, the dreaded disease of the past, broke out in Surat ( a filthy but super-rich diamond-processing town in Gujurat ) and started spreading to other parts of the country. There was red alert in India and in abroad for India. Suddenly the world was hesitant to accept Indian goods. The flights and even the people arriving from India were being fumigated. The tourists' arrival in India for the peak winter season plummeted and the tourism industry including the seemingly clean hotels and flights came almost to a dead-halt. The worst aspect of the ensuing disaster was its threatening vector property across provincial and national boundaries. And in the stake was my own and my family's lives, seemingly away from poverty and garbage.
We live in an extremely inter-related and inter-dependent world; whether it is poverty, pollution, garbage disposal, environmental degradation, education, illiteracy, health, commerce, investment, financial flows, terrorism, nuclear disarmament, governance, and you name it. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the fire & fog and currency crisis of SE Asia with all its global ripples and repercussions have confirmed the doubt, if any.
Those who create, manage and consume wealth need to have a vision broader than that of an accountant. Those who govern and make policies need to have vision of the planet, rather than their beloved self, company, community and even country. Let us not confuse the present crisis. Our future and fate is systemically inter-linked not only to ourselves but to our planet as well. Internationalism and globalization can not be reserved only for business, commerce and investment.
It all happened in 1994 immediately after the monsoon. Pleague, the dreaded disease of the past, broke out in Surat ( a filthy but super-rich diamond-processing town in Gujurat ) and started spreading to other parts of the country. There was red alert in India and in abroad for India. Suddenly the world was hesitant to accept Indian goods. The flights and even the people arriving from India were being fumigated. The tourists' arrival in India for the peak winter season plummeted and the tourism industry including the seemingly clean hotels and flights came almost to a dead-halt. The worst aspect of the ensuing disaster was its threatening vector property across provincial and national boundaries. And in the stake was my own and my family's lives, seemingly away from poverty and garbage.
We live in an extremely inter-related and inter-dependent world; whether it is poverty, pollution, garbage disposal, environmental degradation, education, illiteracy, health, commerce, investment, financial flows, terrorism, nuclear disarmament, governance, and you name it. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the fire & fog and currency crisis of SE Asia with all its global ripples and repercussions have confirmed the doubt, if any.
Those who create, manage and consume wealth need to have a vision broader than that of an accountant. Those who govern and make policies need to have vision of the planet, rather than their beloved self, company, community and even country. Let us not confuse the present crisis. Our future and fate is systemically inter-linked not only to ourselves but to our planet as well. Internationalism and globalization can not be reserved only for business, commerce and investment.
1 comment:
Lot of passion and thoughts involved in it. I have just glanced over the topics. It looks substance. Let me go through it a bit more vivid and then can be in a better position to interact.
Thank u for sending all!!
S K Bose
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