 In poor neighbourhoods,
environmental problems arise mostly from how other people have chosen to lead their lives.
In poor neighbourhoods, environmental problems like bad health, bad diet,
are immediate and very visible. Richer neighbourhoods can have different environmental
problems, more invisible ones. Since clean air, clean water and good food are available,
and the maid cleans or the cook cooks, one can even sit and think of larger problems like
global warming, climate change. Or, sustainable development.
| Is a City a Pity? The "growth path" the country has taken so far
has not led the poorest people to improve their living standards. Nor has inequality been
reduced in any fashion. The official response to urban poverty has been
"unimaginative, inadequate, half-hearted."
– Report,
National Commission on Urbanisation, India, 1988. |
 |
 |
As rivers get dirtier, streams and wells dry up, soils become infertile, so
that the chances to work and study become limited or do not exist at all, rural poor
people and students run to the big city. In India, urbanisation — the creation of
cities and city-like facilities for people — means only making a big city (called a
metropolis) bigger and more equipped.
In India, as you go further away from the metropolis, urban growth becomes less and
less. The metropolis is the only one that keeps growing, and eating up all the area
around. The big city develops, other places remain un- or under-developed.
The big city sucks energy and materials from all around. Its growth means decay
elsewhere.
Great Gobbling Grro@wthh!*#!
Does everybody in an Indian city
have an ecological footprint of the same size?
No.That is because environmental
services are not equally provided to all city-people.
LOTS OF ROOM |
ELBOWED OUT |
Here, clean water is piped into homes and chee-chee water is piped out.
Number 1 and number 2 are immediately sealed off from air and insects, and flushed away
with the chee-chee water. Solid waste is bagged, placed in closed containers, and
given to kachrawalla to cart away. Wires carry electricity into every room, where
it can be cleanly converted to heat, light, or mechanical drive. In the kitchen, mom or
the cook use LPG. Nobody swats flies all the time, or gets actively mosquito-bitten. There
are bedrooms, and study rooms, and living rooms, and other rooms.
Fundung
 |
The municipality takes care of other yukkity things.
HERE, clean water is a dream. Flies breed in human goo in the open. Solid waste
clogs drains, and mosquitoes buzz over pools of dirty water. Drains are open, paths
narrow, and houses tiny. Smoky fuels like charcoal or wood make women cough while they
cook and spoil their health. Children are all the time exposed to environmental hazards.
Unless, of course, for some time, PhulKumari’s little child comes to your
house in the morning and plays in a corner while Phulkumari cleans your dirty dishes and
sweeps and swabs the floors. No municipality to take care of any of the yukkity things. |
A Down To
Earth Supplement
