It's picnic time mate

It’s picnic time mate 20.12.2009

Christmas and New Year holidays, winter, leaves to avail – It is picnic time. Planning is more fun than actual holidays, just like dreaming of crackers months before actual Diwali. Dinner time discussions started in October itself. Munnar, Alapuzha, Goa, Anadamans and then Kulu – Manali, Gantok were sifted. This time we wanted to soak ourselves in snow. Tinku and Pinki were jumping with joy, imagining playing in silky snow. Rekha as usual was sceptic – apart from the wallet, her worry was swine flu. As the D day neared, booking flights, vehicle and hotel rooms had to be done. Budgets had to be drawn to start with. Flight charges to Chandigarh, vehicle to Kulu, hotel suite, food – the budget was just Rs 1.75 to 2 lakh. Kerala backwaters would be lighter on the wallet and Andamans will leave the wallet lighter. The consensus was – ‘go snow hunting’.

Just then walked in Sharath. We invited him to join. He has a unique way of getting his say. He first discussed with apparent interest with my children about the snow, Yak and Himalayan man and the budget with us and said the four of them would join. Then he started his game. He said a budget of 2 lacs is fine for us. ‘We – the upwardly mobile – can afford’, he paused and said ‘but the earth and atmosphere can not’. Children were startled, my wife miffed, but I know him from school days. My disappointed look was hiding the smile within. He reeled out how much carbon will we be putting in to the atmosphere with our flight and car ride in to the snows and how much of the very snow will melt away due to that. Don’t know where he gets all these figures from. I was only reminded of the story of counting stars. Children – the environment conscious generation – listened with rapt attention and countered ‘we can snail [by train] instead of flying’. It meant three more days of fun for them, but it will mean a loss of some Rs 50000 of earnings for us. The saving on flight charges, travel by bus with only local movements in car will more than compensate that. We were convinced. We felt we should do this bit for our dear mother earth. Thank God we were not in Copenhagen.

He continued ‘with greed, the haves are burning the earth to ashes, while majority of the people – have nots – struggle to eke out a living. The per capita consumption of resources by Americans is 25 times that of an Indian. The foot print of mankind – measure of consumption of natural resources as a percentage of the capacity of earth to renew itself – is 140 now. To lower it below 100, we should consume less than 70% of present consumption and to wipe out the deficit of the past 40 odd years before which it was less than 100, we have to consume less than 50%. The figures are on averages. Call all those consuming less than the world average as ‘Prithvi Mithras’, while the rest as ‘Prithvi Kshathrus’. The ‘Mithras’ are more than 70% of the population – poor and marginalised – while the rest – rich and middle class – are the Kshatrus. The poor don’t consume a fraction as the Kshatru’s. All the damage is done by the Kshatrus consuming several folds the average i.e. much more than 140% of their share of resources. Reducing our consumption by 50% won’t do. We have to reduce to below 50% of world average’. I retorted ‘this leaves the Kshatrus with a choice just short of taking ‘Sanyas’ and adopting ‘Vanaprastashram’’. He assured ‘Not necessarily. As a first step shut out the garage on weekends and follow it with shutting out the ACs – better still throw them away – Manufacturers! Please excuse. This will bring down our consumption from 140% to 100 [i.e. 5/7] straight away. Use hand spun and hand woven cloth without much colour and prints. At least our curtains, table cloth etc. can be of Khadi or handloom as I do. Eat fruits raw, instead of jams and juices. Off course a big no to meat. No it is not ‘jeevakarunya’– animals consume huge quantity of vegetation to produce small quantity of meet. Stopping meat eating will directly reduce global warming. Use water from pipe – the harvested rain water – instead of de-mineralised or RO – packaged water. No plastics – carry bags, bottles. Walk down, cycle your way, use public transport and only if left with no choice, use two wheelers or car in the worst case – Auto industries! Please excuse. In effect return to nature. ‘Nature has enough for everybody’s need but not enough for anybody’s greed’. ‘Learn to live with nature and not on nature’ was Gandhiji’s kashayam – sakala roga nivarani. That [living on nature] is exactly the mistake we have been doing in the past three centuries since industrial revolution, accentuated in the past 50 years, more specifically in the past 20 years’. He said ‘There is dead end ahead – we have to take a U turn to proceed’.

The decision was unanimous – ‘scale down tour plans’. Again tourism industry! Please excuse. Then came the real ‘Bramhastra’. He asked ‘what did you have for breakfast children?’ ‘Milk with corn flakes, apples, Horlicks’ and the list went on. He remarked ‘are you aware that a child is dieing of hunger every 6 seconds in the world? 1.08 billion Persons world over – almost equalling the population of India – are critically hungry and starving to death. They can’t support themselves’. Pinki asked ‘why don’t they work and earn’. He replied ‘it is not as if they don’t want to work. They have been rendered unfit to work and keep themselves alive by the very political and economic system which is making us think of flying to Kulu. One sixth of world population of 6.87 billion is critically hungry, while just 1% holds 57% of the global wealth. The widening disparity is driving more and more to starvation and death’.

‘World Food Program’s – WFP’s – [UN] budget for the year 2009 is USD 6.7 billion to provide food for just 10 percent of the critically hungry. It is still not fully subscribed. It requires just $ 62 [Rs 3000] per year – less than the pocket money of many children – per person planned to be fed. Leaving the critically hungry, the remaining 5.705 bn, have to contribute only $ 1.2 [Rs 60] per head to avert the catastrophe. Or the above wealthy 1% can set aside $ 100 [Rs 5000] each exclusively for this purpose. Or, leaving the poor, a contribution of USD 3.3 [Rs 165] each by the 30% middle class and rich people of the world – about 2 bn – would do’. Looks so simple. Nothing can be nobler than saving millions from starvation and death. Nothing can be more criminal than leaving them to their fate either.

UN does not provide food as alms and stop there. Similar to ‘employment guarantee scheme’ of the ‘Government of India’ they provide work to the needy to earn their next meal, giving the first meal only for free and incidentally develop rural infrastructure to ensure better food security in future. They feed millions of school children the world over – an extension of Shri Kamaraj’s mid day meal scheme – to ensure not only that the children don’t drop out, but also they get educated and can provide for them selves better in future.

Tinku immediately calculated and told ‘pappa, with our budget for the trip, we can feed almost 65 persons for a year’ which Sharath corrected as ‘save 65 persons from dieing of starvation’. This was difficult to swallow. However, Sharath had by then managed to convince us to swap Kulu for Mahabalipuram at a budget of Rs 10000 and send the balance Rs 190,000/- to UN WFP fund. From next year we would enjoy planning the tour, but divert the whole budget to such humanitarian causes to justify our claim to be Human beings. Tours may give us pleasure for a few days but saving so many lives will make us proud for life. Off course, budget for Diwali will follow the same pattern and yes, we will be going green too.

N.B. The characters in the story are imaginary. Resemblance if any of the narrator in the story to the reader and of Sharath to the author of the story are only intentional!!