Why are we Indians like this?
I recently read a blog post at The Naive Indian talking about why we Indians don’t need to spend any efforts on initiatives such as the Earth Hour (although the comment is made in a jovial tone, rather than a serious one).
Why do I have a problem with this? The reason is that most Indians would make a similar comment about this situation. And usually no one is serious about it, only sarcastic. What would be refreshing to see is instead of ranting about our pathetic electricity situation, we would look past it and participate in such an initiative. Wouldn’t that be a MUCH BIGGER statement? Despite the fact that we anyway don’t get a lot of electricity, we still want to support initiatives that are working towards better planet tomorrow.
Oh, I get so mad sometimes.
Everyday, we hear about shortfalls that Delhi/Gurgaon is facing in terms of Water and Electricity, figures about the needs versus the availability, about how the infrastructure breaks down and instills further madness in the chaos. How about doing something about it? of course, we can’t go and put together a new power generation plant (if we could, the left would find a way to prove that it is not in the interest of the country, anyway).
How about taking measures to reduce the overall demand? I asked a friend of mine about why everyone doesn’t swap their bulbs by CFLs? He said, that CFLs are expensive and people can’t afford them (mostly). Ok. Agreed. Imagine we had 24 hour electricity, wouldn’t everyone’s electricity bill be higher? But that is what all of us are clamoring for? Yet, we can’t spend some extra amount of money to move towards that goal.
Finally, I do not want to subscribe to a lifestyle which carries conservation to the extreme. We should definitely live a comfortable life style to the level that we can afford. But we can be less wasteful (for example by not leaving the TV on the stand by, or maybe installing a solar water heater).
Anyway, this rant (yes that is what it is) was triggered by the typical attitude that we take towards our problems (i.e. rather than trying to solve them, we complain).
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March 29th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Though they are power-saving, I once read somewhere that disposal of CFLs is presenting a huge problem. I guess CFLs consist of some poisonous substances which pollute the environment. Maybe we should not be blindly moving towards CFLs.
As for The Naive Indian taking a dig at the Earth Hour, I did it because there was plenty of literature out there on the internet which tackled the issue seriously. Therefore, I presented the lighter side of things
March 29th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Hi Krishna,
I wasn’t being critical of you in particular… I saw that you were presenting the lighter side of things…. but this is the same response I have got from others I have talked to this about…
Your post was just the trigger
…
March 29th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
@Krishna,
Regarding the emissions into the atmosphere from CFL breakage, you are right. It does emit Mercury into the atmosphere (as do tube lights)… However, the total amount of mercury emitted by a coal power plant to light a bulb is much more than the mercury emitted by the broken CFL. And in India, most of our power is still produced by coal plants, so it may still make sense…
And anyway, if the CFLs are disposed properly, then there will be no breakage (a distant dream as it may be in India).
Here’s a lot of detail around this topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp
March 31st, 2008 at 4:49 pm
The best way for people to be less wasteful of natural resources is to reduce world population. Every time I hear the words lets be eco-friendly from a woman with six kids I want to smack her for being a short sighted hypocrite.
We will never reduce demand by simply creating more efficient machines, it is not in human nature to do so, especially in the US. We reduce demand by saying one day our resources will run out if we keep expanding the earths population. Rather than looking outside of box, we need to look for ways to stop cramming so many people into the box.
There was a time when every family across the world needed several kids in order to make it all work and assure that some of them made it to adulthood. Those days are long gone. There are joys from having a larger family, or so I am told I can’t stand my siblings and only have one child, but the fact is having more than one because you want more than one is simply a short sighted selfish acted that imparts a debt on all future generations and sets a bad example for them. There will come a day when either our grandchildren or theirs will be fighting wars over food and water, rather than oil and religion.
March 31st, 2008 at 5:59 pm
@Brad… I agree. we need to be less wasteful. which doesn’t mean that we stop leaving though. save where you can without dramatically altering your lifestyle.
Kinda agree with what you say about families as well (though I won’t put it that way). In India, the people who have a lot of children are usually on the poorer side (who actually can’t afford to feed and educate them, so the cycle is endless). What is needed is awareness – a LOT OF IT.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:13 pm
You would be surprised to know how many people leave their appliances on standby. TV and laptops take the cake in this category. People are unaware that even plugging into the sockets leads to electricity waste.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:07 pm
@Poonam – that is exactly the point… exercises such as the Earth Day are meant to spread awareness so that people will stop and think about this.
And you are right, we used to leave our appliances on Stand By all the time, but that is minimized for some time.
Personally, I feel that even without altering your lifestyle drastically, you can conserve enough to make a collective difference.