tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post5285701927761679348..comments2024-03-27T13:58:06.458+05:30Comments on Suvro Chatterjee bemused: Counterculture, postscriptSuvro Chatterjeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01027202980259279420noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-29153279587953290072009-10-09T22:17:51.553+05:302009-10-09T22:17:51.553+05:30I can see/understand (given my limits) what you...I can see/understand (given my limits) what you're saying in your essay and your comment Suvro da, but that's why I've been wondering about your previous essay on China for more than a year....I don't believe that either India and China is headed towards economic betterment (and even though I am no economist I know that growth rates and GDPs alone don't really reflect the real lives of living human beings). <br /><br />And that's the other thing I've been so frustrated about: we don't seem to have found any other path of development for ourselves and we are aping the U.S without aping things that would be well worth aping.<br />And a hundred 'yesses' about what you say about sweatshops and backoffices. No, there is nothing glorious about the way India and China are apparently 'moving ahead'. Well we're moving ahead for sure. I don't dispute that. Moving ahead towards some sort of a disaster more like it. <br /><br />And then you have these post-colonial experts and the neo-Marxists ranting that there is not much wrong with our bursting population but that it is only the western nations that need to be careful about using up too many resources...<br />Who said that bit on carbon dioxide? That is a rather priceless one. <br />I'll end this one for now.<br />Thanks for writing in with your comment.<br />ShilpiShilpihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03106170029106184978noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-62257699648179314022009-10-09T21:29:00.399+05:302009-10-09T21:29:00.399+05:30I'll reply to other parts of your comment a wh...I'll reply to other parts of your comment a while later, Shilpi, but as for China and India's so-called growing economic 'prowess', do note that they are doing it merely by becoming the sweatshop and back-office of the world respectively, which is nothing very glorious. And, no matter what growth rates and gross domestic products show, their per-capita incomes/consumption levels are not likely to come <i>remotely</i> near the American in less than a hundred years, given their gargantuan (and ever-growing) populations. And if they tried to achieve that with the kind of power-generating technology we have been heavily relying upon all through the last century (namely, burning fossil fuels), then, as a learned wag said long ago, there would be so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that you couldn't light a match anywhere on the planet any more. That's what I meant by saying their current trajectory is a recipe for global disaster...Suvro Chatterjeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01027202980259279420noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30819742.post-23649557129652845042009-10-09T21:15:29.910+05:302009-10-09T21:15:29.910+05:30Suvro da,
I’ll try not to ramble but I've bee...Suvro da, <br />I’ll try not to ramble but I've been reading and re-reading this post of yours and the connected others. <br />1. It sort of horrifies me, astounds me and sometimes amuses me as to how many scientists and so-called clever people really believe that technology can fix all our problems. In relation to the environment specifically – William Catton and Riley Dunlap (neither of them explicitly Gandhian...) noted that that was the fundamental problem with the Human Exemptionalist Paradigm (and they have been saying the same for a little more than the last three decades, and nobody’s been listening to them either even though they have been cited some 300 times), although I still thank the day that you asked me to read ‘The Guide for the Perplexed’ by Schumacher. Some years ago I went through many issues of the National Geographic from the late 70s, and there too one sees the great belief reflected: the belief that technology would solve the world’s food problem - that HYV seeds and mechanized farming would take care of the burgeoning population, and that industrialized animal farming (meaning keeping hundreds of cows, chickens, pigs – you name it, in tiny pens or coops with no room to move around) was a brilliant idea, although the National Geographic did start singing a slightly different tune by the late 80s for sure. There are some voices that have always questioned the uncritical belief in growth and consumption patterns….but they do seem to be just lone voices.<br /><br />2. Sometimes I think that the reason for this insane culture of buying and spending and consuming and living the high life is because people can’t see that there are things apart from just material objects that make life really meaningful – and I completely agree with what you’re saying, they don’t see any alternatives because they don’t want to see them.<br /><br />3. I wonder whether a cataclysmic change may leave m/any on the planet. Maybe the whole world might be wiped out given the equipment we have now. <br /><br />4. I’ve been feeling very uncomfortable about both India and China for the reasons that you highlight in this essay of yours. No matter how many articles appear in The New York Times stating that India and China are all set to take the centre-stage – I am awfully skeptical, and I don’t really feel any better about China (I’ve been wondering about your older post on China though…). <br /><br />I’ll stop writing for now. This comment has also gotten longer than I’d anticipated. I’ll put in another comment some time later with questions.<br />Thank you for this post. <br />ShilpiShilpihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03106170029106184978noreply@blogger.com