Dark Clouds over Nigeria Forebodings for India
There is no use berating the politicians, the rulers, the planners or the scientists. The pressure should be on the common people who have nurtured a great consumerist thirst for daily luxuries. The common people will have to control these violent plans for 'progress' by controlling their own consumerist tendencies.
In order to save his position the Minister for Power must give in to the people's demands and pressures. However, even if the environment is destroyed, electricity production must go on. Above all this, such plans will also bring in financial conveniences which will help his party or his own future in the elections. He will warm himself at the fires which burn for the people by their own demands.
It is not possible to say that different countries of the world have not responded to this exploitation. But due to lack of a capable, well-informed leadership, their response is not getting crystallized. It is mostly the Saddam Hussein type of rash anger which can only be suicidal. At least in Karnataka, many movements have taken birth in the past few years pointing out the reaction of the people against these causes of violence. The farmers' movement, the Dalit movement, the environmentalists' movement, the Kannada movements, the consumer movement and other such movements are truly those which can fight against the looting of local resources. But all these are not able to gather momentum because of their own dominant ideological intentions and remain mostly scattered.
To give a simple example: As far as the Kannada activists are concerned, only the Cauvery problem or the issue relating to Bangalore Tamils or the grandeur of the English school signboard are gnawing problems. They are not able to see an inch beyond that. The Kaiga-Bedthi-Sharavathi problems don't exist for them. Nigeria is just some distant bad news quite unrelated to them. Our consumer movement is overwhelmed by governmental apathy, irresponsibility, the mismanagement of public enterprise, the loss, the cheating by private enterprise etc.... Perhaps nothing else is visible to them. The news from Nigeria is not likely to touch them at all.
Our various movements will have to shape common philosophical grounds in terms of ideology and determine to fight against all sorts of exploitation. They must define their ideology in relation to the various forms of exploitation.
More importantly, instead of merely resorting to oppositional methods, our movements must discover alternatives to the present bureaucratic legislative measures. For example, our farmers' movement which fights for rice grains and pump sets for the villagers must take up the responsibility of giving up some electricity voluntarily, and, in fact, demanding current cuts when the Linganamakki reservoir does not fill sufficiently, and request that no new pump sets be granted electricity that year, and that those who need power must on their own install diesel pump sets. They should impose restrictions upon themselves and be able to say that they don't need streetlights in case of a difficult year. It is we who have dismissed them as uselessly dull and incapable of responsibility. Our consumer movement should go beyond solving small grievances against cheating and try hard to inculcate the value of moderation in our attitudes towards consumerism and thus control this commodity-culture that has in so short a time invaded us and is gobbling us up.
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