ADDRESS BY SHRI K. R. NARAYANAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF INDIA, AT THE BOOK RELEASE FUNCTION OF DR. NAJMA HEPTULLA, DEPUTY CHAIRMAN, RAJYA SABHA
JUNE 24, 1993
Dr. Najmaji, Hon'ble Deputy Chairman, because I can say so this is almost half Parliament,Hon'ble Ministers, Excellencies, Members of Parliament and friends.
This is a very delightful occasion and also a very important occasion. I am honoured to release this very crucial book coming at an appropriate time when the whole world is discussing environment and when there is so much anxiety in our own country attached to environmental development. I am, particularly happy that this compilation contains a kind of interaction between environmentalists and parliamentarians because the book itself is a product of the seminar conducted by Inter-Parliamentary Union. I think it is one of the most crucial interactions needed in the world today if one wants to translate environmental policies into action.
India, it has been said, has always been ahead in the realm of ideas and in the realm of policies also very often. We have had in the realm of ideas right from the Upanishad period, Dr Saheb will bear witness to it, we have all the ideas which we get even in modern science and in terms of policies propounded by the Government we have had the most progressive policies seeing ahead of times whether it is family planning or community development, agricultural policies or even fine planning and industrial policies, we had all these in the realm of ideas.
A good friend of India, a reputed American journalist, American economist said once, "In India, especially, the intelligentsia know almost everything. They have heard of all the ideas and they have experimented in some way or another with most ideas with the result that when a new policy become shabby much before it is put into practice. It becomes a platitude because in terms of realm of ideas we have talked about it, written about it so much, long before we have started implementing it, with the result that when we start to implement all these ideas, look rather old, rather shabby, and naturally it affects the implementation itself. This is why I said, this concept of interation between environmentalists and parliamentarians is really very very important.
I only wish there was one article in it about noise pollution; not in Parliament; This is one aspect of pollution which has not been touched. I think, Najmaji has done it with a purpose, with the political finesse. The book covers a very vast field, almost every aspect of environment affecting developing countries and, of course, the world as a whole is touched in this book. Of course, the author herself has considerable experence as a scientist from the age of 22, I think, or earlier. She has been a scientist when she took a Ph. D. and I am fascinated by the subject matter of the Ph. D. It is cardiac anatomy. I think, something which helped her to get into the hearts of the people, even the hearts of politicians and parliamentarians. So, this whole approach, therefore, to environment that Najmaji has taken, is with a human heart, with understanding of human issues and problems.
There are some ideas, some aspects of this which are so important for us, because today a country like ours is in a very difficult situation. First of all, we had to start our development in the full stream of democratic rights when people wanted to have benefits and rights obtained immediately and at the same time we had to develop our country, industrialise our country. That itself was an almost impossible task which nobody else had attempted in the world before. Now, we have to develop our country in the midst of environmental demands, pressures, considerations because most of the things which other countries did in order to become rich, in order to become developed, we cannot it today because we have the pressure of environmental problems on us. So, we have almost a double disadvantage and from the point of view of development. On the top of it today is added on the demands of human rights. We cannot have a dam built today because human right and environmental rights have combined together and they are coming in the way of what other countries l00 years or 80 yearsago have done without anybody protesting in any way.
So, this task of development and safeguarding environment has become, indeed, a very difficult, practical problem for a country like India and it has become so difficult because the developed countries which have consumed so much of fossil-fuels and other resources of the earth and produced the environmental crisis today, appear to be very virtuous and they tell us that you should not do this and you should not do that because it would affect environment. There is, some saying in Hindi that a cat after eating 100 rats has gone on a pilgrimage! I think most of the developed counhtries are doing this.
That having eaten 100 or a million rats they are now telling us don't do anything with rats at all and you have to be very good and preserve the animal life, vegetable life and your forests and all that. So this inequality in history as well as in modern practice is completely forgotten. We the developing countriies are using the Ozone depleting gases as well as green house gases only for, how many years, may l0 15 year probably. Even then it is 5% or less than 5% of the world average which the developing countries are using. While during the last 50 or more years, the developed countries have been producing these gases on an enormous scale threatening the world environment and causing almost what looks like a apocalypse coming on us. This is one aspect of it.Then how you reconcile our demands with the demnands of environment, is really a philosophical as well as a practical problem.
Now, I believe that technology is very important. You cannot go back in technological development. Technology has caused most of these problems, but nevertheless, at least solution to part of the problems has to be found in further technological development and application of environment friendly technologies. But that is not enough. I do not think any amount of technology will solve this problem. Because firstly, population is increasing and even more importantly, the consumerism and the demand for more and more, especially from the developed countries, is increasing on such a rapid rate so that whether you would be able ever to satisfy these new demands without endangering environment.
I think this is not a moot question, it is really a certainty. If the present consumerism and the satisfaction of all the needs and wants fabricated by advertisement and other restless desires of human beings are to be satisfied, I do not think there is any way, technological, or any other method of preventing the disaster of environmental crisis. So one has to look at from technical point of view. One has also ultimately, in my humble view, look at from the point of view of controlling some of the human cravings for consumption. Here, I, as an Indian, would certainly go back to Mahatma Gandhi who posed this proposition, that if a human wants are multiplied endlessly to respond to the restless cravings of the human mind, you will never be able to satisfy them at all. So, there must be a limit may not be at the low Gandhian level or the Indian village level, may be at a much higher level.
But somewhere there should be a limit if we are to conduct our developmental process in such a way, as to preserve the health of the environment. These are all questions, really, I think, discussed in this book. There are one or two very good chapters. There is one chapter of articles on 'Women and Environment', this is something which as someone who comes of a village still haunts meas to the conditions of the average women in India, especially using firewood as fuel. It is not just causing deforestation but it is affecting the health of millions and millions of oridnary poor women in our households in our country. One has to find ways of diverting it for the good of the environment and good of the health of our people, particularly our women. As I said the whole problem is not one of technology, one of knowledge, one of practising , in fact and in life what we know.
I am afraid, as a nation, as a people, while we respect animals, plants, and all forms of life, we do not often respect our environment. There is a famous story of Swami Vivekananda who, when he was in Madras, he was approached by a delegation of a society devoted to cow protection. Now, he was a very religious man. He wanted the cows to be protected, but he got angry with the delegation. He asked them, "Have you done anything for protecting your neighbour who is hungry and who is sick? Have you ever thought of him and you are thinking of cows?" and he really threw them out of his residence in Madras. I am saying that he was not against cow protection or animal protection but he wanted to emphasise the fact that human protection ultimately we all believe that, all this is for the benefit and welfare of human beings, and therefore, this central fact has to be kept in mind. This is where what we from developing countries have been talking about the developmental rights of the people, as part and parcel of environmental rights.
I want to congratulate you, Najmaji, for this very fine and important effort, you have put in collecting these essays and putting them as in one volume with a very presentive introduction, I am sure it would go a long way in creating awareness among our people on the importance of problem of environment and I hope it would create awareness in the authorities for implementing some of the proposals you have made in this.
Thank you
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