Entry 17 – A sore sight for eyes
It is easy to become overwhelmed by sights, smells and sounds when one first arrives in India, but now after six weeks I find I am becoming a little more adapted to some of this sensory assault. In part this is good, but there is also a down side. One sight that I have, unfortunately, become all too used to seeing – to the point of not really seeing it any longer – is the amount of garbage that lies in ditches, on roadsides, across vacant lots, down alleys, over sidewalks, in supposedly green spaces – in other words, everywhere. When I realized today that I was not really seeing this garbage any more, it was troubling, as I realized that this is perhaps how most Indians see – or don’t see – either the garbage or the problem it represents.
It was Gandhi who said “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the west... If we took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” But perhaps it is less the stripping of the world in the name of economic advance that I have seen in India, than the covering over of the earth in the signs of supposed progress. What I see is nothing less than the covering or hiding of the very ground under a layer of garbage, much of it plastic. There are old and broken shoes -- everywhere I go there are shoes abandoned, singly and in pairs; I see plastic wrap and sheeting and bags of various kinds, and shreds of plastic wrap that has caught on corners and walls and bushes and poles and been pulled apart by the wind and animals looking for food; there are inner tubes and bits of tires; odd bits of broken metal; vinyl in scraps and sheets in all colours, but most of it bleached out to white by the sun; I see the remains of food and food containers, and bottles both plastic and glass; mounds and mounds of coconut husks. And mostly, I am not even sure what much of the garbage is, or was, but it is there and it is a blight.
Just the other day I was walking past a hospital nearby to the hostel, and saw someone in a hospital uniform carry a garbage bag across the road and toss onto the edge of the empty field. I don’t know what was in the bag, or whether where she put it was a garbage pick up point, or whether she was just adding it to the debris, bagged and loose, that had accumulated in the field, some of it in particular piles and much of it just strewn by human activity and wind.
The cows and dogs search the garbage for something to eat. I have seen people go through the garbage, perhaps in hope of finding something useful or sellable or recyclable. Occasionally the garbage is pulled together in small piles and burned, which I am told is illegal, but it is done. I don’t know who does it, or what prompts them to do it, or when it happens, but it is done, and I can often smell the burning, which is unpleasant. I will not miss the smell of burning garbage one bit when I return to Canada. I never see garbage burning, but I smell it, and I often see piles of fresh ash with unburned plastic items left behind, and always a shoe or two.
I have not asked anyone about garbage collection in the city, or elsewhere. This problem is not just Mysore, but in the villages and towns and countryside through which we have travelled. I have not spoken to anyone about how, or if, government officials at any level are addressing the problem. Or whether it is even seen as a problem. Or, again, as I began this reflection, whether it is even seen.
I think, however, that this is a symptom of so many other problems, and a symbol of them. And perhaps addressing this problem could also be a symbol of addressing so many others.
In a basic Christian worldview, and its Judaic predecessor, there is a belief that God gave humans dominion over creation; this is often misunderstood as license to use the environment in any way humans want, instead of being understood as having responsibility. But I have come to see that the previously Christian west does not have a monopoly on ignoring what we are doing to the environment, ecologically and aesthetically. And what that represents about the way we live. India is stepping up to western standards in many ways, but this is not necessarily good in respect to the disregard for the environment and the cost of economic progress. In 1974, William O. Douglas (the longest serving Supreme Court Justice through the middle decades of the twentieth century) wrote “I realized that Eastern thought had somewhat more compassion for all living things. . . In the East the wilderness has no evil connotation; it is thought of as an expression of the unity and harmony of the universe.” But that sense of harmony with the universe seems to have disappeared, buried beneath a layer of garbage.
Addressing this challenge would take so much effort. There is the challenge of cleaning up the existing garbage, from acres of fields and lots and miles and miles of streets and roadways. And, of course the challenge of preventing it from returning.
There is the challenge of finding a place to take that garbage once it has been cleaned up, and what to do with it. Should it get tipped into old mine shafts, poured into open pits, used as landfill, burned, burned to generate power? There is the associated challenge of developing an infrastructure system to move the garbage, and to move it regularly. There need to be places that garbage can be put, instead of being tossed into streets and lots, as well as a system to retrieve it, and, one hopes, to sort it into recyclable materials and sheer garbage.
Of course, there must be education to address garbage so that in the long run people change their habits; in doing, it can be hoped that loose garbage will disappear as a problem. Probably this will can accomplished through part of a curriculum in school education, but that means a generation or more for things to really start to change.
And then, there is the need for the change to a culture that doesn’t produce so much garbage to begin with. Do we need plastic carrier bags for every purchase. Does everything have to be wrapped the way it is? Why do items of clothing need to be wrapped in plastic, for instance? Why do we need to buy and own so many things?
in Canada, we are fortunate to have developed systems for getting rid of garbage – but we still have not addressed problem of the amount we produce every day. I think of conspicuous consumers who generate garbage as a by-product of living materially over-rich lives. I think of the number of paper cups used each day at coffee shops, and compare that with the metal cups at coffee stands in India; and these cups are, in many places, shared without washing, but that is another issue, despite the practice of Indians drinking without putting their lips to a cup, or pitcher, or bottle, and without spilling! And I think of the amount of plastic I have with me, even here in India and especially at home, and I begin to think about how that will be disposed of.
Where to begin? And in the face of so many social, environmental, development problems, is this issue of garbage in public places even a pressing one? But perhaps it is a representative challenge to address, to realize that the earth must be cared for, in ways large and small.
Several decades ago, Albert Einstein noted that “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” And that thinking, of course, must be paired with action. Both in the west and the east, in North America and India, the drive to consume needs to be pared back, and the results of unbridled consumption need to be dealt with, and someone, please, needs to take the garbage out rather than allowing it lie under our feet everywhere we go.
In a statement attributed apocryphally to Chief Seattle of the Squamish tribes of the western American coast, we hear:“You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.” It is time to stop spitting on the earth, to clean up our act, in India and everywhere, and it is time to clean up our mess and devise systems that prevent us from befouling our lands again.
And this is just a beginning of what we need to do.
It is easy to become overwhelmed by sights, smells and sounds when one first arrives in India, but now after six weeks I find I am becoming a little more adapted to some of this sensory assault. In part this is good, but there is also a down side. One sight that I have, unfortunately, become all too used to seeing – to the point of not really seeing it any longer – is the amount of garbage that lies in ditches, on roadsides, across vacant lots, down alleys, over sidewalks, in supposedly green spaces – in other words, everywhere. When I realized today that I was not really seeing this garbage any more, it was troubling, as I realized that this is perhaps how most Indians see – or don’t see – either the garbage or the problem it represents.
It was Gandhi who said “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the west... If we took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” But perhaps it is less the stripping of the world in the name of economic advance that I have seen in India, than the covering over of the earth in the signs of supposed progress. What I see is nothing less than the covering or hiding of the very ground under a layer of garbage, much of it plastic. There are old and broken shoes -- everywhere I go there are shoes abandoned, singly and in pairs; I see plastic wrap and sheeting and bags of various kinds, and shreds of plastic wrap that has caught on corners and walls and bushes and poles and been pulled apart by the wind and animals looking for food; there are inner tubes and bits of tires; odd bits of broken metal; vinyl in scraps and sheets in all colours, but most of it bleached out to white by the sun; I see the remains of food and food containers, and bottles both plastic and glass; mounds and mounds of coconut husks. And mostly, I am not even sure what much of the garbage is, or was, but it is there and it is a blight.
Just the other day I was walking past a hospital nearby to the hostel, and saw someone in a hospital uniform carry a garbage bag across the road and toss onto the edge of the empty field. I don’t know what was in the bag, or whether where she put it was a garbage pick up point, or whether she was just adding it to the debris, bagged and loose, that had accumulated in the field, some of it in particular piles and much of it just strewn by human activity and wind.
The cows and dogs search the garbage for something to eat. I have seen people go through the garbage, perhaps in hope of finding something useful or sellable or recyclable. Occasionally the garbage is pulled together in small piles and burned, which I am told is illegal, but it is done. I don’t know who does it, or what prompts them to do it, or when it happens, but it is done, and I can often smell the burning, which is unpleasant. I will not miss the smell of burning garbage one bit when I return to Canada. I never see garbage burning, but I smell it, and I often see piles of fresh ash with unburned plastic items left behind, and always a shoe or two.
I have not asked anyone about garbage collection in the city, or elsewhere. This problem is not just Mysore, but in the villages and towns and countryside through which we have travelled. I have not spoken to anyone about how, or if, government officials at any level are addressing the problem. Or whether it is even seen as a problem. Or, again, as I began this reflection, whether it is even seen.
I think, however, that this is a symptom of so many other problems, and a symbol of them. And perhaps addressing this problem could also be a symbol of addressing so many others.
In a basic Christian worldview, and its Judaic predecessor, there is a belief that God gave humans dominion over creation; this is often misunderstood as license to use the environment in any way humans want, instead of being understood as having responsibility. But I have come to see that the previously Christian west does not have a monopoly on ignoring what we are doing to the environment, ecologically and aesthetically. And what that represents about the way we live. India is stepping up to western standards in many ways, but this is not necessarily good in respect to the disregard for the environment and the cost of economic progress. In 1974, William O. Douglas (the longest serving Supreme Court Justice through the middle decades of the twentieth century) wrote “I realized that Eastern thought had somewhat more compassion for all living things. . . In the East the wilderness has no evil connotation; it is thought of as an expression of the unity and harmony of the universe.” But that sense of harmony with the universe seems to have disappeared, buried beneath a layer of garbage.
Addressing this challenge would take so much effort. There is the challenge of cleaning up the existing garbage, from acres of fields and lots and miles and miles of streets and roadways. And, of course the challenge of preventing it from returning.
There is the challenge of finding a place to take that garbage once it has been cleaned up, and what to do with it. Should it get tipped into old mine shafts, poured into open pits, used as landfill, burned, burned to generate power? There is the associated challenge of developing an infrastructure system to move the garbage, and to move it regularly. There need to be places that garbage can be put, instead of being tossed into streets and lots, as well as a system to retrieve it, and, one hopes, to sort it into recyclable materials and sheer garbage.
Of course, there must be education to address garbage so that in the long run people change their habits; in doing, it can be hoped that loose garbage will disappear as a problem. Probably this will can accomplished through part of a curriculum in school education, but that means a generation or more for things to really start to change.
And then, there is the need for the change to a culture that doesn’t produce so much garbage to begin with. Do we need plastic carrier bags for every purchase. Does everything have to be wrapped the way it is? Why do items of clothing need to be wrapped in plastic, for instance? Why do we need to buy and own so many things?
in Canada, we are fortunate to have developed systems for getting rid of garbage – but we still have not addressed problem of the amount we produce every day. I think of conspicuous consumers who generate garbage as a by-product of living materially over-rich lives. I think of the number of paper cups used each day at coffee shops, and compare that with the metal cups at coffee stands in India; and these cups are, in many places, shared without washing, but that is another issue, despite the practice of Indians drinking without putting their lips to a cup, or pitcher, or bottle, and without spilling! And I think of the amount of plastic I have with me, even here in India and especially at home, and I begin to think about how that will be disposed of.
Where to begin? And in the face of so many social, environmental, development problems, is this issue of garbage in public places even a pressing one? But perhaps it is a representative challenge to address, to realize that the earth must be cared for, in ways large and small.
Several decades ago, Albert Einstein noted that “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” And that thinking, of course, must be paired with action. Both in the west and the east, in North America and India, the drive to consume needs to be pared back, and the results of unbridled consumption need to be dealt with, and someone, please, needs to take the garbage out rather than allowing it lie under our feet everywhere we go.
In a statement attributed apocryphally to Chief Seattle of the Squamish tribes of the western American coast, we hear:“You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.” It is time to stop spitting on the earth, to clean up our act, in India and everywhere, and it is time to clean up our mess and devise systems that prevent us from befouling our lands again.
And this is just a beginning of what we need to do.
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