- The ‘Forest Man of India’, Jadav Payeng, is sharing his expertise in the North American country.
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Jadav Payeng, a Padma Shri award winner known as the “Forest Man of India”, recently signed an agreement with Fundación Azteca, a non-profit organisation, to regrow forests in Mexico. It is heartening that other countries are learning from traditional Indian experiences, though, back home, they do not get the required attention.
When pondering how to engage with people at the grassroots level who may not be able to grasp the intent behind a policy, why don’t we think about involving those like Mr. Payeng to whom people will be able to connect better and stir a change in the nation’s environmental outlook?
Mr. Payeng, who started off by growing bamboo at the age of 16 and later raised the famed “Molai” forests on 550 hectares of a barren sandbar in Majuli island on his own, has often reiterated the role coconut trees can play in drought-stricken areas.
But we hardly see such ideas being taken seriously. Conditioned as we are to believing only in expertise, the ideas of people who have the “experience” are put on the backburner. The reality is that combining experience and expertise is crucial for sustainable development.
Mr. Payeng’s home State, Assam, helplessly faces floods every year, leaving many homeless and destroying crops and livelihoods. While Mexico is using the knowledge of an Indian to start afforestation drives, we are far from doing that. By starting similar afforestation in the neighbouring States such as Meghalaya, Assam’s problem of floods can be minimised, if not ended.
Today, though least responsible for the problem, indigenous populations are at the receiving end of environmental apathy, facing forced displacement, loss of culture, livelihood, homes, biodiversity and so on. On top of that, they are totally devoid of the ability to influence decisions. This approach is a blunder in developing countries where we see a clear “paradox”, as these countries have more common natural resources than others in the world but stand least benefited from that advantage.
Kenyan environmental scientist Joseph Mutanga, a representative in the United Nations Economic and Social Council, is known for fusing science and indigenous knowledge on conservation, food and medicinal plants to protect ecosystems and create livelihoods. One of the low-cost methods to fight climate change, says the World Resources Institute, is securing the land rights of indigenous people. However, we do not even think of exploring it.
Realising the teaching the importance of ecology early, American schools have started teaching students about Indian conservators like Mr. Payeng. However, it is disheartening that there is a lack of awareness of such environmental activists among Indian students. Thus, our education system needs reforms to develop in young budding minds a sensitive approach towards the environment and the will to contribute early on. Students should be taught beyond classrooms through field expeditions and visits to national park and bird sanctuaries. Environmental societies in schools and colleges are helpful too.
The administration and local bodies need to start the “desegregation” between expertise and experience by including indigenous people, who are known as the best nature conservators, before making decisions about dams, mining, forests and so on.
While traditional knowledge is rendered invaluable in Indian culture, we hardly see the same logic being applied to environmental matters. If this can be corrected, we can easily succeed in overcoming many of our environmental issues.
Cooperation among the media, youth and civil society too can facilitate such an approach. With information and awareness aided by the media, the civil society agents such as NGOs and environmental policy think-tanks can work with environmental activists for inputs and to start awareness and ecological drives. With the help of youth, such initiatives can reach a larger audience and we can be assured that future responsibilities will fall on more responsible shoulders.
As much as knowledge is a prerequisite for prescription, it is incomplete if not supplemented with experience. We need the environment way more than it needs us. It is high time we marked a new chapter in our approach towards solving environmental problems, for innovative ideas such as the Sustainable Development Goals need an innovative approach.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.