Last night, as I watched the television drama , Foyle's War, the realisation struck me with great force that human greed has ensured that the theft of the commons continues unabated, notwithstanding the widening and deepening of liberal democracy. The episode I was watching is set in post World War II England. War has devastated parts of the country and an enormous program to reconstruct infrastructure, funded by the State but driven by private enterprise, has been undertaken. In a small town, this has taken the shape of a corporate entity, appropriately addressed by several denizens of the town as " profiteer" , is trying to sell the dream of a new town centre. It will be studded with shops and offices and will have new homes on both sides of the new roads leading to the town centre. Since the project will subsume an enormous parcel of common greens, some residents are up in arms. Why can the damaged homes not be repaired/rebuilt ? Do we need new shops when most of us do not earn enough to make purchases there ? Do we even need the ware that will be displayed in these shops ? Where will cattle graze when the common greens vanish ? Where will our children play ? Where will our dogs chase butterflies and race after sheep ? Where will we spread our blankets on a balmy day and savour home made food packed in picnic baskets ? The " profiteer" has no answer to these and similar questions. He only keeps repeating mindlessly, Don't you want progress ? Isn't that what we fought the war for ? Isn't that why our young men sacrificed their lives ?
Happily, this particular commons eludes the grasp of those who only see " profits" where we see rolling lands, meadows, natural water bodies, ancient trees, and a multitude of flora and fauna. Unhappily for most of us, the battle has been lost time and again in independent India. Commons , including water bodies, have been sold to land "developers". Sky high towers with basement parking, glittering facades and manicured lawns have sprung up in their stead. Sometimes, these parcels of land , including "reclaimed" land, are dotted with row houses, vaingloriously described as villas. How will rain water flow and where it will collect if the natural slope and paths that water followed are built over and the water bodies filled up ? The town planning authorities elect to not answer the question because they are in cahoots with the developers aka profiteers.
Perhaps if it were mandatory to place the layouts of all large, planned residential complexes in the public sphere, people with domain knowledge would be able to point out such gaps and the developer and administration would be compelled to make appropriate changes. It is mostly a fond hope rather than a realistic outcome, of course, but sometimes activists and conscientious citizens do manage to steer projects in the right direction.
More importantly, we need to continuously talk more about this aspect of the " progress" that gives the Indian middle class its luxurious homes. As a member of that class, I plead guilty to having given no thought to the environmental impact of the residential complex that I moved into more than 15 years ago. It was only several years later, when I had woken up to issues such as rural distress, internal displacement, forest rights etc that largely go unreported in the print media and tv news, that I realised that most ongoing residential and commercial projects in India's major cities are being pushed through with an eye on the enormous profits and the " benefits" flowing to the political class and the bureaucracy, with no regard for the long term impact on our soil and water resources. This was the time when someone shared with me a comprehensive study that CSE ( Centre for Science & Environment ) had carried out in Gurgaon. They had identified scores of natural bodies that had either been filled up and built over or were choked with construction debris or whose catchment area had been completely concretised with 20 storey high buildings. Shockingly enough, no one in the district administration was inclined to even accept a copy of the report. They had obviously no interest whatsoever in taking any remedial action, as recommended in the report. For a few weeks, I tried my best to get the report at least formally accepted by the administration. I failed miserably, and often wonder whether it ever made any headway. The only good that came out of the entire experience was that I became aware of an issue that I had hitherto been completely ignorant of.
There is no guarantee whatsoever that prospective buyers will pause , if made aware via noise in the mass media and /or social media , that their dream home stands where once the expanse of a water body performed a critical function or where trees, scores, even a hundred years old, abounded, or which was rich in wild life and in an avian population . The possibility can not, however, be ruled out.
If we care at all about the legacy we are leaving behind for our children and their children, we must do what we can to take back the commons.
As 17th century English folk poem says:
" The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose."
We must not let the "greater villains" get away with the theft of the commons.
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