Vanishing Wealth

              POEMS AND POETS

               28. OUR VANISHING WEALTH

What is our real wealth?

Today, we reckon it in terms of money and other 'assets' which can command a money value.

Come to think of it, all that which really sustain life -land,water,air- are gifts of nature, and 'priceless'. But man has become clever enough to put a price tag on everything and market it. Even drinking water has to be purchased in our cities in bottled units.

From about the second half of the 19th century- the Victorian Age- the world has been on the road to 'Progress'.This is now interpreted in solely economic terms-especially commercial terms. Villages are changing, towns are expanding, cities are becoming huge conurbations. We reckon our progress in terms of indices like GDP.

People hardly understand what is behind all this. On the one hand there is relentless exploitation of 'Nature'- those things which are exhaustible, not renewable. There is reckless consumption, leaving a trail of pollution and waste which cannot be disposed of by any means without causing damage to the environment. Some things like nuclear waste-our scientists do not even know how to make it safe for posterity.Things get attention only when there is a crisis- as when some localities in the US refuse to allow nuclear waste to be dumped there. An expanding city like Bangalore does not know where to dump its solid waste. There are not enough villages around.

Our lifestyles have radically changed within a generation, beginning with what and how we cook  and eat our food. Few people have the courage and the integrity to admit that things are not so good,after all. Wendell Berry, author, poet and essayist, writes:

.".....our country ( as opposed to our nation) is characteristically in decline. War, depression, inflation,usury, the attitudes of the industrial economy,social and educational fashions-all have taken their toll...........the news from everywhere in rural America has been almost universally bad: bankruptcy,foreclosure, depression, suicide, the departure of the young, the loneliness of the old, soil loss, soil degradation, chemical pollution, the loss of genetic and specific diversity, the extinction or threatened extinction of species, the depletion of aquifers, stream degradation, the loss of wilderness, strip mining, clear-cutting, population loss, the loss of supporting economies, the deaths of towns."

All these are familiar to us too in India- how much we read about suicides of farmers, weavers, migrating rural populations, the expanding poverty line, urban squalor,etc! No GDP reckons these negative aspects. And who is in charge of the whole show? We may think of the govt or the pool of wisdom called our economists or leaders,statesmen and scientists. But the reality is different. Writes Berry:

 "Almost the whole landscape of this country.....is in the power of an absentee economy, once national and now increasingly international, that is without limit in its greed and without mercy in its exploitation of land and people."

 " the national economy, which is increasingly a global economy, no longer prospers by the prosperity of the land and  people, but by their exploitation."

" community disintegration  typically is begun by an aggression of some sort from the outside...and in modern times the typical aggression has been economic. The destruction of the community begins when its economy is made- not DEPENDENT.....-but SUBJECT to a larger external economy."

"  local communities and places can "participate" only as victims. The global economy does not exist  to help the communities and localities of the globe. It exists to syphon the wealth of those communities and places into a few bank accounts."

 (Taken from: The Art of the Commonplace

                                                         Indore: Banyan Tree, 2012)

These are strong words, reminiscent of the words of Oliver Goldsmith, written in 1770, we saw earlier!

Almost the first sign of such degradation is the disappearance of the rural scenes around us: the loss of the flowering and fruit trees, their rich variety, the visiting birds and insets, the sounds and scents associated with them. Many in Indian cities and towns wonder about the absence of the humble house sparrow. Yet how many know that it is the first victim of our expanding mobile towers and their radiation, and the destruction of their habitat? Till about twenty years ago, we could walk a mile or so from our towns in any direction, and we would be among green fields and lakes, some hill or stream. We could say, with William Vaughn Moody:

A mile ahead the land dips down
And the woods and farms begin

                                           (From: Gloucester Moors)

Even our big cities like Bangalore and Chennai had typically large ,open areas. But everything is now levelled and 'developed'!

Milton sings of the pleasures of walking out of the city :

"As one who  long in populous city pent
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoined,from each things met conceives delight-
The smell of grain , or tedded grass, or kine
Or dairy,each rural sight, each rural sound-
If chance with nymph -like step fair virgin pass
What pleasing seemed for her now pleases more,
She most, and in her look sums  all delight."
                      
                                        Paradise Lost, 9.445-454

Of how many cities can we say this now, in India?

Cowper sang of the ploughman plodding his way home- a typical evening scene in our rural areas. The plough symbolised the power of man over nature, but a power which yet submitted to the authority of the land- the land would yield only under certain conditions at certain times; at other times, the land had to be left alone, to regenerate itself, to recover the ' natural and indestructible powers of the soil'. But came the tractor, and nature became the prime target of man's greed. Some sensitive poets pleaded for the plough!

God Save The Plough
Lydia Huntley Sigourney

See,- how the shining share
Maketh earth's bosom fair,
     Crowning her brow,-
Bread in its furrow springs,
Health and repose it brings,
Treasures unknown to kings,
     God save the plough!

Look to the warrior's blade,
While o'er the tented glade,
     Hate breathes his vow,-
Strife its unsheathing wakes,
Love at its lightning quakes,
Weeping and wo it makes,
     God save the plough!

Ships o'er the deep may ride,
Storms wreck their banner'd pride,
      Waves whelm their prow,
But the well-loaded wain
Garnereth the golden grain,
Gladdening the household train,
     God save the plough!

Who are the truly great?
Minions of pomp and state,
     Where the crowd bow?
Give us hard hands and free,
Cultures of field and tree,
Best friends of liberty-
     God save the plough!

Who are the truly great? Tiruvalluvar, the great Tamil Saint-poet sang  1500 years ago-

Suzhanrum yerppinnadu ulagam adanaal
Uzhandu uzhave talai. 

Agriculture is arduous. But whatever  other employment people may engage in, they have to come to the farmer at last. ( For all depend on food.) Hence agriculture is the most excellent. The whole world runs after ( ie because of) agriculture
                                                           ( Kural, 1031)
In fact, Valluvar sings the excellences of farming and farmers in 10 famous couplets.
Today, agriculture has been corporatised, commercialised, chemicalised. No wonder, a commercial civilization cannot look upon agriculture except as one more avenue of commercial exploitation and profit. The voices like those of Wendell Berry and Vandana Shiva are lost in the hurly burly of commercial glamour and glitz! Long live GDP!