Gods must be crazy in Plachimada too!

“You are not writing for the university students. Imagine you are talking to a villager. Be sure of your facts. Let your words be clear as daylight.” I am not saying this…

It was Bal Gangadhar Tilak who used to say to his colleagues in the newspaper offices of Kesari and The Maratha which he co-founded and used them as platforms to awaken Indians to fight for their rights and spearhead the struggle for ‘Swaraj’ (Self Rule) from the British Colonial rule in the late 19th century.

Drawing inspiration from his words, I will try to be simple, factual, clear, and logical in this first piece of my writing for this blog. In the modern times of speedy mechanical life and in the era of sms, tweeting, and other faster modes of communication, it will definitely be painful for some readers to read lengthy articles in blogs. Hence I will try my best to be precise as well! After reading this article, if you think that you should teach me a lesson by your criticisms, I would be most delighted to take them in the true spirit of critical writing. I firmly believe that it is through such critical voice we can evolve as a society rooted in the noble ideas of humanity, life, liberty, equality, fraternity, rationality, and justice.

If we read the public life and work of great visionary reformers, we would simply understand that their dream and struggle revolved around establishing such a society. Although the history provides us with numerous examples of such great personalities who were instrumental in changing the course of history, the personalities like Buddha, Jesus Christ, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lenin, Periyar E V Ramasamy, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B R Ambedkar whose sacrifice and relentless pursuit for an equitable society have actually left a deep influence in me.

Yesterday, May 27th 2010, we remembered Buddha and Nehru on their birth and death anniversaries respectively. These two were visionaries of different sort belonging to two different distant periods of time. Buddha lived roughly two thousand five hundred years ago and attempted through his enlightened teachings of eightfold path to remove the ignorance which he considered was the root cause of human sufferings. The other visionary Nehru, the first prime minister of Independent India also known as the architect of modern India, guided by the principle of Fabian Socialism, tried to find solutions to human problems rooted in inequalities through his economic, modern education, and social reform policies. Although the methods these two men used were totally different, they stand in unity with others I cited in the paragraph above in addressing the problem of human sufferings.

I am not talking about these things without reason! Yesterday, the remembrance of Buddha and Nehru and some serious thoughts on the current state of affairs in our country kept me disturbed throughout the day. Hence, I thought I would watch a movie to have some lighter moments. Since I forgot to bring all my collection of movies when was shifting back to Delhi a couple of months ago, I approached my batch mate in JNU who also lives in the same building for some light movies. He readily showed me his collection to pick one or two. When I was searching his collection of movies, this title Gods Must Be Crazy just struck me. Although I watched this movie in the late 1980s when I was in high school and enjoyed the humorous side of it thoroughly, I thought watching it again after decades would be a great fun. But I was totally wrong as the movie rather put me back in the pensive mood and raised in me some serious questions about the development model that we have adopted in the modern times.

The movie brilliantly portrays two life styles of the humans existing on our very same earth. One is about the life of indigenous people who live far away from the perplexities of civilised world and the other is about the life of civilised men living in cities with all complications. When the civilised man interferes, accidentally or deliberately, in the life of indigenous people, conflicting situations arise which not only takes away the peace of mind of the aboriginals but also can threaten their life is the message I drew from this hilarious movie.

The depiction in the first case is about the indigenous people living in the deep deserts of Kalahari in the Southern Africa who adapt themselves completely to the environment. They live in small families and believe that the gods give only good and useful things on earth. They are not even aware that there are other people living in the world. In their world there is no crime, no violence, no punishment, no laws, no judges, no bosses, no rulers, and most of all no sense of ownership. Despite the nature’s severity like droughts that produce nothing but scarcity of necessities like water, food, etc in the desert region, the people work hard, are innovative in their ways of daily life, and above all are satisfied with what nature has given to them. This opens up our mind to the fact that the nature may look harsh but the same nature has given everything for the life of its children. The only thing is that the children need to work and find the sources of their life in ways that conform to the laws of nature.

The other story in the movie is about the life of civilised men who live in the city which is just 600 miles away from the desert region. The civilised men, with all their determination not to adapt themselves to their environment, built cities, roads, machineries, vehicles, and so on thereby altering the environment to suit their necessities. The sense of greed, possession, jealousy, competition, insecurity, and many more qualities give way for establishment of rules, violations, crimes, violence, courts, and all other complications in the civilised world.

The creative example presented in the movie was the accidental dropping of an empty Coca-Cola bottle from the flight in the isolated habitation in the desert gives joy initially to the family as they could put the bottle to use for many things. But when everyone wants to use it and does not want to share it, a competitive conflicting situation arises leading to fights and loss of peace in the family. The same family was satisfied with whatever they had before the arrival of the ‘so called god sent object.’ Fortunately, they quickly realise that it was a evil thing and needed to be disposed off. The next scenes in the movie are about how the head of the family gets rid of the evil thing and in that process his encounter with the civilised world and its problems with all his innocence.

What came to my mind after watching this movie was the people of Plachimada village in Palakkad district of Kerala and their collective struggle to get rid of Coca-Cola unit that caused environmental pollution and water shortage! The similarity between the story in the movie and the reality in Plachimada is more or less same and striking. In the movie, the empty Coca-Cola bottle-a by product of civilisation-created competition and crisis leading to loss of peace in the aboriginal family, whereas in reality, the bottle filled with Coca-Cola drink that was produced using exploited ground water leading to environmental pollution and drinking water shortage in Plachimada has in effect taken away the peace of minds of tribal and weaker sections of the population of the village. Whether an empty bottle from above the earth or a bottle filled with drink made of water exploited from below the earth seem to generate the same effects, that is, damage to people and environment!

Although the formation of a tribunal recommended by the expert panel might facilitate people’s compensation claim, the compensation can never undo the real damage caused to the environment and the people of Plachimada. Our history is witness to many such unsolvable real effects like Bhopal gas tragedy and its aftermath.

Like Coca-Cola in Plachimada, there could be hundreds of industries in the country with sole profit motive and be flouting the environmental norms and producing much deeper disastrous consequences which might not have come to the fore for reasons of politics or otherwise.

Such a scenario raises some important questions like (1) Whether the development models we have adopted so far in independent India to address the problem of human suffering has really solved the problem or it has aggravated the suffering and alienated people in the process of their pursuit of materialistic happiness? (2) Whether such models take environmental concerns into account or they have been used to promote certain vested interest groups which have no or very little concern for people and environment? My simple observation of our surroundings filled with noises, pollutions, inhuman living conditions, skyrocketing prices, begging, and many other odds tells me that the development process in our country has not yet fulfilled its agenda. I simply wonder where we are heading towards!

Selvam Velangani Manickam

New Delhi

28/5/2010