Slowly and steadily, I am venturing farther and farther with my bicycle. I had never before cycled in city's heavily crowded main roads. Until recently I had only heard from others that riding on those two slim wheels is not the safest mode of transport. All those 'others' had done a good job in scaring me, which means I ventured out only in the odd non-peak hours and did not go beyond a few kilometers. But I kept going farther by the day and faced more aggressive drivers, and finally at times immersing myself in the big mean and noisy thing called peak hour traffic.
People who warned me of the dangers were very right. For some reason, every driver and rider who is gifted with the controls of an internal combustion engine seems to, miraculously, become blind to bicycles. When they turn left or right, or go in the wrong lanes or in the opposite direction in a one way as typical of us proud Bangaloreans, they somehow manage to see all those giant buses and trucks and even cars very clearly. And then they seem to get attracted to bicycles and at the same time don't get to see it, and end up trying hard to drive straight into the cyclist. That means the cyclist must start his ride with an attitude to be prepared to run or prepared to get banged. Most people choose the farmer option but still, fairly often we see riders who have ended up with the later.
The worst enemies of the cyclist are the cars and trucks parked illegally on the roads that have so lovingly planted 'no parking' signs. Time and again I come across them and am left with a difficult decision to move away from the comfort of the curb and to the center of the road. And moving to the center of the road often involves having to face the 'bicycle-blind' drivers in the heavy traffic. I have still been a chicken and often get down and then get into the footpath. But then how many of our roads have footpaths? The next big enemies are the two wheelers who just love riding on the extreme right side of the road, or in case of a double road, on the opposite side. There are so many such people, I have a feeling Bangalore has a cult of such riders. The third enemy is the cyclist himself, who I have seen, often jumps signals and cuts tersely into the center of the road oblivious to the fact that everyone else pretends to be blind to his presence. And soon after he cuts tersely, goes bang!
Five kilometers is as far away from home that I have ventured yet. I would love to sneak out farther early in the mornings but haven't done that so far. But then, cycling is love, and I know I will be spending more and more time with it. It has been such fun riding just for the sake of it. And it is keeping me from the guilt of burning fuel, and contributing to the already horrible traffic with my automobiles. Come, let's build cycling culture in this 'once-green' city; I am sure you will enjoy it.
This is about a lady called Janet who plants trees.
You can have a tree planted on someone's behalf to commemorate a birthday, anniversary, ceremony, or just another day you're glad to be alive. So far she's planted over 650 trees...She's looking for people who can become members of her charitable trust and contribute 100 rupees per month.
She's also trying to get in touch with companies to see if the corporates can accommodate her mission - The Rajanet Yegneshwaran Charitable Trust.
She plants trees anywhere and everywhere - sidewalks, schools, churches, company compounds, houses... If you know any place where there's place for a tree, get in touch with Janet on 9845449703.
Government of India thinks developing countries should not be restricted with emission norms, as it affects their development.
I wish we had a vision further into future. We are fast on our way to becoming growth hungry, consumerist nation following the footsteps of the west. If we continue the trend of double digit growth in the economy(which is not bad) and start gulping every available resource in the already resource crunched country(which is bad), it is not hard to see what happens in next 15 years. If the nation of one billion starts running behind growth and if every Indian start consuming as much as the Americans, this earth will be empty in no time and what follows will be nothing short of catastrophe.
Sure, we need our people to come out of poverty and live better life. But there are better way to approach better living. We need to tax cars and subsidize buses. We need to promote local marketing against packaged foods. We need to tax polluting products to subsidize eco-friendly products. We need to encourage green ways of doing things. We have to find ways to uplift farmers as a priority than creating more billionaires. There are plenty of things we are now doing the wrong way, for which we need to think long term.
And to add finally, yes, the governments must take steps in these directions but there is a lot that we all can contribute as individuals.
Green folks in Pooh's Den have an Earth Day competition up and running. Here is the details of what they are looking for.
"What do you think needs to be done to get Indians more aware of their environment and how do we go about protecting it? What in your opinion will be the ideal law to get things moving in the right direction?"
First question first.
People become aware of something in a few situations.
1. Spoon feed the knowledge and information to children. 2. Force feed the knowledge to adults.
As for children, what is fed to them properly in young age remains in their mind forever. The criticality of things is high enough that we need a subject or at least a sub-topic called 'environment' in the schools. Of course children are already burdened with too much to study, so this could be entrenched as part of science topics, by reducing the study material in some other areas of science. But there must be at least one class a week teaching children about environment, conservation and impact of today's problems in our lives. This could go on from, say - class 5 to class 10, without reducing emphasis on the topic in any class.
As for adults, few things are actually registered in the minds of adults unless it is repeated to them again and again and a lot of work is done to keep them aware of things all the time. It is not that adults do not know the problem. People already know simple things like 'avoid using too much plastic', 'avoid driving too much', etc. But it is not exactly something that stays in their mind all the time, and comes as a later priority after tackling all the problems in the daily world. The next time we go shopping, we hardly care to register if we are driving that half a kilometer and if we are bringing things back in a polythene bag. What is needed is a constant reminder. Nothing short of a mass campaign no smaller than the ad campaigns of FMCG companies can help here. Even such a campaign will not find results easily. It needs a lot of money. It should be strong enough and widely covered that each time a person comes out of home, he sees many instructionals on conservation. Each time s/he switches on tv, radio or reads newspaper, s/he must not escape the awareness campaigns. And even such campaigns become effective only with further marketing from viral and personal modes. It is not easy, it needs lot of time, effort and money. But it is the only way. We need to create a system where being eco-friendly is a 'cool thing'. That's how we need to go ahead.
Now to the question of ideal law. Laws probably already exist, but have never been helpful in the absence of sufficient enforcement. The problem of corruption is deep rooted enough that the laws that do not emphasize on making quick buck don't really work well anywhere in the world. So it really comes back to awareness again. When there is awareness sufficiently deeply rooted in each person, there is really no need of any more laws; things automatically move in the right direction. Awareness causes people to comply. And the same awareness keeps the enforcement agencies working as they should, when people don't comply.
I have been thinking on starting a blog on this topic for a while now. It is something very dear to my heart and I am keen to work on now, but have been postponing it since I am not sure if I can dedicate time for it. I am already running three active blogs, participating in a blog project, have another blog that I need to pull back from death bed besides this blog. I have also allowed another blog to die because I could not make much updates on it. But working on an environment related blog is something difficult for me to resist. Treehugger has been an inspiration, and I shall get working on it right away. So I should have another blog up and running within a month's time.
