Environmental Ethics & Value Crises

Environmental Ethics & Value crises

Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here again. In all probabilities, I was here during the
inaugural session of your batch two years ago. Dr Nandi contacted me and asked me if I would speak to
you all. I seldom miss an opportunity of meeting and talking to students. But what riveted me was the
topic Dr Nandi asked me to speak on! He wanted me to speak on Environmental ethics and Value crises,
emphasizing on Mental pollution.
Before I start my lecture, I wish to ask you all one question. We must answer that clearly, and
unanimously. Only then can we go forward. The question is What are you all getting trained in this
college to become? [Many answer that they are training to become engineers.]
Thats settled then. We are all going to be engineers. We are getting trained for that. You see, an
engineers mind is different from the rest of the people in this world. There is a very particular type of
thinking that makes you an engineer. One important characteristic of that mind is that it gravitates to the
specifics. In any situation, it wont beat around the bush. It goes to the root of the situation and
concentrates on the specific details. That is a common feature you will find in any good engineer. So,
with that information, let us look at the topic again. I do not understand what is meant. I understand what
environment means. I also understand what Ethics means. But I dont understand what environmental
ethics means! First time I heard of that term! Then there is the term Value Crises, as if to hint that crises
in values is essentially related to the ethics associated with environment! I dont know. I think, we might
as well say Environmental Values and Ethical Crises or Environmental crises and ethical values. This
is something we engineers dont do. We dont play with words. We play with things. We deal with ideas
only insofar as they are directly related to things. I may read five pages of poetry that my poet friend has
composed. All I understand is that the sky is blue. That is all he has effectively said. He may have filled
up five full pages about what he felt and blah, blah, blah. But what it all finally means is the sky is blue.
Of course, this is not to denigrate the topic in any way. I just used the opportunity to explain on
aspect of an engineers mind to you. The environment is indeed a bugbear with us engineers. Every so
often, we hear of the damage we engineers are making to the environment. So, let us look at that for a
little while. Every work we do in our field is on the world around us. We dont work with or on feelings.
We work with and on things. We work on the environment. Any work of substance that we engineers do
will obviously damage the environment. We cannot help it. If an engineer is afraid of damaging the
environment, he will not be able to work at all. It is like a doctor who is afraid of blood, or a doctor who
is afraid that he will hurt his patient. Every work a doctor does relates to the body of a living person. If
you touch the body, it hurts. Hurting is part of a doctors job. Of course, the motive is something that is
totally different from hurting. The motive is to cure. Similarly, the motive of all our engineering jobs is
never to damage the world. Nevertheless, I have to admit that our motive as engineers is also not
expressly to conserve the world either. Engineering and exploitation of natural resources are too closely
connected, although none of us would like that word exploitation to be used in our context. But, if you
want to call a spade as a spade, that is what it is.
What are the criteria on which engineers work? I hold that engineers work on two criteria.
Anything we do has to answer two questions in the positive. One is it useful to us? Two is it
economical, cheap? We understand what useful means. Something that makes our lives easier, more
comfortable. How do we understand cheap? Nothing is cheap. It is always a relative term. It is always
cheaper than something. Hence, all that we do has to be cheaper than what we already have. Only then
will an engineer accept the outcome. You will notice that impact on the environment is never a
consideration in our work. That is how we have developed ourselves. Today we hear about our
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environment being damaged. Who is talking of that? Are they engineers? They can never be engineers. It
is always the twelve steppers, the green-peace activists who talk about that. As engineers, we are sure
that if what we have done is damaging the environment, we will find a way out of that using our brains
and hands.
Technology is dynamic. Depending on the inputs we receive from the world around us, we evolve
better, more efficient technology. And this exercise is always driven by economics. Take the history of
the IC engines. Why did they gain popularity back in the 19th century? Those days, the streets of London
were filled with horse-drawn carriages. Hundreds and thousands of them were on the streets. Horses shat
all over the streets. The cost of keeping the streets clean were going up by the day. That was when the
need was felt to go for a cleaner alternative. IC engines were the answer. Ironically, a technology that
we today hold responsible for environmental damage was hailed in as green technology a century ago!
Similarly if you look at the trends in thermal power generation, you will find that up to the 1980s, the
generation was very polluting. Then awareness grew and today we have newer technologies like the
Integrated Gas-Coal Power plants which are much more efficient and much less polluting. You know that
the flue gases are scrubbed before they are released into the atmosphere. Thermal power generation & IC
engines these are the two main air polluting sources. As awareness of pollution is rising, engineers are
working on developing better technologies to answer that problem. This is the line along which you all
will have to think. Just because environmental damage occurs due to engineering, we cannot stop our
work and go back to cottage industries. That is not even an option for us. I am saying this specifically
because if you look at some of the developments in our country, I feel sad. We have the Honble Supreme
Court passing a judgement that SUVs will be banned in Delhi because they pollute the air! We have a big
group led by activists like Medha Patkar who have stopped construction of a dam on the Narmada! We
have another activist group that has stopped mining in Orissa because of which Korean Steel giant
POSCO has left the country! This is not the way in which we will achieve 8% GDP growth. On the one
hand we wish to grow economically and overtake China; on the other hand we have qualms with the
damage our work does to the environment. This conflict in our national mind is what is slowing us
down in the world.
This conflict in the national consciousness has to be addressed as quickly as possible. Take the
Clean Ganga Project. Few thousand crores have been spent every year for the last few years in so-called
cleaning the Ganga. What is the result? Studies are now telling us that Ganga is polluted beyond
acceptable standards; so also with the Yamuna River. I do not understand this situation at all. It is a river,
for gods sake, not a lake! Stop pouring effluents into it and in one month, you have a new river with
fresh, clean water again! It is that simple. The crores of rupees can be better used in financing alternative
methods of dealing with the effluents we are throwing into the river. You see, that is another
characteristic of and engineer. A good engineer has no judgements about anything as being waste.
Nothing is an absolute waste for him. Take the case of Tata Steel Company in Jamshedpur. As a result of
the steel making process, so many so-called waste products are produced, in huge quantities. They can
all be dumped somewhere as waste. They dont do that. Each of those waste products are put to further
use. How? The slag is sent to Cement Industries. Do you know that slag, which is a waste product of any
metal industry, is a raw material in cement manufacturing? So also the fly-ash which produced as a waster
from thermal power stations. Fly-ash is also used as raw material in cement industry. Many years after
starting Tata Steel, they started a new company called Tata Pigments. Do you know why? Many chemical
waste products were treated in this new factory and used as raw materials for paints & lubricants
industries!

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The whole thing depends on economics, you know. A day will come when it will make economic
sense to treat the liquid effluents, urban fluid sewage, etc. and use it for something else other than just
dumping them into the Ganga. That is when the Ganga will become clean again. You must certainly be
aware that sewage can now be treated to such an extent that potable quality water can be reclaimed from
it. Of course, we Indians may have social, cultural and psychological reservations about using such water,
but, wait till such a step starts making economic sense. Then you will find a mad rush for implementing
that technology.
But do you know where the problem with our field is? We engineers lack something that ancient
Indians possessed. Let us say we found out a new technology, which is much more efficient and much
more cost effective. What do we do? We jump headlong into it and implement it everywhere. We do not
understand the long term ramifications of what we are doing now. If something is useful and cheap now,
we go for it. This creates problems for us in some other areas. The IC engine solution at the end of the
19th century is a classic example of what I am trying to tell you here. It was brought in as a much needed
relief from one kind of problem that the society was facing. When we adopted that new technology,
which was much more efficient and certainly cheaper, we were all happy. It was only 100 years later that
we realized that this new technology was slowly creating problems elsewhere, i.e. polluting the air we
breathe. Now, can we overcome this extreme shortsightedness that we engineers have?
I believe we can. Ancient India had indeed solved this problem. How? By developing a worldview that had amazing interconnectedness. They had a term for this interconnectedness called Rtam. In
fact, when I came to Bengal, I was surprised to find that boys had this word for their name! We had a
couple of students in my College called Rtam Mallik and Rtam Bhowmick. Every one of us in this world
is connected to everyone else. Not just people, even animals, trees, birds, insects, germs, things, stars
everything is actually inseparably interconnected. This led to the development of a sense of sacredness in
our daily lives. Our ancient Indians used this world, even as we are doing now, but with a sense of
sacredness attached to it. Once we bring in this idea of sacredness into the whole picture, exploitation
stops. We develop a sense where we can start feeling how much is too much and how much is enough.
We can use the things of this world. In fact, the driving motto of the ancient Indians was The world for
the soul, and not the soul for the world. But, we get an intuitive sense of how much load to put on the
natural resources of this world. You must understand that Earth can replenish itself. There is a rate at
which we can draw from its bowers and then it replenishes itself. That rate, our ancient Indians knew
intuitively. Their world-view gave them that sense.
How I imagine it is like this: We had this amazing knowledge with us, up until the 15 th century,
roughly. Then, for various reasons, we went into a deep slumber for about 400 years. Then we woke up,
or were flogged out of our sleep. And when we woke up, we had forgotten what we knew and found
ourselves in English dress and hats and boots! I mean, ever since we woke up from the centuries-long
sleep, we have adopted the western world-view, which is highly individualistic, where every one
considers himself an island, unconnected with everyone else. Slowly, we are realizing where we have
faltered. There is no need to reverse our steps. All we need is a course correction, a small change in our
outlook. Let me explain with a small story.
There was once a farmer who was able to produce the best harvest year after year from his field.
The Dept of Agriculture noticed his consistent performance and decided to study his practices. They
asked him his secret. He said, I choose the best quality seeds and distribute them among all my
neighbors. The officers couldnt understand why he had to do that. It would be logical if he himself used
the best quality seeds. Why distribute them among his neighbors? He replied, My harvest is determined

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by the quality of the pollens that come from the flowers of my neighbors fields. If they are of the best
quality, my harvest turns out great.
Is this kind of thinking compatible with our present world-view? No. This farmer would be
termed an idiot by most of us. We shall take care of ourselves. We are not here to feed the neighborhood!
That line of thinking has to change. We have to learn to factor in the whole world into our personal lives.
Our own development is irrevocably connected with the development of the world around us. We dont
have to bother about the planet, in fact. As George Carlin once said, The Planets doing fine. Its been
through much worse than what we have wrought. We are in danger. We will be soon gone, if we dont
change our lifestyles. We will be gone, and the Planet will consider us as an evolutionary cul-de-sac, and
the Blue Ball will still go on revolving around the Sun!
So, this idea of Rtam has to be incorporated into our teaching-learning process itself. As
engineers, we are not taught to think along those lines. We must do that now. You hear a lot about
Sustainable development these days. I dont understand what they are talking about. What indeed is
sustainable in the way we are functioning now? Take any of the technology we have now. Not one of
them is sustainable. All of them use resources that are limited and its just a matter of time before we run
out of them. What indeed is sustainable then? All that they mean is protracted usage, thats all. What
would be over in 100 years may get extended to 200 years. But after 200 years, it will still be over. What
is sustainable in that then? Real sustainability lies in recognizing that this world is a self-replenishing
system. Real sustainability lies in honoring that rate at which the world can bear our burden of
consumption. Real sustainability lies in learning to rein our rapacious nature.
I accept that my generation has failed to do this. It is my faith that you all will learn to deal with
this world in this sane manner. We will be engineers, better engineers than the previous generation, but
we will also learn to rise beyond utilitarianism and economic consideration. I will end my lecture by
telling you a small story.
There was once a small girl whose father wanted her to mow the lawn in their house. As usual,
the girl was not very happy. Again, as usual, her father tried bribing her. He said, You remember that
beautiful dress you liked in the shop the other day? I will get you that dress if you finish mowing the lawn
by evening. When he returned from the office, he went with his daughter to inspect the lawn. It was
indeed done very well, but he saw that towards the edge, on one side, the small girl had left a small patch
of grass uncut. He pointed it out to her and said, Uh-huh. That wont do. You must cut the whole thing.
You have left out a small patch over there. The small girl very clearly said, Well then, I dont need that
dress. I cannot cut that patch. The father went near and saw what was there in that patch of grass. He saw
that there was a fat frog that had made that portion of lawn as its home, and the girl didnt want to drive it
away. The rest of the lawn however was cut clean and sharp.
You may all ask me, what exactly did you convey to us, Swamiji, though todays lecture? It
does seem like I didnt give you any conclusions today. I came here to instigate your thoughts on a very
important issue concerning our work as engineers. I have given you mainly three ideas. One engineering
basically deals with using the environment; so, we cannot afford to get too sensitive about not hurting
the environment when we are engineers, or we simply wont be able to work at all. Two as engineers,
our tendency should always be to develop more energy efficient technology and processes. Three we
need to develop a world-view of interconnectedness with this world, a sense of sacredness towards this
world, so that we can overcome the exploitative streak that seems to be inbuilt into the engineering
mindset.
Thank you all.
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