A Vedic Hymn to the Goddess Earth

                                                                                                                                                                             Atharva-Veda, XII,I

 Truth, greatness, universal order (rita), strength, consecration,creative fervour (tapas), spiritual exaltation (Brahman),the sacrifice, support the earth. May this earth, the mistress of that which was and shall be, prepare for us a broad domain!

 The earth that has heights, and slopes, and great plains, that supports the plants of manifold virtue, free from the pressure that comes from the midst of men, she shall spread out for us, and fit herself for us!

 The earth upon which the sea, and the rivers and the waters, upon which food and the tribes of men have arisen, upon which this breathing, moving life exists, shall afford us precedence ……….

                                                                               

The independent think tank,Global Footprint Network (GFN), insists that humanity is operating on an overdraft, having surpassed nature’s budget. According to its calculations,mankind would need a second planet to satisfy its hunger and dispose of the waste, as early as 2030.

I time travel back fifteen years to that weekend show of “Independence Day”, of that opening panorama of the low flying alien ship blotting the sun out, a technologically empowered species waiting to unleash, invade and take over our world and its resources. Are we also destined to venture out of our earth cradle on a similar mission?

As we welcome the seven billionth newborn into our midst this week, as our planet strains to host this level of humanity,many of us are left wondering whether doomsday predictions may yet come to haunt us. When Thomas Malthus forecast in the eighteenth century that our propensity to reproduce would outstrip our ability to sustain food and other resources,could it be that he was right after all and simply a few centuries ahead of the curve? While we might be able to stabilise the world population sometime in the  future, would the strain not become unbearable in the poverty stricken regions of Asia and Africa which face the fastest population growth?

Some of the red flags are already up. As Mathias Wackernagel of GFN says, “From food prices to the crippling effects of climate change, our economies are now confronting the reality of years of spending beyond our means”. Many may see this to be uncalled for scare-mongering and would repose faith in technology and Man’s creativity to provide the necessary scallop. Similar to the way Industrial and Green revolutions proved the Malthusian doomsayers wrong in the last two centuries.

But as I reflect on all of this,I wonder whether we are not missing the woods for the trees. Is this devouring of the planet’s bounty, from forests, fisheries, fresh water to minerals and oil,due to the population getting added?  Or is it more due to the ravenous greed of the existing one?

Is the “flattening of the world” as Thomas Friedman aptly puts it, bringing those additional billions of the developing world onto that level playing field? And what happens when these billions start aspiring for the materialism of the west, for that “great American dream”? Kamla Chowdhury, Professor, IIM Ahmedabad, in her Earth Charter theme provides an answer, “We live in a world which has an obsessive preoccupation with growth and unlimited confidence in new developments. We have pursued the philosophy of cancer which grows and expands on its host, eventually killing it. We are behaving like the cancer cell, killing earth by using it ruthlessly and unsustainably.”

So what is the way forward? To heal the earth, I believe we need to heal the individual. The post industrial era ushered in a societal belief of the supremacy of Science and Technology and these became the only approach to knowledge and power. In the process we have become rewired towards greed, aggrandizement and become spiritually contaminated.Methinks we need to regain the moral and ethical values to take a holistic view.

• Perspective shift towards technologies and innovation with a human face.
• Societal values and Economics that would cooperate with our world and its ecology rather than exploiting it.
• Spiritual positivity and sustainability in our thinking and actions.

Can we empower ourselves to adopt a new paradigm for development based on the above values? That surely would be the biggest turning point in human history.

“The world has enough to fulfill all our needs but not our greed.”

Mahatma Gandhi

In Learning………………                                                                                                                                                  Shakti Ghosal

Acknowledgements:

1. Global footprint Network : http://www.footprintnetwork.org/
2. The World is flat A brief history of the  twenty-first century : Thomas L. Friedman
3. The Earth Charter: Kamla Chowdhry.