THE THREE 'E's

Civilization today suffers from three galloping diseases (i) Eco- logical destruction, (ii) Energy exhaustion and (iii) Economic imbalances, the three are in a critical stage. Let us see what can be done about them.

Ecological destruction can be gauged even by the number of species of both fauna and flora which have fallen prey to and continue be threatened by the trend human civilization has taken. For example's the green cover of trees which perform numerous functions to maintain ecological balance has been sadly ueglected. In our avariee and short range selfishness, we have tended to kill the very hen which lays the golden eggs. Miss Katherine Mary Heilemanu (Sarala Devi) has, in her regent book 'Revive Our Dying Planet given an estimate of the value of eco- logical services rendered by a single tree in its lifetime to Rs. fifteen lacs.

All this forces us to think that our production and consumption activities in agriculture and industry must now be judged from their impact on ecology. c. g. the paper on which this article is printed (in 'Science for Villages was made not by cutting any tree, but utilizing what was waste' in Nature-the stem of banana plants and other agro-wastes. Human values, public opinions, state polities and inter-national conventions need to be fast, educated and influenced to take the right course and all of us must join in this crusade.

Energy depletion threatens to stop the wheels of production and transport, because for the last one hundred and fifty years we burnt the non-renewable fossil fuels and built an economy that cannot sustain any more. Man will have to climb down, from using highly concentrated, sources of energy to those of low entropy but are renewable. This will unwind the concentration of popultion, production, and power, the trio on which the present, metropolitan matrix has developed. Renewable resources can provide us the alternative, but the challenging process needs hard policy decisions. Those at the zenith in the status quo, will have to lose their status and a completely different type of decentralized living and industrial economy of harmony between Man and Nature will have to evolved.

The economic disparities we face today, of one-third population having almost two-third or world production and consumption and the other two-third subsisting on the remaining one-third show no tread of narrowing. Because sophistication in technology leads to still more complex, megalomaniac, capital-intensive and centralized systems bringing the profit of production to still fewer hands. The increase of 'such production is at the cost of social justice. The gap between the poor and the rich widens at all levels i. e. community, country and world-where more capital intensive and size-beneficial production processes are adopted. No amount of good intentions can be the way to a dream where all are equal and free, if the existence of man through the work he does, depends upon centralist and enslaving modes.

Unless our blinkers are removed, we will be repeating parrot- like that the poor are poor because they breed like rabbits' and not see, the truth that it is the insecurity of the poor progressively increasing because of the dice loaded in favour of the rich (as production system favours 'big' and 'moneyed') which is the cause of their misery, and, hence over-population. Thus, Economy of Equality will also need a similar volta facie in the direction to be pursued.

Thus, the balances in three 'E's  require a more thorough going, dispassionate, down-to-earth, but long-range, and universal outlook to influence our science policies as well. The recent Science Congress at Mysore could have been a place where these could have been focal issues. Unfortunately, there were very perpherial references to these critical problems of human survival and the thrust was lost in the jungle of generalities. Let us hope that yet India will be able to show the way by offering alternative and appropriate systems for which the world awaits.

Devendra Kumar