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Honey bee publish details |
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| Name |
Anil K Gupta |
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Editorial |
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| Title |
Scarcity, Scale and Sustainability: The Paradox of Uniform Supply for a Diverse Society |
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| Details |
Diffusion of innovation is pivotal to a developing and growing economy. However, a question that has remained underexplored is, ‘What are the conditions in which scale can actually be an enemy of sustainability?’ It is obvious that societal growth will be very slow without scaling up ideas, innovations and institutions. But can high growth at all costs be sustainable? When high yielding varieties diffused widely, they certainly solved the food security crisis but they also increased the challenges to sustainability. Mining of soil nutrients, increased use of chemical pesticides and other changes led to major health problems. These factors transferred the cost of food sovereignty onto the people through increased health expenditure. The pressure on the policy makers to handle popular growth subsequently eased. Nature’s account was debited and the welfare account of the current population was credited. The decline in the productivity of inputs and agro-biodiversity makes the task of future generations even more difficult due to the limited choices available.
Similar consequences occurred in terms of non-sustainable consumption and packaging. The extensive use of plastics demonstrated the capacity of public and private policy to scale up their use. The environmental load and the cost of eliminating plastic, if ever accomplished, would be transferred to the present youth and future generations. Scaling up the consumption of electronic goods without creating infrastructure for safe collection and disposal of waste, has created an extraordinary load on the environment and on the communities which may have practically no capacity to reverse the consequences.
Another dimension of scale is the diversity of socio-cultural needs and distributed manufacturing to address them. Does longer distance between sink and source of goods and services imply lesser accountability of the provider towards the consumer? Not always! ICT applications may reduce the distance in some cases. However, in the globalised world, socio-economic constraints and cultural contexts of the home country may not be relevant or responsive to clients in remote regions outside the country. The Bhopal Gas tragedy stands as a good example of this fact. Lack of similar environmental and labour standards in regional sink and source cases invariably triggers this dilemma. Even within the same country, the problem might prevail. And yet, we need global reach for products and services, which meet the genuine needs of society.
Sustainable consumption and frugal vertical supply chains have not yet begun to drive distributed manufacturing and horizontal supply chains. The larger the communities involved in a horizontal supply chain, the greater may be the accountability towards human and other sentient beings.
The scaling up of various products and services can also change our perception of what kind of society we want to build. When the readymade garment industry was invented, the classification of the entire humanity into six broad sizes (based on neck and shoulder ratio or waist size categories) triggered mass manufacturing. Obviously, for some, the shoulders were a little tight and for the others, they were a little loose. With the introduction of synthetic yarn, stretchable garments came into being, and brought more flexibility. The preference for customised design, fitting, and thus the need for proximal tailoring went down. Fashion, film and other media and public policy converged towards centralised manufacture.
For many, this trend is irreversible while for others, there is hope. Once the economy stabilises, the pressure for customisation and consequent localisation may start increasing. There is no reason why an emerging economy must envision its future only through a European historical lens. Several trajectories for the future are possible. The wellbeing and happiness indicators that the Bhutanese government has explicitly factored in its developmental trajectory are an evidence of this possibility. The commitment of many northeastern states to have high standards of sanitation and decentralised rooftop water conservation at the household level shows that diverse models have been emerging within our country. A recent study of bird feeding platforms in 180 villages of Gujarat, conducted by SRISTI, has shown that economic growth has not completely diluted the concern for birds and other elements of nature. But, a similar study on grazing lands shows a depressingly opposite trend. Can animals be healthy if they don’t have space to walk? Can unhappy cows with joint pain give ‘happy milk’? In fact, in Denmark there are brands based on ‘happy cow, happy farmers’ implying sufficient space being given to animals to walk and graze around.
When we have to scale up the grassroots innovations, we will have to keep these considerations of sustainability in mind. Local repair and maintenance, frugal supply chain, smallest possible ecological footprint, decentralised manufacture, diversified design and delivery will be necessary building blocks of growth, development, happiness and sustainability. Some compromises may have to be negotiated to claim legitimacy for an alternative vision but the future cannot be cast in the mould of supply chain managers. Else, all the biodiversity and associated cultural, skill, knowledge and institutional diversity is doomed. We cannot let logistics managers decide that humanity needs only one kind of tomato, potato, cucumber, clothes, building material or other natural or manufactured good. Without diversity, pluralism is not possible. The patience and tolerance for diversity and dissent is crucially linked to diversity of preferences, consumption patterns and lifestyles. Democracy thrives only when desire for diversity gets deepened.
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| Volume No. |
Honey Bee 22(3) 3, 2012 |
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