A significant and resilient approach to the wide Indian sustainable consumption and production inequality.

Found another one from 2022 doc trash. This was tailored for an Essay Competition by LFT something, and as per faint memory, it did get into finalist stage. How pragmatic?

(Credits: This amazing Photo is by Nathan Hindman for Meow Wolf) (This is definitely a masterpiece than the essay)

A multidimensional catastrophe will collectively be drowning everyone; rich or poor, given we satisfy its essential prerequisites of continuing overconsumption, relentlessly developing unnecessary needs and wants, delving to magnifying resources overexploitation, and failing to achieve a minimum of productivities, besides producing tremendous waste, is unquestionably a resource curse. India, the trillion-dollar economy club, did accomplish in my perception by victimizing US$3.75 trillion annual environmental degradation, around 5.7% of our Gross-Domestic-Product. Well logically, by 2050, our exhausted resources and depleted environment will undoubtedly pull us out of the trillion clubs, while plausible in the next ten years as well.

Ten years ago, I imagined a Marvel-world future, with aerial cars, high-speed technology, eco-efficient fuels, convertible infrastructure, no poverty, hunger, and my endless list. However, statistically, in 2003, the Indian Human-Development-Index was 129 of 189 countries, recently falling by three more ranks. Technically, 2003 development was significantly better than the one achieved now. Additionally, we have embarked on environmental degradation of US$ 6 trillion since independence. Undoubtedly, India outshined the trillion-dollar club as a mass environmental slaughterer of air, soil, water, atmosphere, biodiversity, and trillion resources of whose ownership is unjustifiable. Shouldn't we be responsibly liable for these trillions' worth of environmental crimes? Further are solutions to myriads of problems. Complex, though I promise, worth reading.

Consumption is a good indicator lest satisfactorily eco-friendly. Building our graveyards adopting luxurious lifestyles is hazardous. Calculating, around one billion Indians fall under brackets of segregated rich and middle class,273 million poverty-lifted, while 86 million poverty-stricken. Besides, the COVID-19 recession has a recovery phase sooner. Therefore in 2030, poverty will decline to 6.7%, hinting at economic havoc. More income increases demand for inflationary pricing, inextricable to exploiting resources. Overconsumption will worsen when the government, foreign-exports, enterprises, and developed income-generating Indians, adopt an environmentally unsustainable livelihood. Honestly, our depleted resources will hardly satisfy a quarter of these palatial wants in the future.

Doubtless, the Indian consumption system is environmentally unsustainable and socially inequitable. Besides production: inconsistent and non-transparent, and the intermediary policy evaluation: ambiguous and politicized. In 2018, during my train journey from Bangalore to Mumbai, what I could personally experience is the unnecessary surplus supply of drinks, toys, bedsheets, and no one’s astonishment necessities like drinking water, sanitary napkins, nutritional food, hygienic washrooms, Wi-Fi networks, and first aid kits rarely found. Whenever luckily discovered, the availability of necessities was appalling. Secondly, there are 2,42,395 (approx.) factories in India, and unfortunately, the hazardous waste generated each year by factories is 4.43 million tons plus the triple trillion-dollar environmental degradation annually. Protectionism and political agendas are triggers to this devastating misallocation of resources.

As a young teenager from childhood, I encountered a product that serves a single purpose with many varieties, millions of brands, millions of a single purpose product and millions of consumers. I always wondered if we had a standard community somewhat like the IUPAC in Chemistry, that consists of a group of government, NGO’s, customers, businessmen, students and all related stakeholders who decide on selecting one single purpose product which has all integrated features of these thousands of variety products. The uniqueness of this approach lies that the standard committee makes them the part of this individual organization, and instead of a variety of companies, there exists only one leading institution of every field, which has subsidiary branches spread across the nation.

The main objective of these committees is to maintain, patriotically follow and create an inclusivity for the four the golden 4 step rule- develop one of the most efficient product/service from the pool and ensure it’s at the maximum environmentally friendly and socially equitable quality, then is to make it implementable- regulate that employment and intellectual property rights aren’t mishandled, monitor that no new emerging business is made to open a new brand of the same product and their ideas if not in the standard product, then make them included, evaluate that objectives are met regularly. This comes with the idea of a global good allocation of resources among public and private where resources are used on the best efficient method.

Creating a new sector for eco-efficient products with existing unproductive supply is just worsening the production and supply chains. Making use of technologies like CAD and CAM can make our standard committees’ prototype better and create no waste. Using one single product, also reduces consumers from open-dumping them, though perishables are a different case. Seemingly, this can be an idea requiring potential contribution and extensive overwork, and perhaps all of us globally to unite into a single fabric, just guiding committees is not sufficient. When people unite, ideas unite, products/services reach a peak, and the effect is that resources are used logically, not as a method to build 24 floored buildings. Using all our specialization with utmost expertise, can obviously make our 2030 agenda rational.

The objective deadlock of achieving a developed society or an environment system, amplifies our intuition to either choose one of them or focus on sustainable development. Our major problem now exists in selecting a feasible objective, besides population certainly is the least most important factor. Competition is good but not environmentally sound, why not compete in the standard committee of creating one globally acceptable product for every purpose? Coming down to my biggest problem statement, our method to achieve the 2030 Agendas itself handicapped with obsolete methods, when we achieve one, we fail the other goal completely, as in we did lower poverty in India but completely failed to prevent and protect climate with sustainable consumption and production. Expecting 100 percent efficiency from millions of factories is like hitting the head on the wall, thinking the wall will crack. Let’s get the boulder to move our degraded walls-this new approach and protect ourselves with perhaps a new standard all feature inclusive helmet followed globally.