There’s a hand, someone’s got a question. Mansoor Khan prepares himself to hear that question he’s heard a lot before: “How dare you say this?” He answers calmly, “I dare because I have studied it, and I dare because I know it is real”. It is not arrogance you hear in his voice, just the experience of one who’s been researching on a subject for years and years. He is like the man who knew the earth was falling down on us but no one would listen.
But Mansoor has waited patiently, he knew that one day they will see what people like him have been predicting for long, that growth is over, that growth can’t go on forever. That day had come in 2008 with the financial crisis. But six years later, we are still not sure. How can someone just stand there and say growth is dead, that person with the question asked. It is the St Teresa’s College in Kochi, and on a Saturday, the crowd is not so much, but the ones that came have been very receptive.
Listening to Mansoor go on about his favourite subject of energy and resources and fossil fuels, it is difficult to imagine this man standing in front of you had a past when he made films in Bollywood. Not just any, those are the ones that brought Aamir Khan to movies. Mansoor had then been a lad who wanted to prove to his dad that he could do something useful. He had dropped out of MIT after five years of engineering, he had been in that stage of not having found himself.
Filmmaking is something his dad did and subconsciously, he may have picked up some skill. He got his cousin Aamir to become Sanjaylal in Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander, which remains the film closest to his heart. Sanjay is also a boy who wants to redeem himself in his father’s eyes after doing a lot of wrong things in life. There’s been more movies — Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, Akele Hum Akeke Tum and Josh. But filmmaking is something he happened to do. And he may do one more, but only to communicate the things he wanted to say — about growth, about energetics.
“What makes growth possible, what does it depend on? Fundamentally on energy and resources. And that’s depleting. But we have been conditioned to think from a different point of view, all our systems have been programmed to believe that we had plenty of energy resources. Few realise we are already beginning to slowdown and this is not just in India. It is a global descent,” Mansoor speaks passionately, knowingly.
The endless studies and research had started at a time his own land was going to be acquired for an international airport. “Along with me, 14 other villages and 30,000 people would be displaced. So the question came to me, what do mean by progress and development?” From there he went on to the social argument, the environmental argument, and the geological. “Somewhere along the line, while I was battling for my land, I became aware that we have been programmed to think from this point of view because we are the beneficiaries and there is a whole bunch of other people at whose cost we are doing this.”
Mansoor began giving lectures. He’s gone to IITs and IIMs and Yahoo and Morgan Stanley. He told them how we have been deluded into thinking the world runs on financial capital and laws of economics. “No, the world runs on energy and money is just a map to channel that energy. We made the laws of economics, they are just symbolic terms — equity, subsidy, interest rate — not the real thing. You can’t make an omelette without an egg, even Einstein can’t!” he laughs. But this is not a bad thing, he tells you.
Everyone believes only growth is good. “But perpetual growth kills everything. It is like cancer in our body. The cancer cells kill your heart and kidney to grow, not realising they will die too with the human. In the same way, we kill our rivers and forests and everything for growth. Growth is cancer!” Even as he says this, he asks you not to confuse him for an environmentalist. Environment is important, but he is here to tell you that you cannot have perpetual growth and our economies are shrinking, and that it is not a bad thing.
