Ranjona Banerji | Will April bring more roads we do not need?

Here I am, an old woman in a dry month…

Just about every weekend, environmental organisations, civil society groups and concerned citizens collect at a chosen spot in and around Dehradun to try and flag the dangers of environmental damage being done to the state. There is increased frequency in these gatherings because the changes to climate and temperature and nature around us are all perceptible. The storms that were supposed to happen were tepid and embarrassing. The rain that has fallen is in pathetically small amounts. Our famous winter rains? Ah well.

Dehradun and Uttarakhand are by no means unique to these changes, but I deliberately limit myself, although as we know, some parts of India suffered heat waves as early as the onset of spring this year! The problems of both environmental change and its perception are by no means easy to deal with. The inevitable argument, which I will not dwell upon, is that of preservation of Nature versus the “need” for “development”. And if truth be told, from Delhi to Mumbai to wherever else you want to go, the mad rush for construction has sent pollution levels through the roof and increased disease and discomfort.

The planet has reached its tipping point, regardless of large promises made by the politicians of the world. The cost of development which politicians and their developer friends want is too high a price to pay. Development that people need to lead a decent life is rarely on offer.

For example, innumerable highways for tourists to reach Dehradun are not required when forests and mountains are destroyed and neither the destruction nor the “development” is beneficial to residents. You can substitute Dehradun with any other settlement in India.

This winter, which wasn’t much of a winter, I went up to the closest hill stations a few times. The first time, it snowed. I exaggerate. There were a few flurries. It was beautiful and thrilling and a few hours later, it was gone. The best few times, well. Winter this year has been bleak, because there hasn’t been enough snowfall. The upper reaches of the Himalayas were more black than white. Stark, bare, sad and scary.

Last summer, we hit almost 50 degrees Celsius in our fast-growing gateway to the mountains, in two brutal heatwaves. This year is not going to be much better. Our official response: how about we cut more forests and build more roads.

I hear you in the back of my head; I see you from the corner of my eyes. I have said all this before. That is very true. My problem is that nothing changes. Except for the worse, obviously. We have abandoned our senses and silenced our voices. We’re happy to let things slide along, even when it affects us. This is apathy of the most self-defeating sort. If I’m to be kind, and our unresponsiveness comes from some internal inertia, how do we kick ourselves out of it?

The planet is not waiting for us to wake up. It’s responding to our stimulus and adjusting itself. These adjustments are to our detriment. And to several other species as well. Not that so many of us really care. We are the most entitled humans for the most part. I don’t mean just that all us humans think we’re entitled. There’s no argument there. I mean that in a collective, we appear to be more entitled than ever before. The slim ruling classes remain selfishly in charge, whatever new democratic names we give our current feudal lords and ladies. But the groups below who have tasted power and wealth have spawned huge numbers of us who cannot be bothered as long as we get our comforts. It is us who have tipped the balance, by our greed and our wants.

What a lecture, right?

Should I crawl back into my corner with my “thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season”?

Let’s behave like today’s people, then. Fight over fictional shows on streaming sites. Or over fake “advice” given by fake experts called influencers? Because that’s what we’ve become. Easy to provoke and easy to cancel. Which is why even our protests whether to support democracy or to protect the environment seem to have taken this turn. Is an actual gathering of people accrual in its effects? Or does a gathering become real only when it is seen on social media? Some of us wanted to stop traffic on the highway, others were opposed. Some wanted to sing songs, others were not interested. Some wanted speeches which only those gathered could hear, others said it was preaching to the converted.

The forests meanwhile are vanishing. The more we disagree on how to save them, the faster we spin to our doom. “And the dead tree gives no shelter… and the dry stone no sound of water”. The poets have said it all, but we will never learn.

But maybe you cannot blame us for being lost in our methodologies. The situation is dire, but the destruction does not stop. You think you have won one battle and yet a thousand others emerge around them. We do not have priceless Van Gogh paintings to throw paint on in our town. Nor do we have the resources to travel the world to deface art to make people in our region aware of our problems. It almost seems like a lost cause sometimes.

“Say not the struggle naught availeth,

The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been, they remain.”

These words from Arthur Hughes Clough have been a solace when dread rules, because the poem ends in hope and the promise of light.

But the poet I have quoted through this piece has been TS Eliot. And if there is hope, there is impending despair at our foolishness.

“April is the cruellest months” are the opening words of Eliot’s most famous poem.

It’s upon us and who knows what it will bring apart from dust, heat and more roads we do not need.