Respected Madam/Sir
Greetings from Rahul K Kamble, Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Sardar Patel Mahavidyalaya, Chandrapur
I am pleased to inform you that Department of Environmental Science of Sardar Patel Mahavidyalaya, Chandrapur is organizing a UGC sponsored National level conference on “Cleaner Production for Greening Industries: Steps to Sustainability” on 31 March 2012. For this conference Hon’ble Shri Sanjay Deotale, Minister of Environment and Culture, Government of Maharashtra; Shri Sanjay Bhuskute, Maharashtra Pollution Control Board, Mumbai and other dignitaries from different parts of the country will be participating.
It’s my great privilege to invite you on behalf of Principal, S P College, Chandrapur to participate in the conference.
Research papers are invited by 20 March 2012. I have enclosed the soft copy of the invitation for your perusal.
Kind regards,
Rahul K Kamble
Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Science
Sardar Patel Mahavidyalaya, Chandrapur 442 402
Cell: 0966 54 99 330
Replies
Dear Chandra Kishore,
Thank you for the work you do, and thank you for your response. I do believe, and evidence supports, that the poisonous nexus between human beings and the ecology upon which their lives depend (intra-species), is a direct outcome of the poisonous relationships between human beings (inter-species). This core problem decides who consumes what, how we consume, how much we consume, what we consume, and the human values upon which this consumption is based.
Whereas the intention might indeed once have been good and humble, as you say, to designate people of power and learning as "dignitaries", it has long lost its merit in action, visible in the facts-on-the-ground. "Dignitaries" so far as I can see in India, has come to mean that those with such designations exercise unaccountable arrogance. At the bottom of the Indian pyramid of "dignitaries" is a vast base of throw away people, 3/4 of the nation, visible yet invisible in the nation's daily living. The "american dream" model of development is just such a global pyramid of power with a vast base of syphoned off , throw away, wasted lives (human and all species). Only 310 million in the USA consuming the world -- with tens of millions of throw away people counted among this meger gathering of the global human population -- and our "dignitaries" swimming in dreams of this rapacious, insane model planning for 1.2 billion humans!
If, however, our honest humility extended to all life, we would behave around all life with the due accord assigned solely to "dignitaries". If Indians at the top could respect Indians at the bottom for their inalienable dignity, would not our national handling of our ecological assests change radically? Would we not more likely build cooperative economics -- cooperative with the natural synergies in nature and cooperative with each other, the opposite of exploitative and oppressive -- closer to the best teachings of the ancient culture we so prize?
I suggest an honest humility will oblige us to drop our caste and class bound ossifications. It ought to be so dead it sloughs off like dead skin, leaving us the healthier for it. The truly dignified are the truly humble among us who need no titles, need no scrapings and bowings. All true dignity needs are sincere cohorts applied to a sincere enterprise of building a nation of clear skies, fresh air, dancing waters, thriving ecosystems, rich soils, healthy sustenance and an intelligent, dignified, human population thriving on compassionate, mutual collaboration, in dignified co-existence. We can do that. But this "dignitary" nonsense must go. And a true UNIVERSAL dignitarian consciousness take hold.
I recommend to all our attention the works of physicist Dr. Robert Fuller, who I met in India -- one of the teachers of many of India's leading physicists today. He bent his formidable, mathematical clarity to examining the human condition, theorized and started the 'dignitarian movement" . For the Bengalis among us, his book has been translated in Bangladesh : All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity. Also read Somebodies and Nobodies Overcoming the Abuse of Rank.
Nowhere is it more appropriate than in the Indian and global environmental movement to examine the false premises of rank, clean the slate of the worst of dead culture ( and its suicidal economics) and move forward into an evolutionary path that will make possible our survival. We will not be getting out of our ecological mess building on a killing paradigm of disregard for basic human rights and shared human dignity.
thnks for the great information sir we will definately attend this conference
I feel your pain. It's our humbleness that makes us use "respectable" names for those on the pedstal. Perhaps we, as a society need to put the right people on that pedstal. But, I still like the humbleness and the intention behind it.
It might seem a losing battle, but those who care still has to do something about it and live by personal examples. Perhaps that's why more than 3,000 of us are now part of the Indian Environment Network. Let's work to make our tribe grow!
premilla dixit nag said:
Fantastic initiative...recommendations must be shared.
Dear Professor Kamble,
I hope with all the dignitaries gathered, an intelligent plan will indeed shape up for this bleeding land of my birth. Two years ago, I took the sad journey from New Delhi to Peowah, Kurukshetra and Haridwar, to inter my beloved mothers bones and ashes in the sacred waters. As though my private burden were not punishing enough, the horror of the drive from Delhi to Haridwar was harrowing. NOT A SINGLE, NOT ONE, OF THE MANY RIVERS ALONG THE WAY WERE RIVERS ANYMORE. THEY WERE ALL DRY GUTTERS FOR PLASTIC AND EVERY KIND OF TOXIC WASTE. And when we arrived at Peowah, to cast my mother's bones into the sacred CESSPOOL that once was a lovely lake flowing into the ancient sacred river was heart rending. Had my mother not insisted on being cast among our ancestors, I would certainly not have cast her remains in that gutter, called a lake! And then to journey to Haridwar to cast her ashes and find the sacred ganges a greatly diminished river was enough to tear my soul apart. I found my ancestral land DEVOID OF ALL DIGNITY. IT HAS SO DESTROYED IT MOST PRECIOUS, IRREPLACEABLE TREASURES! For what? Cars, disneyland, fast food and hotels? Money had been poured into chocking the pilgrimage with gaudy hotels, and a chintzy Disney land, AND NOTHING DONE ABOUT THE SACRED WATERS OF LIFE ITSELF.
It is plain to see, the dignitaries of India have not dignified their charge : "hum layen hain toophan se kishti nikal ke, iss desh ko rakhana mere bacchon samahal ke" (we have brought through the storm this nation my children, keep it responsibly). A stirring song, unheeded. Our dignitaries are too busy chasing the "american dream" , more accurately the corporate nightmare, to meet their obligations of keeping our ancient land safe. Our dignitaries have been busy building super highways and real estate complexes, paving over agricultural lands to jam them with traffic spewing poison, in a nation whose fresh water sources have rapidly downgraded into sewers, and whose people are 1.2BILLION. Where the fed are perfectly comfortable around the woefully unfed, indifferent even. There is so much wrong with the direction in which the dignitaries have pointed their sights, that one hardly knows where to begin addressing the problems our dignitaries have spawned.
Perhaps a good place to start is to stop calling each other "DIGNITARIES" AS THOUGH OTHERS ARE NOT! It is the 21st century. India is the world's second largest democracy it is said. EVERYBODY IS A DIGNITARY, OR NO ONE IS. IT IS MOST UNDIGNIFIED IN THIS DAY AND AGE TO HAVE A FALSE, INFLATED, SELF IMAGE. If all the "dignitaries" got off their high horses, and down to earth, where they truly stand, mortal like the rest, we might just begin to find our way out of the dreadful mess we are in.