With about 18 per cent of the world population living in India, the welfare of the people of India has a significant impact on the well-being of the world.
However with 18 percent of the world population India has only 2.4 per cent of the world’s land area. In terms of the natural resources now considered to be the most precious in world economy, India is not endowed very favorably.
Two hundred years of extremely harmful and horrible colonial rule and plunder not only inflicted poverty and exploitation in numerous ways, it also actively promoted divisions and violence as colonialists ruthlessly pursued policy of ‘divide and rule’.
Keeping in view all these adverse factors, the people of India have done reasonably well in the post-independence period of the past about 77 years to overcome many serious problems. However several other serious problems still remain and new ones are emerging fast.
A very important question that faces the people and leaders of India is whether they can build further on their existing strengths while at the same time taking remedial actions to correct their mistakes.
Now in the year 2025, keeping in view also very serious problems increasing at world and regional level, it is important to very carefully consider the path ahead.
I think the first and perhaps the most important aspect of the path ahead is to strengthen broad-based unity of all people that is rooted in ending all injustice based on religion, caste, region, gender or any other identity. This is already long-established in the constitution, and in some respects India has also progressed in admirable ways, in the process gathering the democratic strength to maintain the unity and integrity of the country despite many attempts being made from several foreign countries to break this unity and to promote separatism. Nevertheless it must be recognized that just as India has progressed in some contexts, at times India has also made serious mistakes. Remedial actions taken in time to correct these mistakes are very important. The clear aim must be to end all discrimination and to promote unity based on equal rights and equal dignity of all people. Gender justice at all levels should be protected.
Secondly, it is important to promote economic equality and reduce inequalities. This must be done using fiscal means by raising more resources from the rich to bring more benefits to the poor to a much more significant extent. In addition there should be structural efforts to reduce inequalities, among other things by ensuring that the poorest rural households must have at least some minimum farmland. Thirdly, labor laws including safety, health, wage and social security laws must include essential welfare concerns and must be properly implemented. Fourthly, special schemes that can best use the special skills and meet the special needs of various communities like tribal, nomadic and semi-nomadic communities, various pastoral and artisan groups etc. should be prepared and implemented with their participation. There should be a special focus on implementation of concepts like gram swaraj (village self-reliance), as well as related ideas of Mahatma Gandhi whereby India can make its very special contribution to alternative development thinking. Education and health care must get much more government support with special emphasis on meeting the needs of weaker sections in satisfactory ways. Last but not the least, giant corporate monopolies that can go to the extent of dominating policy must be discouraged while providing much more room for innovative and creative middle and small-level enterprises as well as for planned economic development.
Protection of environment should get much higher importance, and this must be well-integrated with protection of sustainable livelihoods. Very important contribution to climate change mitigation and adaptation, ending water scarcity and reducing droughts as well as floods can be made by a vast well-planned, people centered, participative program of environment regeneration in rural areas that integrates sustainable livelihoods of people with protection of environment and related objectives like renewable energy. Promotion of natural farming and horticulture, protection of forests and afforestation efforts that seek to mimic local natural forests, soil and water conservation, small-scale renewable energy and small and cottage-scale industry and value-adding work must all be very important components of such an effort.
In urban areas there should be emphasis on reducing waste as well as for much better waste segregation and management. Transport, industry, farming must all be planned in pollution minimizing ways, instead of attempting reduction of air pollution only in knee-jerk responses. Rivers and water bodies everywhere must be protected from not just pollution but from any distorted intervention that harms their natural systems and life-forms supported by them. Protection of biodiversity and all life forms should be a very important part of protecting environment.
Peace and non-violence must be emphasized at all levels in society. India should seek to avoid any wars as much as possible. India should also seek to remove all those causes and grievances which can lead to support for terrorist and separatist violence, while at the same time continuing other strong efforts to defeat the forces of such violence. All kinds of violence including domestic and gender violence, child abuse, bullying, workplace violence, street violence, sectarian violence of various kinds must be reduced by making many more and much better efforts with continuity.
Democracy and true democratic spirit must be protected at all levels. Federal aspects of the constitution including rights of states or provinces must be protected while various states or provinces should in turn promote decentralization at the district and village level. Basic human rights should be respected, with special emphasis on the rights of weaker sections.
India should seek a path based on a suitable combination of policy choices that bind together the precepts of justice and equality, peace and non-violence, protection of environment and biodiversity in mutually consistent ways. At the same time, at the world-level, on various issues, India’s voice should be based on these precepts while also protecting national interests.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071, Earth without Borders, and Man over Machine—A Path to Peace
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