Sustainability Indicators
D John Chelladurai
Abstract:
While the world is struggling to come to terms with itself at the
sustainable front, through such initiatives as CoP (CoP 30 being the current
one), saner people say that the response is nowhere matching the crisis.
The growth being cancerous corroding every vitals of the living
earth, the response are cosmetic at its best; our commitments at the global
forums are made only to be breached, while humanity continues to add to the
worsening of the health of the earth.
The hope is not beyond human contrivance. Noble souls across the
world have given enough models to make earth sustainable. The ‘Limits to Growth’ by the Club of Rome,
‘Small is Beautiful’ by E F Schumacher and Gandhi’s prescription of a neighbourhood living are certain
promises. Especially Gandhi’s
comprehensive approach to life gives us a set of indicators for sustainability,
that are potential terms leading us to a wholistic way of life in tune with
nature. These Indicators are:
1. Inclusiveness and adaptability: trusteeship
2. Pro-human: being appropriate
3. Universal compatibility: Optimization
4. Nature-friendly: self_restraint lifestyle
Introduction:
This article attempts to find out the root of the challenges we
face and the sustainable response we are to find.
While humanity has innumerable scientific and material
achievements for individuals to cherish, the progress of civilization has
brought us to a defining crossroad, in which saner people began to wonder if
all these accomplishments came in vain.
We find in the modern living, social human steadily slips into
individual cocoon and tends to turn economy or politics self-centric or
individual centric. From cultural being
individual steadily turns into normative and dogmatic being, social beings are
morphed into institutional and political beings. Social ills like gender
disparity, discrimination of marginal people, continue to remain unabated. Poverty and unemployment remain rooted in
society; the rich and poor, west and east continue to remain as a cleft in the
face of humanity. Globally 800 million people go to bed hungry every night[1] even
while the world boasts of producing food in surplus. This is an irony when 30 per cent of the food
that comes to the plate never gets eaten.[2]
The race for riches and the
craze for consumerism subdue the essential symbiosis of life on earth. Climatic
change with its pollution and depletion threatens the very existence. Deforestation and desertification are rapidly
expanding (9.2 per cent in the last 35 years)[3]; the
size of rainforest is shrinking. Amazon forest alone lost 7900 Sq Km, five
times the size of Delhi, in a single year between August 2017 and July 2018.[4] NASA says, Mother ‘earth is in fever’[5], and
the temperature is alarmingly on the rise; consequently her children, the
species get extinct in the order of a dozen every day.[6]
While being on a global walk, individual forgets to be global in
perspective resulting in cultural clashes, and such terror expressions as
‘9/11’ October 07 (2023 Hamas attack and the following invasion by Israeli troupes
into Gaza Strip) the recent January 03, (ISIS suicide attack on Iran). In our
craving for the best in the world, we appear to pursue a perilous path.
The reason is conspicuous; unlimited growth, in all
dimensions. We do everything beyond
mother earth’s carrying capacity. World debt day / overshoot day suggests that
we humanity, finish off our annual ration (provided by nature) by the first 210
days every year,[7]
and then snatch away the food, for the remaining days, from the table of our
fellow brethren called plants, birds and animals.
Climate Crisis:
IPCC Chairperson Jim Skea spoke at COP28, Dubai saying
that human activity has led to changes to Earth’s climate of a magnitude
unprecedented over centuries, some of them irreversible… The UNEP Gap Report released a few days ago
shows that we are headed towards global warming of 3 degrees Celsius if we
carry on with current policies. And let
us not forget gaps in terms of adaptation and financing.
As the Chair of the IPCC, I can reassure
you that the scientific community is poised, using the resources available to
it, to support the outcomes of COP 28 in shaping climate action based on
science. But let us recall, science by itself is no substitute for action.
We try to contain the global warming by
1.5 degree Celsius, and within 2 degree
Celsius by 2100. Whereas, we reasonably apprehend that we may break the sealing
to peak at anywhere between 3.3 and 5.4 degree Celsius. Artic is already warmed
by 2.0 degree Celsius. We have lost 28 trillion tons of polar ice in less than
30 years.[8]
[9]
Health Crisis:
According to a Lancet study, 101 million people in India are
living with diabetes. Another study
states that the prevalence of diabetes in India stands at 11.4%,
while 35.5% of Indians suffer from hypertension, additionally abdominal obesity
stands at 40% across the population and female abdominal obesity is 50%.[10] [11]
Economic Crisis:
A report of the UNDP released in July 11,
2023 says, 1.1 Billion remain poor.[12]
It further says, 25 Countries halved
multidimensional poverty within 15 years. However the poverty reduction claims are more
statistical than actual. The ground reality is that the gap is ever
widening. For example, in Indian
villages where 45 per cent of the 1.46 billion population lives, it is considered that a person earning INR
2886 per month is not poor.
It amounts to less than Rs. 94.88 per day. The government of India has subsidized the
rural life to ensure poverty reduction considerably. However, in a constantly inflating economy[13] this amount
promises pretty little modern life.
Our poverty reduction method is
essentially to increase the GDP manifold so that the trickling down of fringe
benefits would make the bottom people enjoy a figurative increase of income above
poverty line that was set years ago.
For instance, a housemaid to come above
poverty (UN index of USD 2.25 per day, an income of USD 4090 or INR 348
thousand per annum for a family of 5_Indian average family size), the employer
must have manifold income, even then it is doubtful the employer would pay a salary
of Rs. 348,000 per annum (Rs. 29000/month). In the middle-class families, as of
now, the full-time maidservants are paid no more than 12000/month, and a vast
majority of the families do not keep full-time servants.
Politics: Rightwing propensity sway
across the globe. There is a general
apprehension that we are all losing our mooring, cultural identity and primacy;
and an inclination to cling to our
‘nativity’. Across much
of the world, voters are turning to populists who are intensely distrustful of
the institutions on which liberal democracy is built. [14]
Impact analysis:
The current
damage to the sustainability of life on earth is chiefly attributed to the
fossil fuel based development. The
manner of industrialization is condemnable. Our challenge is that our life is
deeply rooted in industrialized development and
Market based consumerist life that has a desire to consume without end.
However we must
be naïve to believe that it is the root cause of the problem. The actual cause
is that we have long been believing that humans are the masters of this earth
and the earth is our common property, for us to enjoy, exploit.
Even in the era
of climate crisis, we continued to believe that by altering the manner in which
we industrialize we can save the planet. By converting the fuels into green
energy we can contain global warming.
Even the noblest of the climate justice campaigners believe, that
we can solve the problem by owning the earth collectively. By that they mean,
we need to collectively take care of the earth.
Take for example, the GLOBAL CHOICES, an international campaign
group for climate security. It says, “The High Seas are areas beyond national
jurisdiction and in essence belong to all of us and also to the incredible
biodiversity and many creatures that call it home. It includes the frozen Ocean
Commons of the North Pole.[15]
Our problem of sustainability
is not what color our energy is but how much we consume. In a limited earth our disproportionate
consumption amounts to snatching away the food of the other beings (flora and
fauna).
‘If we adopt an industrialization based lifestyle we
it would strip the world bare like locusts.’ M K Gandhi (Young India, 20 12,
1928, p.422)
IPCC Chairperson, Jim Skea, at the COP28, Dubai, UAE,
confessed that, science by itself is no substitute for action.
Does the Ocean belong to all of us? Yes in praxis and a no in principle . Human who needs 2300 Kilocalorie per day, doesn’t
need the entire ocean, so to say, the entire landscape to lead a life. Gandhi’s view of swadeshi life, calls for a
contented life within a zone that is as far as the individual can cover by
foot. (read his message at YMCA, Madras_ February 16, 1916; Selected Writings, pp. 377-90)
Gandhi’s Response:
Gandhi wrote a seminal commentary ‘Hind Swaraj, Indian Home Rule’.
He argues in it, “Ideally I would rule out all machinery, even as I would
reject this very body, which is not helpful to salvation, and seek the absolute
liberation of the soul. From that point
of view I would reject all machinery, but machines will remain because, like
the body, they are inevitable.[16]
The Prophet of nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi proposes a
comprehensive sustainable lifestyle. In his search for Truth, he explored the
reality of life of humans in all its facets: socio, economic, political,
religious, bio and ecological, and proposed a life governed by the principles
of Swaraj (self regulation), Swadeshi (neighbourhoodliness) and Sarvodaya
(welfare of all), to make it the most sustainable life on earth. The society he visualized was a
decentralized, self-sustaining ‘gram rajya’(village republic, a decentralized
state of political governance). It is a life of “satya-grahi’ which means ‘a
life in alliance/adherence with truth.
While Gandhi was convinced of a satyagrahic life style and
striving to live that life himself through his ashrams, he was not in a
delusion about its practicality. He said that they are ideal visualization, for
which humanity would take time to mature.
The uniqueness of Gandhi was his pragmatism. He did not let his idealism bog him
down. He spoke of what could be
practically done to get out of this mess and he did put in to action. He was
realistic in his approach which earned him the epithet ‘Pragmatic idealist’.
Some of the pragmatic concepts Gandhi proposed were
revolutionary both in their veracity and
insight. They were sustainable in effect
and optimized in their approach. Optimization means, an act of changing an
existing process appropriately in order to increase the occurrence of favorable
outcomes and decrease the occurrence of undesirable outcomes.[17]
Optimization:
His pursuit, actually, represented an optimized approach to
life. It means, constantly retuning
one’s perspective over the various factors that codetermine the life and its
relationships, and the systems that govern the relationship, in a manner that
makes transactional relationship reciprocally sustainable. It means, doing everything in an optimum[18]
manner, in a way that is neither-less-nor-more.
One can see this optimum principle codetermining all his
approaches to life, be it personal or national, physical or spiritual.
Principles such as swadeshi (neighbourhoodliness – as consumer, producer),
khadi (hand made fabric) and village industries, village republic (gram rajya),
decentralized social order are some of the concepts essentially carrying
Gandhi’s idea of optimization.
For instance, Gandhi proposed technology be pro-human and
pro-nature (or appropriate, as EF Schumacher termed it later.). It can
neither be too rudiment to be of any use, nor be monstrous to the point of
overpowering the very user. He cited
sewing machine as one such appropriate machine.
It liberates the individual from the toils of hand stitching, while does
not lead to surplus production to the point of creating unemployment; it
consumes no electricity and pollutes nothing.
Economic Optimization:
Employment is a quantifiable resource within an economy. Mass production allows a few to usurp more
than the average share of the global production opportunity, leaving a large
section of the masses to be contended with the crumbs, far less than average,
creating huge ‘opportunity gap’ called unemployment. He proposed decentralized village industries
in place of global manufacturing conglomerates, in order to optimize the employment
availability within the given production possibility (demand). He proposed an economy that J C Kumarappa
term as ‘economy of permanence’. A bread-labour (ie., physically laboring to
earn livelihood) on land using appropriate tools is a life worth living, Gandhi
echoed the idea of Ruskin. It renders
justice to individual economy and ecology at the same time, sustainably.
Poverty and wealth are two sides of the same coin. The uniqueness
of Gandhi’s optimized approach was that while working on the removal of poverty
(poor must gear up - antyodaya) he was equally insisting upon ‘voluntary
poverty’ among those having surplus (the rich must gear down). The structural
arrangement Gandhi proposed for voluntary poverty was ‘Trusteeship’. He
proposed to Jamnalal Bajaj, a rich Indian businessman and an associate of
Gandhi, that he ‘be the trustee of his wealth and put it to the use of the poor
millions.’
Taking clue from Gandhi’s nonviolent appropriate economic ideas,
the British economist E F Schumacher wrote “Small is Beautiful: A study of
Economics as if People Mattered”. And, The Club of Rome, an association of
Nobel laureates, brought out the report ‘Limits to Growth’ out of the study
based on ‘computer simulation of exponential economic and population growth
with finite resources’. They all endorsed what Gandhi said about
self-restrained appropriate living, through optimization.
‘Ecological Debt Day’ is a
day that marks the point in each calendar year where human consumption of
natural resources exceeds the earth’s ability to replenish those resources that
year. At a sustainable rate of
consumption, Ecological Debt Day would fall at the end of each calendar year.
As of now, humans devour in 210 days the earth’s provisions that are meant for
365 days[19]. In this context what Gandhi said sounds more
prophetic: ‘there is enough for every human’s need but not everyone’s greed’;
‘consuming more than what we actually require amounts to stealing’, a violence
against nature. May be ‘fulfillment of needs’ and not the ‘pursuit of greed’,
which is essentially an optimized consumer behavior, would be the way to delay
the ‘Ecological debt day’ by few notches.
Appropriate technology:
As Gandhi
maintained that ‘life’ was the reference point, he insisted that tools and
instruments have to have ‘upholding life’ as their central purpose. A tool
cannot be accepted merely because it is sophisticated. It has to be as
efficient as the individual life necessitates and only as effective as the law
of nature permits. In this sense Gandhi
had both lower and upper limits for every means and method, tool and
technology, to ensure that they were in harmony with all the other factors at
play.
Economics as
an art of material transaction is intrinsically bound to the welfare of the
people concerned. No instrument, however efficient and sophisticated, could be
allowed if it did not hold ‘the welfare of all’ as its central purpose. Gandhi said, ‘What I object to is the craze
for machinery, not machinery as such.’[20] ‘The craze is for what they call
labour-saving machinery. Men go on “saving labour” till thousands are without
work and thrown out on the open streets to die of starvation.’[21] The Charkha
is one of the best examples of appropriate technology in Gandhi’s time; it has
now been improvised and today we have Amber Charkha with eight spindles,
and solar driven Amber Charkha with sixteen spindles. These charkas
employs individuals to earn sufficiently, and doe not allow one to earn more
than what is sufficient.
Similarly, governance structure must be strong enough to govern,
and small enough (for the last person) to access. Gandhi proposed the concept
of decentralized political order. Gramrajya
or panchayat rajya (village republic) and its concentric circular
relationship with other systems is what Gandhi believed, would deliver best
possible justice to people. These are
essentially an optimized political approach to life.
Society must be in right size enough for a symbiotic life; no more no less.
Social Optimization:
The concept of village republic (gram rajya) Gandhi proposed was
an optimized social order. Individual
requires social association (cooperation and mutual aid). A healthy society would be one in which
individual can connect personally with fellow beings. However, individual has serious limitation to
the extent one can stretch out socially and geographically. In other words, a
society cannot expand endlessly without making its members largely
anonymous. Society, according to
Gandhi, should not expand beyond individuals’ ability to comprehend it and to
relate personally with rest of the members and their functions. His visualization of a social order akin to
Oceanic Circle, with individual at the centre, encircled by family, village,
district, state, nation and the world one after the other, carries the spirit
of optimization. In the inner circles, ie., family and village, it is self-rule
in the personal sense, and in the circles beyond, the relationship is more representative
than personal.
Optimization and diversity:
Global living has brought diverse humans to co-exist in close
quarters. People of different religions,
ethnic and cultural orientation have come to live in every locality.
Information technology has removed the geo distance anyway. Between individual’s religio-cultural
affiliation and the social diversity, we need to adopt a mean-point of behavior
to be compatible. One of Gandhi’s eleven vows ‘equal reverence for all
religions’ (Sarva Dharma sambhava) explains this essential virtue
especially for global humans. It is,
appreciating plurality while being rooted to one’s faith.
When E Stanley Jones an American Methodist priest asked Gandhi,
“Christ says ‘love thy neighbour’, what better message of nonviolence could you
give?” Gandhi responded saying ‘I have
no enemy’. The ‘wrong and wrong doer
are not one’. I am against the ‘wrong’, the wrong doer is my person, he
stated. More than loving one’s enemy,
overcoming the habit of seeing an ‘enemy’ in others, is important.
In the spectrum of human behavior violence and nonviolence
constitute two ends; absolute violence being one extreme and puritan
nonviolence being the other. Though a
proponent of nonviolence, Gandhi did not go for the extreme expression, but
stuck to what are practical. Thus, he was reconciled to certain inevitable
commission of violence, such as ‘driving away animals that spoils cultivation’.
That is an optimized nonviolence.
Gandhi employed his optimum approach to health and sanitation too.
Today, as World Health Organization has declared, ‘obesity’ is a global
epidemic and a source of all life style hazards. Gandhi argues, “A man with extraordinary
physic is not necessarily healthy. He has merely developed his musculature,
possibly at the expense of something else” Gandhi says. In his book Key to health he proposed a
balanced life of just sufficiently nutritious food, active physical life, good
sleep and healthy thinking. The
eco-friendly toilet he designed, called ‘wardha latrine’ was one of the best
optimized response to sanitation, as it was serving the domestic need while
being sustainable both economically and ecologically.
Decentralization:
In a society
consisting of ordinary humans of moderate capabilities, decentralisation is the
way to optimize economics.
Decentralization means localization or customization, and not
dissipation or disintegration. It aims at moving systems and structures towards
appropriate or optimum size, no less and no more, so that they operate
gainfully for the people concerned.
Centralization
amounts to concentration. It leaves
power in the hands of a few to wield at the expense of many. It is against the
laws of nature and is essentially a defiant practice. Gandhi proposed
decentralisation of economic and political arrangements. Talking about
governance, he quoted Thoreau: ‘. . . that government is best which governs
least’.[22]
Decentralisation, E.F. Schumacher wrote, is ‘to
evolve a more democratic and dignified system of industrial administration, a
more humane employment of machinery, and a more intelligent utilization of the
fruits of human ingenuity and effort’.[23]
Large
industries, Gandhi held, are a means for a few to monopolize employment
opportunities. Instead, he proposed an economic conduct based on village and
cottage industries supported by ‘appropriate technologies’[24]
as the best economic order.
Decentralization of production opportunities is a precondition for
‘non-exploitative’ living.[25] Decentralization makes people the centre of
power, and they become the operators of their own economy. In such an economic
system, there will be an organic relationship between production, distribution
and consumption,[26] in a manner
that is just and equitable.
Such an
economic order entails a fairly uniform distribution of knowledge, awareness
and sense of responsibility. Creating such a discipline in society too is part
of decentralisation. Hence Gandhi
introduced Nayee Talim—'new
education’—which is all about decentralized and appropriate pedagogy for life
skills-centric knowledge distribution. Knowledge travels from a more
concentrated place to a less concentrated place. This pedagogy is an art of inclusivity yet
mutual enrichment of life within a community—just essential learning and no
more no less, through appropriate methods (learning by doing), from within an
accessible source (community), and towards a no-less-no-more life.[27]
‘If India is
to evolve along non-violent lines; it will have to decentralize many things.
Centralization cannot be sustained and defended without adequate force,’[28] Gandhi
asserted.
Characteristics of a Sustainable practice:
Sustainability
is characterized by four factors. They are: pro-individual, pro-community,
pro-life and pro-Creation
5.
Functional
inclusiveness and adaptability: A system
must be accessible down to the last member of the society in which it operates;
there should be a belief that every member is a stakeholder of the system.[29]
- Pro-human: Besides being pro-individuals, a system
has to be pro-human. This means the system (the economy, for instance)
would work for the good of individual without losing sight of the good of
all. It functions in compliance with the principle of welfare for all,
including those outside the scope of the system.[30]
It means not negating the interests of any,
directly or indirectly. For example, ‘trade balance’. If one community is procuring of raw
materials (cotton, for instance, as the British did) from another community for
its own growth without sharing the economic benefits—say, employment—that those
resources generate with the producer community, it amounts to unethical
conduct. Such procurement, in effect, is exploitation or misappropriation, on
account of the unilateral gains it leads to (or the loss it imposes on the
other).[31] Gandhi’s campaign for Swadeshi (local
production for local consumption, such as Khadi and gramodyog products) came as
a response to this unethical element in the global economy at that point of
time.
- Universal compatibility: A system cannot serve some among
humanity at the expense of other lives. That would be incompatible with
the idea of universal good for all. Gandhi wrote, ‘I want to realize
brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but with
all life, even with the crawling things upon earth, because we claim
descent from the same God, and that being so, all life in whatever form it
appears must be essentially one.’[32]
- Nature-friendly: To be sustainable, a system
has to work in tandem with the laws of nature. Living in compliance with the law of
nature is the very basis of our life.
Gandhi said: ‘I suggest that we are thieves in a way. If I take
anything that I do not need for my own immediate use and keep it, I thieve
it from somebody else. It is the
fundamental law, without exception, that nature produces enough for our
wants from day to day; and if only everybody took enough for himself and
nothing more, there would be no pauperism in this world, and there would
be no human dying of starvation.’[33]
Conclusion:
As Robert
Swan said, “ The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else
will save it.” The present climate
crisis suggests that we do not have time to wait and think. It is time for us to act. Gandhi gives us
sufficiently tested concepts of sustainable living, along with workable
systemic structural designs. They are
essentially nonviolent models.
Nonviolence means non-violation of the fundamentals of life.
Sustainability is brought about by a process we know as ‘ Optimization’ Optimization
is understood as an act of making apt / appropriate use of an opportunity or a
situation or resources. In the layman’s
language , optimization can be stated as
‘no-more-no-less’ state of affair.
Nature sustains life following the principle of optimization. In our
physical body we find it in the form of homeostasis. Everything about
the body is maintained at their optimum level.
Gandhi did
not use the term ‘sustainable’ ‘optimum’ or ‘appropriate’. Nevertheless, in all his reformation
endeavours, one can see that he attempted to optimize systems and structures so
that the outcomes would be equitable, just and sustainable, amounting to the
welfare of all. His C oncepts of Gramrajya, Swadeshi, Khadi,
etc., embody these qualities. The idea of optimization helps us understand what is sustainable
and what is not.
What the Prophet of nonviolence, Mahatma Gandhi proposed was a
comprehensive sustainable lifestyle. In his search for Truth, he explored the
reality of life of humans in all its facets: socio, economic, political,
religious, bio and ecologically, and proposed a life governed by the principles
of Swaraj, Swadeshi and Sarvodaya, to make it the most sustainable life on
earth. The society he visualized was a
decentralized, self sustaining ‘gram rajya’. . It is a life of “satya-grahi’
one who life in alliance with truth.
The
principles and concepts he proposed were optimized, appropriate, and
naturalized. His practices had strong features of what we not term as
sustainability. His sustainability is
characterized by four key factors. They are: being pro-individual,
pro-community, pro-life and
pro-Creation.
D John Chelladurai
Dean, FIDS, MGM University,
Chh. Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra, India
djohnchelladurai@gmail.com
+91 94 219 25 146
Nov 13
2025
