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
+91 94 219 25 146
Nov 13 2025
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