I won’t deny that Indian journalist Swaraaj Chauhan’s posts over at The Moderate Voice frequently rankle me. His most recent, a commentary on an article on global warming in The Economist, is a good example. Here’s his opening:
The blame game has already been going on, and is likely to become ugly and fierce as to who is causing maximum pollution and contributing towards visible changes in environment.
On the one side we have “developed†countries refusing to have a critical look at their reckless consumerism. While on the other are the “developing†countries wanting to mindlessly ape the Western lifestyle and thus putting an unbearable burden on the scarce resources on our planet earth.
The highlighting is mine.
This strikes me as a false dichotomy although it’s pretty hard to tell without an operative definition of “reckless consumerism”. Perhaps that’s one of those Humpty-Dumpty phrases, meaning exactly what the author wants it to mean, no more, no less. Does “mindlessly ape the Western lifestyle” mean “want the same things as people in Western countries do”? Why is that a bad thing?
Do I practice “reckless consumerism”? I drive a 20 year old automobile less than 200 miles a month. The appliances I own are, on the average, 10 years old. I buy just enough food to keep my miserable carcass moving around and buy clothes when the ones I have wear out (sometime after, I think my wife would say). Is it the Internet connection that I’m using to write this post on that Chauhan objects to? Or my calling my mother in St. Louis on the telephone a couple of times a week? The handful of books I buy each year?
Were Indians “mindlessly aping” Western lifestyles more or less when India had its idiotic policy of autarky? Were they better or worse off? Are the 214 million people in India who are undernourished while the country like China has on average entered the middle class of national economies due to reckless consumerism? Were a larger or smaller proportion of Indians in need when Indians mindlessly aped the West less?
I note in passing that China and, I believe, India both subsidize the price of gasoline, i.e. sell it to their citizens at prices below world prices. Is this an example of mindlessly aping Western lifestyles? I’m not aware of any Western countries that subsidize the price of gasoline.
I, poor, ignorant, benighted soul that I am continue to believe that the problems in China and India are not that they have too much reckless consumerism but not nearly enough and certainly not being practiced by enough of their people. This reckless consumerism which Swaraaj Chauhan blames for the world’s ills has, in my uninformed opinion, helped more people in China and India out of poverty than all of the development programs ever conceived.
A couple of additional questions for Swaraaj Chauhan: are poverty and starvation sustainable? Do the poor and starving think of them that way?
Thank you. As an old hack I love to rankle people…because it is only then they shed their lethargy and participate in a debate, so essential for open societies and democracies.
You have raised a very vital question about “consumerism”. I would like to discuss this issue in detail in a future post at The Moderate Voice blog.
Meanwhile I would like to quote Mahatma Gandhi: “On this earth there is enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed”.
I have intentionally used the word “reckless” while talking of consumerism in my post, and also emphasised our responsibility as world citizens to ensure that our “greed” does not damage the environment in a manner that we do no get to enjoy whatever we are enjoying
We must eat consume from the interest and not from the capital.
More later…but thanks for responding to my post. I have enough humility to agree with you if you make some convincing points…And I have the courage to say that I was wrong.
You’ll find a lot of leftover socialism in Indian intelligensia even today, more than a decade after India’s marriage with socialism ended.
They usually construct strawmen to emphasise the need to reduce consumption by pointing out the large sections that are starving while other parts of society binge on consumerism. While doing so they ignore the fact that today starvation is almost always a result of an inefficient distribution system rather than of insufficient production, and cannot be wished away by reducing the consumption of those with access to the system.
I personally find it retarded, but unfortunately there seem to be far too many people willing to curse western consumerism while ignoring the fact that America’s consumption creates jobs in China and India and feeds hundreds of millions of households.