If you haven’t read E F Schumacher yet, you must. This German-born British economist has been a childhood favourite of mine. The author of the epoch, Small is beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973), left a very early impression in my mind as a kid growing up in the seventies. Small is indeed beautiful. More so today. Even as I am all grown up.
In 2022 (and in this article), I want to spin off a new phrase—”Soft is Beautiful”—from Schumacher’s popular words. We live in a time when we are surrounded by the hard and the real and the palpable. In the crevices of everything hard, there lies the soft. In many ways, this “soft huge thing” that is ubiquitous everywhere (but seldom recognised to be important enough) is quite like the largest ‘organ’ (if you may call it that) of the human body, the interstitium. We still believe the skin is it. The hard rules over the soft. What you see wins over what you don’t.
Let me then jump out of economics and the physiology of the human body and dive straight into the lives we lead. We live in a society that is fast-tracked in every manner. We worship new gods today. We don’t worship trees as much as we do technologies that could get us fresh air. We don’t worship heritage, as we do the gigantic new buildings that spur our economic endeavour further and beyond. We don’t worship what is clean as much as we do what dirties up our planet the most.
Have we gone crazy? No. Doesn’t quite seem like that as yet. It is just that we prioritise interests and concerns. We do largely believe that the world is run by money. And making this money, and eventually using this to make the world look “beautiful”, seems to be the primary driving force of the new society. And if that’s right, it’s all a matter of perspective. It’s all about where you stand and what you see. This perspective is the point of repetitive and laborious debate.
I do believe we are just too close to the book to be able to read it. We need to step back and think. Let me isolate some thinking points on issues that get to the raw end of the perspective stick. Let me just list three. And maybe make us feel a wee bit guilty, enough to act.
1. Air quality: The just-released Swizz-based IQAir’s World Air Quality Report 2021 lists New Delhi as the most-polluted capital city in the world. And that too, for the fourth successive year. Now this is a dubious distinction that makes our capital city rub shoulders with Dhaka (Bangladesh), N’Djamena (Chad) and Dushanbe (Tajikistan) in the top four.
This dubious distinction of Delhi being the pollution capital of the world is not a tag to be proud of. We have had this dog tag for long and we have done precious little to jump out of the box and solve the issue.
Of all the pollution types any city grapples with, the case of air is the worst of them all. However, what we see is what we tackle. Air pollution is not seen as much as that of every other kind. Pollution of land, water, sound and even visual (in terms of billboards and more) are seen more and acted upon. What you don’t see is what you don’t recognise. Even as it eats into our very lives, with a fresh new report saying that the pollution in Delhi cuts short lives by 1.5 years.
Slow death is never an issue, is it? Society is busy with sudden deaths, mostly. It’s a matter of perspective.
2. Heritage: Now this is a really niche one. Those who think of heritage are considered to be people with nothing else to do. They are often considered to be those who sit atop Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: self-actualising folk who live in ivory towers of their own. Oftentimes of their own making.
Every big city of ours has seen the wrecking of the old to replace it with the new. Heritage structures that could have been saved and used (not as museums alone, but as repurposed commercial spaces), are often quickly, cleverly and quietly erased. Bengaluru just saw one such quick and decisive guerilla action with the erasure of Empire Talkies (Empire theatre) that sat as a heritage jewel on Mahatma Gandhi Road.
Let’s accept a current day fact though. Commerce is important. Valuable real estate plots on which old and dilapidated structures sit are a waste of resources. Why lock up a resource when you can get it to unlock potential money trapped in it? It’s a matter of perspective.
3. Trees: In the beginning, there were trees. These trees oftentimes came with the lay of the land. We encroached on our forests and farmlands to build cities. As we did this, we were kind to some trees that did not come in our way and cruel to others that did. Our early forefathers were wise enough to build a little and preserve a lot more. Nature and its bounty were still respected. Human greed was still under control.
And then came the big city, its big needs, its wants, its desires, its aspirations and more importantly its big greed. The trees got chopped, slowly but surely. In the beginning, when we wanted a tree out of the way, we did it brazenly. And later, as civil society kept watch, we did it quickly, quietly and cleverly. The protective rules exist though. More in the breach than in compliance.
The trees in our big cities are fast vanishing. Public projects are as guilty as private ones. Greed to that extent is equal, public or private. And governments are today contemplating bringing in technology to solve the issue. Outdoor ambient air purifiers are making their quiet entry into our public spaces. Wait till many of us require an indoor air-purifier to keep our oxygen saturation intact. If technology can replace a tree, why bother keeping them? It’s a matter of perspective.
I must shut down this tirade then. I have picked only three soft spaces in our public domain to discuss. The important point is to rethink perspectives. At least now. Before it’s late. Too late.
Soft is beautiful. Soft is stuff that does not make immediate money for us. Soft is stuff we don’t see or even smell. Soft is not fashionable. Soft is not mass. And soft does not belong to anyone. It belongs to everybody. Soft is public property.
But soft can kill. Kill us physically, and more importantly kill even our sensibilities. Soft is the interstitium in our body that you and I don’t recognise exists yet.
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults
(harishbijoor@hotmail.com)