Finding a better way to shape our future

Arun Maira

Former Member, Planning Commission

POLICY pundits say that we are facing a poly-crisis. They disagree about many things. How much will the GDP grow next year, and even how much it grew last year? How much poverty has been reduced, and even what is poverty? Whether, with growth, employment and incomes have been going up sufficiently for the 90 per cent below or only for the 10 per cent on top?

While economists debate how much GDP is required to create adequate employment, we are losing the ground that supports our economic growth and our lives.

While economists debate how much GDP is required to create adequate employment, we are losing the ground beneath that supports our economic growth and our lives. India has 17 per cent of the world’s population living on 2.4 per cent of the world’s land. In 2014, India ranked 155 out of 178 countries on the global Environment Performance Index. In 2022, India slipped to the very bottom: 180th out of 180. India’s pattern of growth is not sustainable.

We cannot rely any longer on economists who are debating whether the present government or the previous one is responsible for the ship sinking slowly. We need a new ship — a new paradigm of inclusive and sustainable growth — to take everyone to a safer future. How will we change the ship’s design while we are sailing on it together? Our existence depends on answers to these fundamental questions.

The scientific revolution began in 17th-century Europe with Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes among its founders. Descartes promoted the concept of a ‘rational man’. Bacon declared that science would give man the power to control unruly nature. The modern scientific method of objectively studying all phenomena with data, pushing aside emotions and faith in mystical forces, was applied in the natural sciences to begin with, and then in the social sciences. Economics, the most mathematised social science, emerged as the emperor of social sciences in the 20th century. It is the only social science with a Nobel Prize, first awarded in 1969, following the five other Nobels — for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace — which were instituted in 1895.

Science has advanced by fragmenting into many specialisations. As science advances, experts know more and more about less and less. There are many specialisations within medicine alone. The effects of the disappearance of general physicians on health are visible. The cost of healthcare is rising, while overall wellbeing is declining. Though biological bodies can be kept alive longer with modern science, anxiety and mental depression on account of poor health are increasing, even in countries with the most advanced medical systems.

Existential anxiety is growing among youth in the 21st century. They are concerned about the health of the planet, and about the condition of economies that are not creating enough opportunities for them to work with dignity and earn enough. Depression is increasing in young people, as well as the use of drugs and resort to violence, to release their frustration. A higher GDP will not solve these problems.

Just as the health of a human being cannot be measured by the size of the body, nor health improved by making only the stomach stronger, the health of human society and its natural environment cannot be improved by increasing the size of its economy or measured by the GDP. Social, environmental, economic and political systems must work together to improve the wellbeing of the whole. A new science of systems is required to enable experts in diverse sciences to understand the whole of which each is only a part. They must listen to each other and learn together.

The world is divided into fragments by walls rising among people with different beliefs, different life experiences and formal education in different subjects. Rich people live in physically gated communities separated from the poor outside. They travel around the world and meet other people like themselves. They are global citizens who belong nowhere. Social media has created higher walls between people we like and those we don’t. All hurl abuse at others over the walls. They don’t want to listen to the other side and understand why others think the way they do.

India has many problems to solve, according to experts. These are related to the environment, society, jobs, inequality, agriculture, industry, security, etc. While experts in their separate disciplines have narrow solutions to each problem, the people on the ground experience combinations of the problems. Experts must get off their pedestals and humbly listen to the people to learn the reality. They live on the common land they depend on for their lives, along with the birds, animals and trees around them. They know how the system around them works. Systemic global problems must be solved locally to ensure that they are the right solutions.

Yoga teaches us that the discipline of deep breathing is essential for improving the wellbeing of the human mind and body, which is a complex system. Similarly, the discipline of deep listening to others we perceive as ‘not like us’ is vital to enhancing the wellbeing of society and the earth we share.

The ‘technology’ of listening is simpler than the esoteric technologies of gene editing. Children in schools are not taught to listen; they are taught to speak and write clearly and win debates. They learn to compete, not how to collaborate. Everyone wants to be heard and seen on social media. Few are curious to learn about the world we share from the perspective of others. Young people are being driven to careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, or Economics and Management). They don’t learn what it means to be human.

The world is going deeper into darkness by pursuing data sciences rather than the science of dialogue. And, in a mad competition for more for ourselves, we are destroying our common ground and ourselves. We must learn to listen deeply to people who are not like us, so that we can understand the world of which we are small parts, and collaboratively shape a future that is good for everyone.

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