My article for the St. Gallen Symposium 2016 (Selected among top-21 articles from around the world)

 

Question: What are the alternatives to economic growth?

 

Stop Measuring Happiness from Material Gains

 

Starting right from the dawn of our species, we have been trying to improve our quality of life through acquiring and modifying the natural resources according to our needs. Wheel and fire, and many other inventions of the Stone Age prepared the most fundamental ground on which millenniums later the modern industries have germinated. For thousands of years, we have propelled ourselves as distinct communities toward exploring newer resources, so we could obtain higher returns while sharing such resources with others. This became the foundational mechanism of the global economy.  It was all going unquestioned until we discovered that our planet has a limitation to the amount of resources it can supply and our way of modifying them to attract buyers has consequences that are not pleasing to the natural eco-system. However, since we have already been into the habit of enhancing our lives with material gains for tens of centuries, we are finding it extremely difficult to shift the momentum in any direction that is different from economic growth. Bringing about this shift is critical for our survival and hence, through this essay, I challenge our ages-old fascination with production oriented growth and offer a new green mind-centric approach which I believe can take us far into the future in a peaceful and sustainable manner.

 

Impact on the ecosystem

Our snail-pacing annual global production received a forward jerk in the nineteenth century with the advent of industrial revolution.  An increased supply swelled up demand which in this case increased the production rate. An increased production rate required setting up more industries which provided jobs to a large number of people. The magnitude of total production could be directly correlated with the hike in our energy use such as from oil whose global production after its discovery rose exponentially in the last century15. All these developments appeared hunky-dory in the beginning because first, the industrial progress was a new achievement for humankind and second, it rapidly transformed the lives of common masses. The population too was only a fraction of what it is today so the energy demand was still within the meeting capacity of the earth. Now, with advancements in science and technology, we have developed a variety of machines which are changing human life experience everyday but there has not been any significant shift from our dependence on non-renewable energy reserves. Being an environmental scientist, I am absolutely positive that switching to renewable energy sources is critical to ensuring our survival on earth.  Oil along with coal are two major non-renewable sources of energy which heavily pollute the environment upon combustion. Nevertheless, as per the 2015 report of the International Energy Agency, 60% of the global energy needs are still being met by coal and oil combined12. Global CO2 concentration is nearing 400 ppm, our glaciers are receding, weather patterns randomizing and still if all we care about is which is the new car in the market, we are definitely walking down the road to self-annihilation.

 

Has all this economic progress brought true joy in our lives?

This is an important question. Nearly every material thing the modern world is after is believed to give us joy. However, is that really happening? There are myriads of consequences of economic progress which circle around to the question of whether this progress has made us any happier than we were ages back. I mean, yes, today we have better medical facilities, machines have helped us develop a proper scientific understanding of the universe and there is no corner on the earth which cannot be reached in a matter of a few hours. But the problem is that we did not stop using our intellect while we were being benign to nature. It seems that the desire to want more is hardwired in our species and it has driven us into a vicious cycle of wanting more and new, and producing more and new.

We were taught throughout the past several decades that economic growth is good and that growth, work and wealth are all directly proportional to each other. The idea was nicely applicable around the mid-twentieth century because the economic progress was generating more employment opportunities for the common masses. The motivation was to pull more and more families out of poverty. However, today our focus has shifted from mind to matter. Businesses are concentrating on maximizing their profit margins and with the production rates going off the charts, manufacturers are trying to reduce the input costs which include cutting manpower. It is also clear that the current economic setup has not been successful in reducing income inequality10. Islands of wealth have emerged everywhere. The severity of inequality could be understood from the New Oxfam Report 2016 that says that the richest 62 individuals in the world today own as much wealth as half the global population. It also says that the collective wealth of the poor half of the world’s population i.e. about 3.6 billion people, has reduced by 1 trillion US dollars in the last five years1. This fact is representative of a staggering heterogeneity in the distribution of wealth across the world. Is this sustainable? Could our species peacefully and collectively go a long way into the future embracing the current economic strategies? I highly doubt it!

 

It is not puzzling that our satisfaction from life is directly related to the environmental conditions we are subjected to6, 7, 14. Clean environment serves as a nurturing womb inside which a healthy body germinates and thrives. The current form of economic operations is definitely not contributing to improving our environment. On the contrary, studies by the European Environment Agency have shown that environmental damage starts to decline as any economy slows down. This is easy to understand since when the economy slows down, pollutant release from transport and manufacturing industries decreases.

 

In the context of human happiness, it is also relevant to think about social cohesiveness as a function of economic progress. Studies have shown that economic progress or increase in income has not necessarily translated into personal happiness4, 13. We may have built large industrial infrastructures and lead a fast paced life where every second seems to be important but has this succeeded in bringing humans closer to each other? One may jump to ‘yes’ as an answer because through technology we are now connected with more people around the world than we ever used to be. But, here it is important to stress the word ‘connected’. Technology has only ‘connected’ us across borders. The happiness humans seek arises from interpersonal bonds3 which by our nature as social animals could happen mostly only by spending quality time with people in physical proximity.

 

Time to redefine our perception of happiness

It is about time that we start changing our line of thought. We need to strike the core of the issue- our craving for more. It begins at the individual level and builds up to become a voracious economy gorging on nature’s resources expectorating poison into the ecosphere. There is an urgent need to shift our desires from accumulating more material wealth to acquiring more satisfaction from what we have. The challenge is that this cannot be dictated to people. That will just not be the right form of governance and could also stir up resistance. In fact it does not need to be a top-down approach at all.

 

The idea is to develop an economy that is not just stable and non-fluctuating in size but also smart. An economy in which maintaining the right environmental conditions for life is the controlling parameter of all activities. In such economy, wealth is homogenously distributed to prevent people from competing with each other for greater wealth. A recent study published in Nature showed that visibility of wealth within a social network increases economic inequality over time11. I strongly believe that we need to stop finding joy in being materially richer than others and should start seeing others as companions instead of competitors. This change could be brought by smartly channeling people’s thinking in the direction of financial equality. Taxation could be a powerful tool to direct momentum towards monetary homogeneity. For example: if a family of four owns three televisions, they should be liable to pay additional tax for maintaining two extra televisions. Not only will this discourage people from buying more televisions, it will also keep the television production in check reducing its environmental footprint.

 

The leveling of purchasing power across a society will drive the industries to produce products that would be affordable by everyone. Hence, the consumption of products will become a question of consumer’s choice and not a question of his or her financial capability. If they start consuming more, heavy taxation will drive the consumption back down to the original level. Upon arriving at such stage, awareness programs would be more effective in promoting the idea of green consumption among people. Research carried out by Dr. Nikolas A. Christakis at Yale University has shown that through a judicious bottom-up approach, where only a small number of individuals nominated by a social group are targeted to instill a change, it is possible to change the behavior of the entire social group9. It could be an efficient and economical strategy for creating public awareness. This whole plan also brings up another challenge. There are a variety of jobs in our society and they all require different intensities of mental or physical labor. If everyone gets paid equally, no one would want to take up the more strenuous jobs. This is where incentives would be necessary but instead of differences in salaries, those incentives would be differences in paid vacations or any other non-monetary benefit. Hence in one case, a manager would get more paid vacations than a clerk. While the manager is on vacation, the position will be handled by another person who would have returned from vacation. This way, while more people will get employed, they will also have more time to spend with their families and on hobbies to attain mental peace and life satisfaction.

 

As another important consequence, since salaries would be similar, the driving force behind people choosing to take up more mentally or physically strenuous jobs will only purely be their interest. Pure interest will drive better and brighter innovation controlled by the environmental friendliness parameter. In terms of benefits to the industries, a possibility could be that those producing green products or products through green mechanisms would get more advertisement space in the national media at a lower rate. Other incentives could include acquiring inputs such as electricity and raw materials at cheaper rates. Agricultural activities and other businesses that focus on maintaining the well-being of nature such as river cleaning, forestry etc. could be given additional support by the governments. As an immediate result, we would be able to regrow our lost forest cover because a society that controls its consumption would not require increasing the food production.

 

Could this be achieved?

I conduct scientific research on the atmosphere and study the effects of anthropogenic emissions on global climate and public health. In this process, I am continually confronted by the pressing issues with economic progress and the repercussions of our recklessness for our collective future2,8. I am convinced that implementation of these solutions is contingent upon reorienting our minds away from material gains. Until we stop measuring our happiness from what we consume and start measuring it from what we give back to the planet, we cannot march into the future as one sustainable society. I find that our way of deciding the value of an individual is flawed to its core. Instead of deciding it from a balance between what the individual could give to the ecology and to the human society, we only decide a person’s worth from what comforts he or she could bring to us. It is disastrous because we are ignoring nature, the entity that sustains us and rest of the life forms in the first place. Continuing ahead on this track, we would completely loose harmony with nature which is dangerous because nature is and will forever be an overpowering, overwhelming force. However, the fact that we are mulling over the alternatives to economic growth tells me that we as species are humble enough to criticize our choices. The fact that our minds could register the problems with our current mode of operating assures me that we may also have the ability to solve them. Slowly but collectively still, we are moving forward in the right direction.

 

References

1. An Economy for the 1%: How Privilege and Power in the Economy Drive Extreme Inequality and How this Can Be Stopped. 210 Oxfam Briefing Paper 2016.

2. Baklanov, A., Molina, L.T., Gauss, M., 2016. Megacities, air quality and climate. Atmos. Environ. 126, pp.  235-249.

3. Baumeister, R.F., Leary, M.R., 1995. The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachment as a Fundamental Human Motivation. Psychological Bulletin, vol. 117, no. 3, 497-529.

4. Easterlin, R.A., 1974. Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence. In Paul A. David and Melvin W. Reder, eds., Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz, New York: Academic Press, Inc.

5. European Environment Agency. Economic Growth Must be De-coupled from Environmental Harm- the EEA Evaluates Findings from 2011.

6. Frey, B.S., Luechinger, S., Stutzer, A., 2009. The Life Satisfaction Approach to Environmental Valuation. IZA Discussion Paper No. 4478.

7. Garcia-Mainar, I., Montuenga, V.M., Navarro-Paniagua, M., 2015. Workplace Environmental Conditions and Life Satisfaction in Spain. Ecological Economics, vol. 119, pp. 136-146.

8. Gorham, R., 2002. Air Pollution from Ground Transportation: An Assessment of Causes, Strategies and Tactics, And Proposed Actions for the International Community. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations.

9. Kim, D.A., Hwong, A.R., Stafford, D., Hughes, D.A., O’Malley, A.J., Fowler, J.H., and Christakis, N.A., 2015. Social network targeting to maximize population behavior change: a cluster randomized controlled trial. The Lancet. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60095-2

10. Majumdar, S., Partridge, M.D., Impact of Economic Growth on Income Inequality: A Regional Perspective, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, Annual Meeting, July 26-28, 2009.

11. Nishi, A., Shirado, H., Rand, D.G., Christakis, N.A., 2015. Inequality and Visibility of Wealth in Experimental Social Networks. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature15392

12. OECD, International Energy Agency, 2015. Key World Energy Statistics Report.

13. Oishi, S., Kesebir, S., 2015. Income Inequality Explains Why Economic Growth Does Not Always Translate to An Increase in Happiness. Psychological Science 1-9.

14. Silva, J., F. de Keulenaer and N. Johnstone (2012),“Environmental Quality and Life Satisfaction: Evidence Based on Micro-Data”, OECD Environment Working Papers, no. 44, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k9cw678dlr0-en

15. http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Energy-Production-Statistics#tspQvChart

 

 

 

 

Article for Brainfeed Magazine, October 2016 issue.

 

Orienting Young Minds Towards Research and Its Implications for National Prosperity.

 

In general, intelligence and curiosity helically and inextricably curve around each other, which means it is likely that an intelligent lifeform will also be quite inquisitive. Humans are a very obvious, and in the known habitable universe, the strongest example of this evolutionary coupling. We have the ability to observe and comprehend the intricacies of a large number of physical phenomena recognized by our senses. In sync with our increasing understanding over time, we have modified what is naturally available into way more complex contrivances raising our species above all others on Earth.

 

 

Human society has now arrived at a point in its advancement where most of the straight-forward, naked eye observations have been accounted for and can no longer push us forward. They certainly do continue to demonstrate the inherent curiosity embedded in our genes but technologies based on simple physical contraptions are rapidly phasing out. For example, no one at the forefront of science today is interested in concentrating energy with a lens using sunlight but many are interested in the more difficult idea of reducing the speed of sunlight. A plethora of such examples exist not only in science and engineering but also in other fields such as business where economy has evolved from barter system into a complex planetary scale organism feeding on the monetary activities of billions of people. The world now has many multi-disciplinary, complicated systems working in coordination in the backdrop to hold the anthropogenic infrastructure together in the way we see it around us. Introducing a novelty in this setup to take it to the next evolutionary level is an extremely challenging feat and hence is highly valued. It is generally clear that nations which are continually experimenting with new ideas and are therefore eventually coming out with successful applications are ahead of others in terms of their prosperity and quality of human life.

 

 

Living in the western world, I observe that the confidence to build and try out something new is instilled quite early on during studies in an individual and that confidence then stays on for life. Here, students are encouraged to work very hard to maintain originality and to believe in their ability to invent or explore while also staying ready to fail in trying. It is seen as perfectly fine to fail if you did sweat hard in trying to succeed. Courses deal with state-of-the-art ideas and the evaluation process requires a student to produce their own opinions or ideas using their intellectual capacity while of course learning from useful literature. Performing such an evaluation is exacting on teachers because of the variability in student responses but this is also where the teaching spirit is put to test. The teachers are responsible for individually assessing a student’s originality, identifying scopes of improvement and continually encouraging thinking out of the box wherever possible. There is some flexibility in the transaction of knowledge between a student and a teacher in that answers do not necessarily have to come from the prescribed book in class for them to be correct. Students are motivated to research multiple sources of information- printed, collected on field or videoed and ask questions. In this way, the collective effort of both students and teachers produces a good number of educated individuals and not all such informed individuals who graduated regurgitating information from only a prescribed text book. A mode of academic operation of this kind results in students and in turn a national workforce which does not wait for other countries to innovate but rather strives to stay on top by generating its own novel solutions to its existing problems. The fundamental aspiration behind this endeavor is to employ the combined mental creativity to build a nation that is a leader and not merely a follower in the international arena.

 

 

It is tremendously important to understand that a sincere ambition to be among the top nations in the world has to be backed by a strong affinity towards indigenous research and innovation within its citizenry. In its absence, we are only a collection of a billion consumers pumping away our monetary reserves to other countries to buy and showcase things we do not even know how to make. An increased resourcefulness as a result of research and innovation also impacts other forms of international transactions. As an example, while technological prowess amplifies military strength without draining billions of dollars from national reserves to outside, it gives us an upper hand in negotiating political or economic deals with countries who might depend on our technological exports. Similar benefits could be foreseen in innovating in medicine, economics or other scientific fronts.

 

 

The inquisitiveness even though is present in human genes has to be brought out in personality in an effective manner through proper nurturing and training. It is challenging to make a beautiful vas out of an intellectually shapeless lump that an individual is in his or her early stages of life. But the rewards of accomplishing this challenge are grand and numerous for a nation. India is a large and diverse country in terms of every aspect of its demography as well as geography. To set our place among the best in the world, we will indispensably need to foster generations with the confidence to innovate and the courage to fail, standup and re-innovate when necessary.

 

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"A Young India Fellow at Yale" Published in The Hindu, May 2016

 

I have always believed in striving for diverse academic and life experiences. Putting oneself in a constructive unfamiliar environment and observing how one reacts to what it has to offer is the best way I know to attain individual growth. Hence, after finishing my B.Tech studies at VIT Vellore, when Virginia Tech USA offered me full funding to join their M.S program in civil (environmental) engineering, I happily accepted it. At Tech, I carried out scientific environmental research which was published in a reputed international journal. During this period, I was exposed to a highly interdisciplinary nature of research. It soon dawned upon me that instead of living confined within one’s own academic realm, having the ability to survive at the nexus of economic, political and scientific fronts is critical for any individual who is aspiring to make a big impact in the society.

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So I returned from the US to study liberal arts at the Young India Fellowship (YIF) in New Delhi. Looking back, I realize the beauty of that decision. YIF turned out to be an extraordinary experience which transformed my understanding of the world. Arriving with an advanced American engineering degree, I now found myself surrounded with amazing Young India Fellows who hailed from backgrounds as diverse as law, journalism, psychology, pharmacy, economics, political science, natural sciences etc. along with engineering. Here, we were encouraged to bring together our respective unique perspectives on current affairs and shape them into one coherent voice which I find to be a critical skillset to have in today’s intricately interweaved world. My YIF experience motivated me to study how governmental policies are framed around scientific research in environment. So when I was selected by the French Government among 12 national scholars for the Charpak exchange scholarship on YIF-Sciences Po exchange, I moved to study environmental policy at Sciences Po, Paris.

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Sciences Po gave me the opportunity to interact with my European peers in a dynamic Parisian setting on topics including environment and development in East Asia, sustainability of growth in developing nations, and economics and international geopolitics over mineral resources. While studying in Paris, I was brought to the forefront of political and economic challenges associated with the implementation of sustainable technological solutions to the ongoing environmental issues. I now began to feel confident that I had received a holistic training necessary before starting on my doctoral degree. YIF was a very positive, inflection point in my career which continues to influence the events in its downstream in happy, unprecedented ways. I am now pursuing my PhD conducting analytical environmental research in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University USA. Yale highly encourages learning across the board which led me to interface engineering with economics to write a discussion on the alternatives to economic growth. It has been selected among the world’s best 16 articles for the Leaders of Tomorrow Summit at the St. Gallen Symposium 2016, Switzerland. I encourage youngsters to strive for a holistic education in life as it enhances the effectiveness of one’s ideas in the modern world.