The ultimate fear

A month ago, Salt prices touched Rs. 150/- a KG in Odisha, Bihar. Rs. 150/- a KG !!! Most people around the world won't believe this, but yes that's the ridiculous price people paid for a kilo of NaCl. Forget Onion, this is common salt that mankind has been using ever since they learned cooking. Back in childhood days I remember that could be year 1985 or so, I had paid 50 paise for 1 kg powdered salt. Today I will change my food habit but for sure, won’t pay Rs. 150/- to somebody for it. Call it hoarding, unscrupulous business practices, panic buying whatever, but such situations does arise often in our country.

The thing I want to address here is that a few hundred or say a few thousand people control lives of a billion people. Not to be surprised about this article which says 10 corporation controls almost everything we buy!!!

The society/civilization we live in today, which evolved over a thousand years has its own story to tell on “why things are, the way they are today”. However we have adapted to it because we find comfort in it, are used to it, become a slave to it. Economics is too complex a thing man created to complicate simple things in life. We poor souls get affected every day for the war called Rupee vs Dollar wherein we absolutely have little idea on how it works. One fine day, a Nixon can deny us the actual value of a dollar. Three petroleum agencies (read BPCL, HPCL, IOCL) can bring our country to a standstill; put the country in starvation and god knows what all will follow.

The problem is that, we don’t have a plan B. What will happen if all truck drivers go for a strike or all our power plants get defunct at once? We can always be optimistic and rule out such weird situation to happen. But just think of an apocalyptic world created say after a nuclear war. How mankind will survive such situations?

In Bangalore, may be around 50% of the apartments depend on water from tankers. My office itself uses 45-50 water tankers every day. I fail to imagine my day in office, if one fine day, none of the tankers turn up!!!

Self-sustained society!! Is that the answer? A plan B with alternatives? Good governance - so as not to let it happen?

Let's talk about self-sustained society! I have seen it tribal areas of my native district, Nabarangpur to be particular, Koraput as a whole. I have seen them relying completely on nature. Their livelihood depends on agriculture, cattle rearing and hunting. Do they really bother about inflation, GDP, MNRGEA, Direct Cash subsidy, free laptops and hundred other things that man in AC chamber designs without having a slightest hint of the ground realities? They live with whatever they get. With a simple life, they are in fact live a happier life than most of us. If one fine day our country breaks down, those are the people who can survive because they have nurtured nature, understood it, and never acted against it. And we are hell bent intruding to their lives with our good for nothing so called modern civic values!!!

Just imagine our lives:
Without matchbox;
Without cooking gas;
Without petrol/diesel/kerosene;
Without electricity.

Do we have simple life skills? We all have taken this modern life for granted without a risk mitigation plan. Do we know how to create fire? How to fish? How to desalinate salt water? How to kill a chicken? How to plough a paddy field?

I loved common people..
People who knew how bread was made,
And how plants grew and how much sweat it takes
- Elvi Sineno

In a post apocalyptic world which one of the books we are going to print first? "Kings James Bible" or "Principles of Crop production: Theory, Techniques and Technology" ?