From Opinions Editor: Schools, colleges, universities and waterlogging

Indian Express

a day ago

Last week, the NITI Aayog's CEO announced that India has become the world's fourth-largest economy. Though subsequent analysis showed that the head of the country's premier economic think tank had jumped the gun somewhat, there is very little doubt that India is on the cusp of notching a step up in the global GDP ladder. The challenge, however, was framed by developments in the country's financial capital barely a day after the NITI Aayog CEO's congratulatory announcement.
An early onset of monsoon brought life to a standstill in Mumbai. Large parts of Maharashtra's capital, including a newly-built Metro station, went under water reminding policymakers that India's economy remains extremely vulnerable to climate risks. Reports show that the country has significantly decoupled economic growth from its carbon footprint – emissions have risen by about 4 percent compared to a compounded growth rate of about 7 percent from 2005 onwards. However, given the enormity of climate change, incremental changes aren't enough.
Studies warn that the flooding problem is likely to get worse. What do Indian cities do to become hydrologically smart? What must be done to ensure that monsoon vagaries do not cause economic damage and loss of lives? Can construction in the mountains be sensitive to local ecologies? Is there a way to ensure development while also obviating landslides?
The answers are not always easy. Very often they are framed in the ecology versus development binary. But does that fit in the aspirations of a young nation that's seeking to reap its demographic advantage? The go-slow-on-development alternative, for instance, might not fit in with the aspirations of a large section of India, who see prospects of upward mobility in the country's economic advancement. It would be terribly unfair to push such people to make difficult choices. And, yet the growing severity of the climate crisis underlines that we have no time to lose.
About two weeks ago, the Supreme Court seemed to hold that there is no inherent conflict between sustainability and development. The trouble, however, is that the resolution to the environment-development predicament does not come in templates. They call for respecting the topographies of individual cities, factoring in the gradients of mountains, recognising the floodplains and courses of rivers, and acknowledging the catchment areas of lakes, streams and other aquifers. Can economic prosperity go hand-in-hand with respect for such environmental peculiarities?
The answer must necessarily come from the country's educational institutes, from schools to universities to engineering institutes. This is not to say that the green imperative has been completely sidelined in the country's education system. In fact, in the past 20 years, considerable effort seems to have gone into introducing the problems of the environment in school and university curricula. However, while sectors such as technology, medicine, finance, engineering, law and even the arts are often seen as the primary career paths, sustainability is still seen as a niche field that's still evolving. Education about the environment has become another box to be ticked in a child's academic career, rather than being one of the ways by which she engages with the world.
At the higher education level, environmental education is too often associated with green technologies – renewable energy, waste management, green vehicles. Though an important part of climate-ready curricula, the technology-centred approach isn't enough if a student in Delhi, for instance, remains oblivious to the links between pollution and the destruction of the Aravali range. Schooling in green building techniques would remain incomplete if the same Delhi student doesn't learn why the ITO area is amongst the first to be waterlogged after an intense downpour. And, any education in waste management has to make connections between daily use items in households – plastic bottles for example – and the burgeoning landfills outside several Indian cities, including the country's capital.
For education to make a difference in increasing the resilience of our cities, towns and rural areas to climate vagaries, the first thing to do would be to increase the engagement of the learner with problems associated with the current crises. Why shouldn't the constant water logging problems of Indian cities be a part of the educational experience in schools, colleges and universities? Why should pollution be a matter of rote learning and not something that students have to encounter almost every few months?
In other words, the country needs a generation – and not just a few people in niche professions — with sensitivity to air, water, land and forests to steward an alternative version of economic prosperity — one that does not come at the cost of ecology. It's time for the country's education system to step up.
Till next time
Kaushik