Image Credit - Abby0427 Yoga

• If a student of art, passionate about arts, knows that s/he is assured of a minimum sustenance income even if her art doesn't sell, s/he won't be forced to take up that job in the advertisement firm and instead pursue a slightly longer but fruitful journey to become a classic artist himself / herself. In short, UBI gives youth the freedom to pursue whatever they want to do in life, without the compulsion of what earns them their livelihood. 
• If a farmer knew that they have minimum income support, whether the crop makes it or fails, they can chase a cash crop over the staple one or they can pursue fertilizer & pesticide less organic farming over fertilizer & pesticide supported "high produce" farming. This choice by the farmer is because they can now risk the crop getting spoilt but at the same time, they also bet on the upside of higher prices due to the growing interest of the urban population in organic foods. In short, UBI helps producers make a choice to chase healthier alternatives for society over the more 'efficient' or 'remunerative'. 
• If an experienced professional knew that he is assured a minimum income and that his family - his ageing parents and his children - will be able to afford a good life, good education and necessary healthcare whether or not he keeps earning his monthly paycheck, he might quit his job (which he hates!) and take up his passion in social work, join politics and either way help the community. In short, UBI provides society free up qualified human capital for its social obligations.
• If the head of an independent news journal is assured of minimum income, s/he does not need to rely on Government grants or private funding to make ends meet. S/he can then pursue stories which matter rather than chase 'masala' stories or celebrity news. S/he already is freed from the need to get access to broadcast media, thanks to the Internet in general and YouTube in specific. In short, UBI helps media become independent of the biases introduced by its funding sources.
• The biggest of all, if a poor man is assured of minimum income, he will never force or condone his children into begging or stealing because he knows that he can afford not to equip them with life skills like these to survive! Their life and liberty will be assured by UBI. In short, UBI can be a game changer for law and order and bring down common sins without the state making any active intervention. 

In essence, IG, unlike UBI, can only provide temporary succour to those affected. IG is a good scheme if one is dealing with a time-bound crisis - like those impacted by a natural disaster but it fails all tests of fulfiling the constitutional promise of "JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all FRATERNITY ".

In fact, IG will only contribute towards decreasing fraternity because of the have-nots (those classified as privileged) would resent the haves (the disadvantaged eligible for IG) for getting a subsidy here or an income there without 'having to work for it'; while the haves would anyway resent the have-nots for their economic or social status.

Read Part 1

Manikarnika Crematorium Varanasi

Part 2: Prosenjit Hazra

References

Disclaimer: This is a purely fictional amalgamation of several real-life incidents I've read in the past several days formed into a contemporary tale running across threads of misinformation, cyber-security, terrorism et al. The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this series of posts are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred. [0]

I had written in past about how the science fiction of the 1980s predicted several innovations (like Androids, Space Travel, Space cities, and teleportation) would come true by the year 2000, and how hardly any one of these seem to be coming true by 2050.

As we cross the year 2019, and we can predict with a more absolute sense about where we will be in the year 2020, and Kurzweil's vision that "we will succeed in reverse-engineering the human brain" and "we'll be able to manufacture almost anything we need in the 2020s, from information, in very inexpensive raw materials, using nano-technology", look pretty much unachievable.

Nevertheless, self-driving cars are here and smart digital assistants Alexa, Siri and Google are answering all those questions which Genie couldn't have answered for Aladin! My peeve is - what is this fascination futurists have with the 20 year horizon. Studies have proven that "we overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term" and futurists should know this better than anyone else. And yet, they insist on making predictions for a 15-20 year horizon (a short period by standards of a human society's evolution).

Compounding effects are something of a fascination for me right now; having listened to this podcast by Naval - I can see how compounding would act over 20 years to bring about significant change - but from the perspective of futurists, I doubt this is significant. Futurists need to look at a scale of 40-50 years horizon.

Most technologies take about 50 years to scale:

• the steam engine experiments started as early as 1698, but the first steam engines came together in late 1760s; the steam turbine came about only in 1800s 
• the internet started as ARPANET started in 1960s but the Internet boomed and then busted around 2000s, finally settling down the curve by 2010
• the electric car has been around from earlier than the internal combustion engine, but serious research of the current wave started in 1990s - we are still seeing them only trickle into the market. 

The main events which brought EIC (the predecessor of the British Raj in India) into control of the largest parts of India, were the infighting, stupidity and power-lust of different factions of the then 'ruling alliance' of India - the Marathas. British and Leftist historians have very conveniently used the titular regency of Bahadurshah Zafar to conclude that the British wrested power of the Indian sub-continent from the Mughals - nothing could be far from the truth. When the British started 'conquering' India, the Mughals did not have control over most of India.

Right-wing historians rightfully elucidate that it was the Marathas and not the Moghuls who were ruling the largest part of the Indian empire in the 1750s when the British walked into India. While these same historians extoll virtues of Rani Laxmibai and Tatya Tope; they shrewdly ignore how and why the Peshwa power centre of Pune; the political capital of Marathas from 1750s-1800s and the virtual capital of India, fell into British hands.

Marathas were able to consolidate their territory during the Mughal–Maratha Wars and later controlled a large part of the Indian subcontinent. From the time of Balaji Vishwanath - the first Peshwa - till Madhavrao (the penultimate Peshwa before Baji Rao II who gave away the throne to the British), the Maratha Empire had control of almost the whole of India. By the late 1700s, the equation between Marathas and Mughals was so unequal, that in 1788, when Ghulam Qadir attacked Delhi, it was the Maratha commander, Mahadaji Shinde who led the army of Marathas to Delhi and saved the Mughal emperor and his family.


The territory in Yellow was under direct control of Marathas while Hyderabad state in Deccan - was a tributary of the Marathas. The only territories which are a part of present-day India but weren't part of Maratha empire were Oudh (or Awadh - now known as Eastern UP), Bengal and Mysore (comprising parts of present-day Karnataka / Tamil Nadu) and Kashmir.

Sidenote 1: Notably, during this period, another Empire - the Sikh one - was emerging from the underbelly of the decayed Mughal Empire. Led by iconic Ranjit Singh, who just like the Peshwas consolidated power distributed among the Sikh Misls into one cohesive Empire.

Shivaji (1627-80), the founder of Maratha Empire, and Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708), the creator of the Khalsa, both rose against the tyiannical rule of Aurarangzeb, and although the Sikhs` real crusade in the Punjab took its birth on the banks of the River Godavari in Maharashtra, the two forces did not come in direct contact with each other until the Marathas, in a bid to fill the power vacuum caused by the fall of the Mughal empire, expanded their influence as far as Delhi.

How did an empire as expensive as this, collapse? The answer lies in how the last generation of Peshwa's acted in complete disregard to national honour, strategic prescience and let petty personal feuds come in the way of the larger good. The story starts with Nana Fadnavis - considered by Europeans as the Indian Machiavelli who was Phadnavis or Finance Minister of the Maratha Empire under Balaji Baji Rao.

Background

The Marathas were defeated by Abdali in the Third Battle of Panipat, and the heir apparent Balaji Baji Rao's eldest son Vishwas Rao died in the same and so Madhavrao - his younger brother assumed Peshwai (Premiership) under the regency of his uncle Raghunathrao. While power politics continued to wax and wane between the uncle and nephew - overall this period saw a resurrection of the Maratha empire after the eventful defeat at Panipat. In this resurrection,  Pilaji Rao Gaekwad, Mahadji Shinde (Scindia) and Tukoji Holkar played a major role in advancing Maratha confederacy and establishing their sub-regency in central India from what are present-day Baroda, Gwalior and Indore. However, Madhavrao died of TB in turn succeeded by the youngest prince Narayan Rao.

Narayan Rao was assigned his uncle as the regent and this is where we start the story of human falling and subsequent fall of India into the British hands. A story no different in its roots than the grand epic of Mahabharat - lust for the throne and craving to see one's direct progeny to inherit it.

Ragunathrao's wife Anandibai conspired with mercenary guards, the Gardi's, and got them to murder Narayanrao in broad daylight in the regent Raghunathrao's own presence. The legend has it that Narayanrao himself ran to his uncle's chambers shouting काका मला वाचवा and walked into a trap laid out by the Gardis who killed him in front of his uncle.

The next in line of succession was the yet unborn son of Narayan Rao, but Raghunathrao tried assuming the Peshwai after the murder of Narayanrao. Suspected to be an accomplice in the murder itself, he was however deposed by a coterie of 12 ministers - titled Barbhai [बारभाई / बारहभाई - 12 brothers]. The council was Nana Phadnavis's mastermind plan to protect Madhavrao II, son of Narayanrao, born posthumously to Gangabai, the widow of Narayanrao, from the Peshwa family's internal conflicts. The Barbhai Council was an alliance of influential Sardars (generals) led by Nana.

The beginning of the fall

The Barbhai council ran the state and continued to rule under the name of Madhavrao-II. During this time, the Maratha Empire was significant in size with a number of vassal states under a treaty of protection who recognized the Peshwa as the supreme power. Raghunathrao was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by the justice Ram Shastri Prabhune but the sentence was never carried out.

Sidenote 2:By this time, while the Marathas had reached the zenith of their power, the Sikhs, caught in the pincer grip of Mughal and Afghan persecutors, were still struggling for survival. The two 'Empires' fought on the same side in couple of wars - including the above metioned Third Battle of Panipat and subsequent resistance to other advances by Abdali throughout 1700s.

 

Left to sulk, Raghunathrao, craving for revenge, went ahead and joined the British. Thane, Vasai and Sashti were to be handed over to the British, and in return, the Company would assist Raghunathrao to become the Peshwa. Raghunathrao hoped to do to the Peshwai, what Mir Jafar had done to Sirajuddaulah. His personal ambition, however, was in complete disregard to the size and stature of the Empire he was inviting the British to intervene into. This treaty was the watershed event which gave the British an entry to annex the actual rulers of the entire Indian sub-continent.

However, the Barbhai council was a very able and astute administration - even though (or maybe because) Nana Phadnavis was considered a Machiavellian administrator. The Peshwas defeated the advances of the British from Bombay and signed treaties with them, effectively cutting off any support Raghunathrao had. Ragunathrao died in 1783.

The fall 

Unfortunately for the Barbhai, in 1795 Madhavrao-II committed suicide at the age of 21 and they were left with no option but to appoint Raghunathrao's son Baji Rao-II as the Peshwa. Nana Phadnavis, who was glue and leader of the Barbhai council died in 1800 - by then Mahadji Scindia, who was instrumental in Maratha victories against the British and a key member of Barbhai council had also died.

While Baji Rao-II remained the titular head, he lost his control over the other chieftains after Nana's demise. The first to fall to British was Baroda - in 1802, the Gaekwads concluded the Treaty of Cambey with the British that recognized their independence from the Maratha empire and guaranteed the Maharajas of Baroda local autonomy in return for recognizing British suzerainty. But this would have still been a small loss as only a small slice of the Maratha empire was chipped away to British suzerainty.

What followed was devastating - after Nana's demise, Daulatrao Scindia [Mahadji's grand-nephew, ruler of Gwalior seat of Marathas] started intervening in the affairs of the Pune. In the ensuing power struggle within the heirs of the Barbhai, Scindia's rival chief Yashwant Rao Holkar [of Indore] marched towards Pune. He proclaimed allegiance to the Peshwa and sent assurances that he only wanted to free Pune of Scindia's control.

The last nail in the Maratha Empire's coffin and the first major milestone in the British Raj's control of the Indian sub-continent was when Baji Rao -II 'invited' the British to thwart advances from Scindia and Holkar (members of his own Peshwa tribe) to reserve the throne of the Empire for himself.

Sidenote 3:The last Sikh-Maratha contact look place in 1805 when Yashwant Rao Holkar, defeated and pursued by the British General, Lord Lake, entered the Punjab and sought help from Maharaja Ranjit Singh [reference]. 

Initially, Baji Rao-II sought to play the Scindia's against the Holkar's but in 1802, Holkar defeated the joint forces of Peshwa and Scindia in the Battle of Hadapsar. At this point, Baji Rao II concluded the Treaty of Bassein in December 1802, in which the British agreed to reinstate Baji Rao II as Peshwa, in return for Marathas paying the British its maintenance and accepting the stationing of a permanent British political agent (Resident) at Pune.

Holkar and Sindhia, once divided, now resisted the British intrusion in Maratha affairs - but it was already too late. The British triumphed in the second Anglo-Maratha wars and later after the Third Anglo-Maratha war Bhosles, Holkars, and other Maratha feudatories were also defeated. Almost all (including the Newalkars of Jhansi - which in 1857 gave birth to the rebel Jhansi Ki Rani Laxmibai) finally accepted British suzerainty.

Attempts to recover losses

Having accepted British intervention only to retain the throne of Pune, Baji Rao-II soon realised how pyrrhic his victory was. He tried repeatedly thereafter to usurp power back from British - trying in vain during the Third Anglo-Maratha war to get his rivals - Bhosles, Holkars, Scindias and others to help him defeat the British. But an Empire once divided, could never come back together - descendants of feudatories neither trusted nor respect Baji Rao-II and none came for help. Finally, after his surrender, Baji Rao-II was settled by the British at Bithur near Kanpur and lived and died in exile.

His entire lifetime, Baji Rao-II is said to have been haunted by the ghost of Narayan Rao, whom his mother allegedly got murdered. He conducted several religious ceremonies from Pandharpur to Banaras (Varanasi) to get rid of the Ghost. Whether or not Narayan Rao's ghost was real or just a figment of his imagination, the ghost of Maratha Empire would surely have haunted Baji Rao-II. While he had 'other accomplices' to the crime of handing over India to the British, Baji Rao-II was definitely the 'Jaichand' of India against the British.

Epilogue - Next Post

Bithur, where Baji Rao-II was exiled, gained prominence during the battle of 1857 - when Baji Rao's successor Nana Sahib laid siege to the city of Kanpur and made Bithur his headquarters. Nana Sahib's story is often told extolling virtues of valour and national pride like those of his contemporaries Rani Laxmi Bai and Tatya Tope, however a deeper look into its annals will indicate why Indians lost the Battle of 1857 also. 

Nana Sahib too, like his predecessor, was not fighting only for a higher national pride - unlike the founder of Marathas, Shivaji. He too had many fallings and petty personal reasons for his participation in the 1857 revolt - like other players of the times. Marathas and all other Indian princesses who participated in 1857, were as divided as the Marathas pre-1857, which led to India's defeat to the British in 1857. That will be the subject of my next post.

Stay Tuned.

I know its too late to post a movie review, the movie Sanju was released more than 10 months ago and honestly, I just happened to watch it because it was showing on TV yesterday. But I am writing this because I simply cannot subdue my ruth at the complete waste of opportunity the movie turns out to be and mainly for the lack of directorial ability from someone as adept as Rajkumar Hirani.

Rajkumar Hirani is an excellent story-teller but more so, a director par excellence, as anyone who has watched Munnabhai MBBS would confirm. His first directorial venture was a testimony to how a saturnine subject can be presented in an entertaining manner, yet contain a social message. But with Sanju, Hirani has failed as a director - because he has stuck to his template for a subject which demanded an independent treatment and not paid directorial attention to what the subject demands.

There are many posts online [1] [2] [3] [4] which call out for the selective editing of Sanjay Dutt's life story but I would rather pardon that. A director has limited time on the reel and surely has the right to decide what to show and what to edit out from his story. Not every director can be a Satyajit Ray to show every small detail of their character's lives from the morning ablutions to last sleeping thoughts, thereafter produce a series of films, than just a single succinct one - and yet be able to carry it off.

I am also not miffed [like here] at Hirani's one-sided criticism of the media as being responsible for vilification of Sanjay Dutt. Hirani is known for his one-sided criticism without acknowledging the nuances, on the subjects he chooses. I am sure many doctors and hospital managements feel wronged by Hirani for not highlighting the nuances of moral, social and financial compulsions which they deal with during treatment. I have met many educationists who find criticism of education in '3 idiots' a gross oversimplification of the problem. But I feel that Hirani's method has merit - a one-sided over-simplified critical narrative of the subject does help magnify the problems we are dealing with as a society and hence it does trigger a debate and thence a change in the social order.

What I am miffed at, however, is the absolute lack of attention to technicalities of cinema which I would have expected a biopic to have. Hirani is now a veteran director and the technical inaccuracies make a caricature out of what a splendid story could have been! Sanjay Dutt's story is amazing - the complex mix of a self-made father with a righteous bent of mind and yet someone who loves his son in spite of all his failings is a very powerful subject which could have been presented much better.

First, the small ones like these - the 80s as depicted in the movie are more like what the 60s used to be. Take, for instance, the cars showcased in a scene where the character Kamli is buying a car for himself in the US. In the 80s, it was the Fox-body cars like McLauren or Thunderbirds rather than Impala and the curvacious Chevvy's as shown in the movie. Another instance is the hairdo - characters' hair styles in the first 30 minutes of the movie were more 70s than 80s. The differences are small, but they do matter when making a biopic. All it would have taken was some research by an Asst Director and attention to detail by Hirani - alas looks like in getting their 'formula' right, they overlooked the technical basics of film making.

Second big technical 'liberty' is in mixing several characters into one; the most obvious being Kamlesh / Kamli. This character is based primarily on Paresh Ghilani - but also encompasses a host of Sanjay Dutt's other friends like Kumar Gaurav [and Salman Khan] - apparently, this was done to not add too many characters to the movie. Now, this would have been fine if this was an entirely fictional character (like that of author Winnie Dias in the movie), but it does severe injustice to real-people when making a biopic. Clearly, the way a Kumar Gaurav would have helped Sanjay in overcoming his drug addiction would be different from how an NRI Paresh Ghilani would. Fictionalising can mean adding drama to scenes which are otherwise mundane, it can even mean over-acting by certain characters (like the Gujarati accent of Kamli), but combining multiple characters into one dilutes the whole essence of the movie being a biopic.

The last folly, but the most disturbing to me, was poor assimilation of real-life personalities by the actors and this would be solely the director's flaw. Except for Ranbir Kapoor, portraying Sanjay himself, all other actors did not do justice to assimilating their real-life characters. This anomaly is magnified not just because the movie is a biopic but because almost all the characters are celebrities and there is so much original footage already available in public domain to study.

The most glaring of this is Paresh Rawal's portrayal of Sunil Dutt. Except for a rare mention of the word 'puttar', at no point does Rawal sound like Dutt Saab. And I will not blame this one on Rawal. An accomplished actor, he has portrayed even Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and many others with ease. Rawal does copy Dutt Saab's body language and facial expressions, but his dialogue delivery faulters and this is exactly where an external curator - THE DIRECTOR - should have stepped in to neutralise Rawal's accent. A celebrated actor like Dutt Saab should have been easy to copy - there is no dearth of material to study Dutt Saab's repertoire, his dialogue delivery, his accent. Again, I would blame the lack of proper research and subsequent implementation - the director and his team have failed miserably.

I found the same lack of 'assimilation' of the character with that of Manisha Koirala's depiction of Nargis ji and even Diya Mirza's portrayal of Manyata Dutt. With Dia Mirza, it woud have been difficult to spot issues because there isn't much footage of Manyata Dutt available - but the fact that she sounds so much like the real life Dia Mirza, makes me feel that she too failed to assimilate the character she was portraying.

Sanjay Dutt's story is very serious and thought-provoking. His drug abuse is quintissential of the Hippy age of 70s and 80s and also representative of the social ills we need to overcome - just this one aspect has been the subject of whole movies. Sanjay Dutt's involvement with Mafia, his possession of weapons and involvement with Terrorism are also very serious issues which highlight the problems which an unprofessional Bollywood deals with. Sanjay Dutt's story is just the manifestation of the deep nexus between Movies, Media, Mafia, Politics and Terror.

And yet Dutt's story is of individual strength, grit and overcoming hardship and emotional stress. I personally have great respect to Sanjay Dutt - there are few celebrities who have the moral courage to own up to their mistakes and even serve a prison term for them. Most celebrities - Salman Khan's case being the most illustrious example of this - shirk responsibility for their sins and use their money power and social connections to escape punishment. Sanjay Dutt is a lone exception - clearly, the values imbibed from Sunil Dutt and Nargis show in his conduct.

And that is all the more reason why I think Sanju is a gross injustice and a lost opportunity for Sanjay Dutt. HIs story deserved a much better treatment, much more effort and attention to detail. It is also a disrespect to the fountainhead Sunil Dutt - a self-made man who rose to great heights as an actor, then a politician - two murky professions by standards of personal conduct - and yet remained a human being par excellence all his life.

I hope a more conscious director, a couple of years later, picks up the subject again - applies the right faculties at remaking this story into what it actually is than the guffawed caricature that Rajkumar Hirani made it into.
.

For example, take the culinary business - it is possible to standardise not just the process of making food but even the ingredients used in food, to build a super scalable restaurant business like McDonalds - yet the price point which a McDonalds can claim will never ever touch even the cheapest of a local fine dining restaurant.

Another manifestation of the value limiting function of a 'commoditized' service is the inability of providers to be able to 'notch up' quality. As an example, when you go to the farmer's market to buy vegetables, you usually choose the best quality available. If everyone in your neighbourhood does that - the quality of produce sold in the market is generally higher quality. Sensing that lower quality does not sell, farmers themselves often do the sorting of higher quality vegetables in their own farms to save the trouble of transporting produce which will anyway get rejected. This however limits the 'scale' which a farmer can achieve in maximising produce or 'scale' a market can achieve.

On the other hand, if vegetables are sorted, transported and repackaged for consumption from supermarkets in towns - we often discover that there is larger wastage / rejection observed at the point of sale. Either the overall quality of the 'full pack' of tomatoes would be bad - you'd find one bad tomato in a pack on an average or one of a dozen packs would be bad. By achieving scale, the market here often loses quality.

Those who operate e-commerce related business can relate to this pretty well. The larger your scale, the more your systems need to tolerate some 'rotten apples'. In travel for example [the industry I operate in], the more the number of bookings on a portal, the more the chances of a bad traveller experience statistically. Online platforms have to provision some part of their expenses purely on doling out freebies or favours to inconvenienced/disgruntled customers. Amazon doles out millions to keep such customers happy who might have been inconvenienced or 'cheated' due to scale - even if this is done under the garb of 'customer-centricity'.

In essence, while we can deploy technology to improve the fidelity of systems or processes or measure and thence improve quality of produce - scalability introduces a hurdle rate above which quality takes a hit and must be compensated for through other means.

When interpreted in form of the financial term 'hurdle rate', it becomes easier to define businesses which are unsuitable to scale. If the hurdle rate is so high that higher input in investment to increase the 'throughput' of the process will not result into higher returns - then the business is non-scalable. And therein lies the opportunity that these businesses are the one's which claim higher premiums.

If you operate in an industry which affords a very high hurdle rate, you should be charging a premium for your services. But if you find that no one is ready to pay the premium - most likely your industry is undergoing a transformation towards becoming a commodity.

The Cyber-Security / Information Security industry has seen such a transformation in the last few years. There was a time when consultants ran scripts and manualy verified the ouput to identify vulnerabilities once in an year. Today automated tools do the same within minutes several times a month - the number of attacks, malware and exploits have also gone up systematically. But as a result, the premium claimed by the 'Pen-Tester' has slowly perished.

The graphic design industry is currently undergoing this metamorphosis along with the photography industry which has already transformed. When each one of us carries not only a high resolution camera in our pockets but it also comes loaded with software which can achieve all those effects which, at a time, took an experienced photographer followed by a photoshopper to get right; as the film got replaced by a few bytes of ever-falling-price memory - the phoshopper's art also got transformed first into a widely available skill, and then, with Instagram - a commodity where readymade 'effects' are available with a few swipes right or left.

AI and Machine learning are attacking industry after industry in similar ways and soon many skills which at one point of time were premium may start going the commodity way. Which industry will be the next one on the block? And which one continues to remain a non-scalable but premium claimable one?

Views are welcome. You can tweet to me on @kulkarninikhil

*Photo Credit: Thanks to @MacAulayCalum for making this photo available freely on @unsplash 🎁 https://unsplash.com/photos/TU1b56dfn2A

Those of you who read these posts [Part I Part II] know that my worldview of ecologically sustainable living, has, over the years veered towards cluster based human settlement – large metropolises or cities with shared infrastructure which reduces the ecological cost of living and that recent technological breakthroughs in Solar power, off-grid power storage, biodegradable materials etc have created a window for suburban sprawls also be become ecologically efficient lifestyles.

But as we concluded in the previous post of this series, the biggest stumbling block in making suburban life sustainable is the real estate overhead claimed by it. Suburban sprawls, however energy efficient, do consume much larger space per-capita leaving less land available for food and related needs to serve the ever-burgeoning population of the world. The matter is further complicated by the rapid upward economic mobility of large populations in Asia and Africa.

I wrote about two routes to manage these contrasting necessities - need to bring prosperous living to all human population and maintaining an ecological balance. I elaborate these two below.

Route A - Stick to cities until we can move back to suburbs!

It is predicted that human population will peak to 9bn around 2050; then come down to today’s levels by end of this century. If we can keep walking on the fine line of ecological sustenance by then, the human population will possibly live in a healthy harmony on earth after this period. An illustration of this ‘sustainable life’ is available in parts of Europe where prosperous nations with low-density population aided largely by mechanised solutions are living a far more ecologically balanced lifestyle than cities and suburbs in Asia or even North America.

It looks difficult however that almost 5bn Asian and African populations slowly maturing towards the lifestyle of the West, would wait for another century – these populations will want the comforts of a developed lifestyle faster and hence might put increasing pressure on our ecological systems. As is evident already with the environmental imbalances across the globe – this might spawn an ecological disaster far before world population peaks, plummeting human prosperity or even threatening human existence!

In a best-case scenario, if we do continue to walk on the thin line between ecological disaster and providing comfort to populations in developing nations; the future, until population abates, lies in clustered living – even denser cities and metros rising vertically leaving larger swathes of land for agriculture and forests.

Route B - Fly away!

The other alternative, like Solar, electric cars and off-grid charging; is again being heralded by Elon Musk. If we can’t reduce human population and we can’t prevent an ecological collapse with the rising population, the only option we have left is to create more real-estate. And what better than colonizing Mars to increase real estate. In fact, several innovations such as Solar Power, Electric Vehicles, even Tunnel based Hyper-Loop systems are a ready fit for a Martian colony.

Humans could harness the power of the Sun to create a cocooned Martian ‘space’ station which would grow its own food, manage its own micro-sewage, and people could commute within the station with electric vehicles and between two stations through hyperloop tunnels.

Are we there yet? Hell - no!

However, we are racing against the ecological clock with both these alternatives; will mankind be able to set up a Martian colony before earth implodes with human population? Or will we be able to create enough cities while keeping the ecological cost of living under check to prevent imminent ecological collapse?

Only time will tell – I just hope I can live long enough to see how the suspense ends!

Tesla Solar Roof

Continued from here.

As explained in my previous post, scientific research proves that cities are more sustainable for mankind to live - the characteristic compactness of cities, for example, lessens the pressure on ecological systems and enables resource consumption to be more efficient [1]. This assumes that cities will be built to sustain the population load they bear through appropriate infrastructure including public transport, sewerage / eco-efficient waste disposal, provision of parks or other recreational habitats etc.

If one observes the ‘ecological cost’ of human living there are 4 direct costs:

1. Food production and transport
2. Waste & Sewage management and processing 
3. Human commute and communications 
4. Real estate needed for stay, recreation and occupational needs (incl. education and administration)

Energy is a common cost underlying all four above costs in addition to other ecological costs they impose. Of course, these costs are directly proportional to the number of humans using these; but assuming we have little control over rising population of humans, the only way to manage ecological cost of human existence is to keep the per-capita ecological cost of the above as low as possible.

Traditionally, the only way to reduce the per-capita cost has been to cluster humans in cities and metros – thus making possible several savings:

1. Food can be transported in large trucks and trains for a large number of people; usage of trains or highway infrastructure can help bring down logistics costs; sorting and processing of food can also be centralised employing machines to the extent possible. 
2. Clustering humans in one place helps build efficient public transportation systems such as metros and bus services. This reduces the travel time but more importantly is much more efficient than guzzling cars running on large swathes of highways. This also frees up highways for movement of goods and the thus reduced traffic jams help in reducing fuel cost per unit of food or other goods required. 
3. Cities rather than large spread of suburbs helps in reducing the average length of the sewage canals from each home to the treatment facility. Large treatment facilities can also help in reducing the per unit treatment cost. 
4. Real estate – clustered living leaves large tracts of land open for – the obvious – agriculture! Rather than build a (farm) house on a quarter of farm land or allocate 10-15% of farm land for suburban sprawl, this land can be appropriated for agriculture or animal husbandry. 

1. Public transport is sparse or non-existent in suburbs, hence people are more likely to use personal vehicles and drive to their place of work (or recreation or school etc.) every day. The amount of fuel spent per person is quite high compared to what an equivalent office commute in public transport by a city-dweller. 
2. Suburban homes are bigger and energy required for their upkeep, ex. heating/ cooling power requirements are much higher for a two storey row-house compared to an apartment of the same size in the city. 
3. It takes more energy to build utility infrastructure such as electric supply, sewerage or roads for a distributed set of suburban homes compared to multi-storied towers in cities 
4. Maintaining the lawn in front or back of each row-house needs water and minerals. On the other hand, a common park is maintained in cities. The average size of the area needed to be irrigated or fertilised or manicured per person is much lower in cities. Add to it the fact that every inch of the lawn is an inch reduced from the pre-suburb forest or farm which occupied the place.

However, in the last few years, several innovations such as Solar Power, electric cars and off-grid power solutions have challenged my well-researched position on sustainable living. And since my own childhood was spent growing up in a township in a row house with a garden around it, I tend to have an emotional attachment to such lifestyle. So, when innovations open up avenues to afford this lifestyle without the moral hazard (personally) and existential hazard (for the human race), I get thinking whether these innovations are indeed an panacea or we are missing something.

Let us analyse the impact of some of the innovations on the above factors.

1. Energy Production: Each of the 4 costs highlighted above need energy and until now, the only efficient way of producing energy (electrical or other forms) was through industrial means – large power plants whether thermals, gas fired, hydro-electric or nuclear. However, with the advent of Solar Power we now have a new method of power production – just capture solar power from your rooftop and power your house, your cars and even a small food processing unit in your backyard. In fact, Solar power is not practical for use in metros because the per person ‘roof space’ available in metros is far less than sprawling suburban row-houses. In addition, we have new ways of storing power - the revolutionary redox system - a fridge-sized box in your home not only generates and stores electricity on-site, but heats and cools the house, provides hot water and even churns out oxygen and hydrogen to use or sell. This adds on to the power of Solar power generation because now we can harness this power during the day and use it during the night time. 
2. Electric vehicles are a complimentary asset to ‘ecologically free’ energy. As the ecological cost of transporting humans comes down using ‘private vehicles’; one of the factors supporting public transport is taken away. No longer do cars pollute more than metro trains because all of them run on electricity. Cars from suburban homes would run on power produced from their own rooftops than a metro train which may still require a power plant to run because enough solar power isn’t produced from rooftops of tall buildings in cities.
3. Waste treatment is an area which calls for more research – for example moving away from non-biodegradable waste in form of packaging and creating micro waste treatment solutions such as a recycle plant for kitchen waste and biogas solutions for sewerage might make local treatment of waste more efficient, thus making redundant the need for laying large sewerage canals from suburbs.
4. This leaves 2 interconnected aspects – real estate consumption and food production. While suburbs can tout kitchen gardens and even animal husbandry in their backyard, these are clearly not as efficient as the amount of space a suburban home takes. If a 1000sqft apartment housing a family of four can be fed by a tract of land 500sqft, a suburban home of 5000sqft which houses approximately same number of people cannot produce all it needs in its backyard. And even if it does – the comparison’s still 5000sqft in a suburb to 1500sqft in a city to sustain a family of four. Yes, there are innovations such as vertical farming, micro- greenhouses – but these too target urban milieu more than the suburban.