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.

Reading the Lounge this Sunday, I was particularly struck by the conspicuous underpinning in several articles fearing a dictatorial dystopia in Indian politics. Whether it was the article and a story on Giant Statues, translation of the poem of dissent, caricature fiction on the eerie mix of mega weddings and government control, or the note on movements of the 'collective' - all of them smoked of dissension from the Modi government's policies, attitude and actions.

Why is this striking, you may ask - after all we're just about a quarter and a half away from the General elections and media is expected to write anti-establishment. It isn't really the fact that these articles and stories are anti-establishment which strikes me, but that most of them hint towards the fear of a dictatorial dystopia which people fear Modi will usher in. Even in private discussions, I have found more Indians wary (and even angry) not at what was done (Demonetisation, GST, Statue of Unity), but at how it was effected - the dictatorial streak of Modi manifesting distinctly in these actions.

I personaly like most of the initiatives of Modi including Demonetisation, GST etc but more notably the federal restructuring of planning in India and the Swachh Bharat abhiyaan - his ideas have been transformational, disruptive and relevant to the athirst young demographic of India. And yet the disruption he has caused in the otherwise tranquil pace of Indian politics has caused discomfort to the Indian public in general.

In fact, Modi has disrupted so much that it may actually be a better outcome in 2019 that a more consensual accomodative and execution oriented leader to emerge - someone who can, without reversing any of Modi's ideas, bring speedy closure to the turbulence that his disruptions have caused. Devendra Fadnavis, the calm, composed but sharp Chief Minister of Maharashta comes to mind as such an individual; Piyush Goyal - the star performer in Modi's own cabinet could be another choice - but alas both have too less administrative experience as yet, to be elevated to this position. Nitin Gadkari looks like a choice the RSS (BJP's ideological parent) and BJP's allies might agree on. Having said that - the more central question is whether or not BJP (and its alliance NDA) will manage to scrape past the majority in 2019. 

As I wrote above, more than just being anti-establishment, these media articles hint the fear of India turning into a more dictatorial country than its current avatar of being the melting pot of cultures, communities, ethnicities and even races. This fear emanates not so much from what Modi has done but from the past that the media fears. In private circles at least, Modi is being compared a lot to Indira Gandhi than with his own ideological predecessor Atal Behari Vajpayee. His style to push his projects and even deadlines down the throat of his ministers, his party, the bureaucracy and even the nation as a whole, is what is detested more than the actual impact of his actions.

This actually adumbrates our fear, not of the right-wing ideology that Modi represents, but in general of what India faced in those 21 months of Emergency when Indira Gandhi chose to misuse the constitution with the help of her weak Presidential appointee. But I contend that these fears are not only misplaced but also represent a shallow understanding of the Indian Republic!

For starters, Indira Gandhi was rooted out by the Indian public immediately following the emergency, setting such strong precedence that no other leader will dare bring in an emergency again. Second, Modi belongs precisely to the anti-emergency camp; his predecessor Atal Behari Vajpayee being one of the leaders who was jailed by Indira during the emergency. Hence, it is not just unlikely but impossible for Modi to bring in any measure even remotely close to emergency; and even if he dares to carry out any other sort of coercive action, he will get squarely blocked by leaders in his own party.

Secondly, not just in a post-independence India but even in past Indian people have hardly given in to a regime which is unilateral and tries to impose a particular kind of socio-cultural behavior on them. Even though the British ruled India for 200 years - aside economic measures, they mostly kept the socio-cultural fabric of India untouched. In past, whenever a ruler - elected, invading or inherited - has tried to force change in the Socio-Cultural fabric of Indian peoples, it has led to the downfall of the ruler or the whole clan.

In fact, dynasties who have ruled India for more than a century have been those who have allowed the populace freedom to continue their own Socio-Cultural lives (and only tried to extract an economic tax from them). And whenever a dynasty tried to impose Socio-cultural changes on the populace - they have faced the wrath of people. Mauryan Empire declined after Ashoka tried to impose Buddhism on Indian people. Mughals declined after Aurgangzeb when he abandoned his predecessors' legacy of pluralism and religious tolerance, introducing Jizya tax, destroying temples, and execute Guru Tegh Bahadur.

In fact, people's "intolerance" for leaders who impose a singular socio-cultural method on people and try to take away cultural freedoms, is the reason why India has remained a cauldron of civilizations. Every culture, art form, race and religion is welcome in India and no one can ever push a singular ethos on Indian people.

As humans we have a tendency to categorise things, we like to organise our houses, offices, cities etc. We like to put things in cabinets or drawers or shelves. But this habit transcends physical space to people - we like to categorise people; into Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews ... Into Leftists, Liberals, Rightists, Fascists, Apologists, Colonialists, Rascist ... Into Indians, Russians, Americans (whatever race they represent!), Blacks, Whites, Caucasians, Asians ... Well even men, women and others!

And then, we categorise ourselves also - even if we don't like what we think we are - we'd like to think of ourselves also as belonging to one tribe or sect or thought.

But the facts stare us in the face - biologicaly you are not the same person you were a moment ago, cells in your body are constantly changing, thoughts in your mind are constantly evolving, your beliefs are constantly changing!

People too cannot be categorised - someone who is liberal about political thought can be a conservative on personal relations, a politician who propounds capitalism may prefer Banks to be nationalised ...

Gandhi taught us not to think of people as masses - as Hindus or Muslims or British or Indian. But the more fundamental learning is not to categorise ourselves, not to box our own identity into one or the other. Great souls can transcend what they themselves are or were - Valmiki gained sainthood from a past as a dacoit!

True freedom starts from thyself, stop bracketing yourself, then stop yourself from bracketing others, then stop others from bracketing others - true freedom comes by freeing oneself from our own limitations.

Most multinational companies seem to have a problem with the data localisation requirements, may be because most of these companies are incorporated overseas and would prefer to follow the legal jurisdictions of countries where they are incorporated. Countries such as the United States or even the European Union have personal data processing laws which may necessitate that data processed by companies incorporated in their territories should preferably be stored within their own territories; while the HIPAA or GDPR does not explicitly require that such data is kept in Europe but some of the other clauses of GDPR will be more convenient to comply with if the data was co-located within Europe.

However, even for MNCs who have a significant local presence with local subsidiaries incorporated/registered in India, the data localisation regulation presents a cost implication. Take for example payment processors such as MasterCard or Visa - currently, they host their servers overseas and with the data localisation requirement they will have to set up additional infrastructure in India store a copy of data here. Depending on how voluminous this data is, the additional data store would require significant capital expenditure and maintaining it would incur significant operational costs as well. Further, this would also make this local data store come under the jurisdiction of Indian authorities who may request for access to the data under various other laws such as the IPC [Indian Penal Code] and regulations by RBI and SEBI - complying with such requests will require setting up a team to manage and service the requests - all adding up to the Operational expenditure.

However, as argued by Sachin Bansal and Manish Sabharwal in this piece, these costs notwithstanding, MNCs should fall in line and comply with the regulations given that the regulations are in favour of Indian general public i.e. the MNCs' customers. They also counter argue, that by not mandating that this data should be kept only in India and by allowing this data to be maintained overseas, the regulations have been fair and they do not present significant operational challenges to MNCs or even Indian companies doing businesses overseas.

But if you looked that this clause as a dispassionate external observer, maybe Norwegian national for example, you would realise that this clause which allows the primary data to be kept overseas and only a copy to be maintained within the Indian territory, is actually a very convenient way for the governments and regulators to say that "I don't care what happens to the data of my citizens wherever else it is kept, all I want is to be able to snoop into the personal information of my citizens as and when I want according to the laws defined in my country".

By allowing data to be stored overseas, without any restrictions, the regulators are providing no cover to snooping or leakage of this data from an overseas territory. For example, Indian citizens' data kept on servers of MasterCard, Visa or American Express in their US data centres is open to being snooped by the US government. At the same time, the same data can be accessed by the Indian government or regulators from the local data stores. In effect, there is absolutely no protection for citizens and all provisions of these regulations only facilitate the regulator or government while allowing (or coercing?) businesses to be complicit participants in this game of personal data espionage.

To be fair, I must also add that it isn't trivial for personal data to be accessed by government agencies anywhere in the world. Most personal data such as credit card numbers is kept in an encrypted form and is not visible in plain sight. A hacking attempt on a credit card database, for example, is unlikely to result in stealing of this data. Nevertheless, a government agency with sufficient privileges can get access to this data by using local laws and forcing the company to decrypt the data and provide them a copy. So the risk of data snooping by government is still very real, even though, the actual mechanisms may be complex.

A decade ago one would have called such allegations as baseless but after the revelations by Edward Snowden about the Prism project by the US government, this is a reality and can no longer be swept under the carpet as a figment of someone's imagination.

So what would be the solution one would ask, clearly for a developing nation like India it will not serve well to close its own data economy by mandating that any service provider should store data ONLY within the Indian territory. In the larger interest of a globalised world also, this would not be a welcome restriction. But opening up data to all world governments to facilitate global economy is taking a very narrow view of how data protection can be implemented for citizens of India. Solutions can be sought if one has the will to protect citizen data and not an intention of only allowing access to their information for purpose of government or national interest.

A simple solution would be that storing data is allowed in any part of the world, as long as all personal data is encrypted 'at source' [i.e. when it is collected*] and the encryption key used to encrypt data should be stored exclusively in Indian territory. This way if any government - foreign for Indian - wanted to get access to this data they would need to have access to the key which is kept in India. To access this key they would need to file proper claims under local Indian laws and establish their need to access this data for valid purposes. This mechanism can not only protect personal information from being snooped into by foreign governments but can also be a very effective way of preventing unauthorised or unscrupulous elements within the Indian government machinery from being able to access this data at will. Police or Income Tax officers will not be able to access personal information of citizens just because they happen to represent the government unless they have proper authorization.

The challenge, however, seems to be that regulators and governments are only looking at one side of the picture which is how do they ensure national or government interest rather than focus on protection of citizen personal data.

While I am guilty of not having represented this view to the Justice Srikrishna Committee, I plan to submit this piece of text to the 'Ministry Of Electronics And Information Technology' which will be presenting this bill in the Indian Parliament. I do hope that the government reconsiders data localisation requirements to ensure that the law is front-loaded with considerations of citizens interest rather than only protecting the interests of the government or the nation-state.

* An example of data encryption at source is passwords - when you choose a new password, the actual password is not sent to the website, but rather your password is encrypted by your browser itself and an encrypted 'hash' of the password is sent to the website and the same hash is stored in the servers. Your actual password is not stored by the website.  

I just read this news article in reaction to the Government's decision to allow courts to award the death penalty to those convicted of raping children up to 12 years of age. The government's decision comes in the wake of nationwide protests against child rape.

But as the article states, and I quote - "fear that with the death penalty, most people will not report child rapes, as in most cases the accused are family members. The conviction rate will come down further".

I have been myself thinking about this ever since I have heard of the law being passed. The problem in India has been the implementation of a law and not having a stringent penalty. I quote again - "We already have the death penalty for several offences and that has not led to any deterrence. If we are looking to create a deterrent, then we have to create it where it works."

The issue is not that child rape or any crime doesn't have stringent punishment but that conviction is low and justice takes so long to deliver that it's often akin to being denied. This is evident in several cases involving politicians and celebrities - Salman Khan was accused of killing people sleeping on a footpath by running their car over them. The proceedings took so long that Ravindra Patil, the key witness (who was the Police protector for Salman on that fateful night), died of severe ailments [and under mysterious circumstances] before the decision was arrived at. The case was won by Khan, but not without the fact that the key witness was NOT present in the courtroom to present facts. The case against Salman for the killing of the black buck, a protected wildlife species, was also decided 20 years after the incident.

I am not relating the case of Salman here as an unrelated rant, but rather to prove how judicial system is faced with severe delays and any form of stringent punishment will not help matters anyway if the sorry state of awarding justice continues.

We need to think of rather strengthening the system, making sure that police officers can discharge their duties without political pressure, the judicial system is also kept corruption free (which is otherwise ensured by the Constitutional provisions of judicial independence) but more importantly speedy and efficient in discharging justice.

On this count, the less noticed aspect of the government's decision is laudable - in addition to allowing capital punishment, the government has set the time limit for investigation as well as completion of the trial of all cases of rape as two months and prescribed the limit for disposal of appeals to six months.

As citizens, we also need to become more responsible - when you bribe the traffic constable with a hundred rupee note instead of paying the fine, you circumvent the law and strengthen the loop which makes the police system more amenable for manipulation than astute enforcement of the law. You do the same when you put up that Facebook post of Salman 'Bhai' being the kind-hearted human being and not an undertrial accused.

The judicial system does not work in isolation - as several cases in past have shown, public opinion and general behaviour of public play a major unwritten role in how judiciary looks at cases. If the public, in general, is content with delayed and subverted justice, leniency to politicians and celebrities - the judicial system will mould itself in the same general frame. But if we stop being malleable about justice based on our opinion and infatuations, the judicial system will gain strength to deliver justice faster and more efficiently.

Let us not just rant for stringent punishment, but rather a more efficient judicial system!
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Image Credits: Michael Coghlan via Flickr

There have been a lot of controversies of late - a movie which was claimed to have twisted historical facts, a caste-based protest, a politically influenced crime or the issue of sharing river water between two states. In all these cases, facts elude the public and the vote always remains is pretty divided and vitriolic because there are always two sides of every story.

It is no-one's guess that a filmmaker may have apparently taken a lot of liberties in historical depiction or that a particular law may have been misused or water or financial devolution could have been fairer or anything else. However, protestors have often gone wild with threats to kill or even cause damage to public and private property.

Sane voices argue that these non-issues keep people and media away from discussing real issues like the state of the economy, the rise of crony capitalism, deteriorating finances of the middle class or farmers committing suicide. So why is it that that large hordes of people keep thronging the streets. Why is it that the public today is paying attention to non-issues, why is it that "youth leaders" are spewing venom or announcing bounties on actors and directors or threatening bloodshed in the name of a river - when there are many other major issues they could pick up even if it were to win elections.

The answer probably lies in the role models which the society has conjured up to the masses - especially young people's minds. [Sidenote: It is usually the Young who control what gets discussed in public sphere, but due to the majority of the youth demographic, this is especially true of India].

Those of us who were (little) early to the Internet party would find the current forwarding and fake news culture on Whatsapp / Facebook similar to what ranting & flaming on newsgroups (e-groups) used to be in the early 2000s.

However, newsgroups, because their access was to a limited few, were also places where ideas were born, partnerships formed & organisations were created. But I find Whatsapp (or other forms of messaging apps like Discord or Telegram) not being so.

One probable reason for this, I feel, is the lack of long-form prose which email as a medium supported and which messaging as a medium shuns. Long form writing forces you to think deeper, engage in self-correction between various coordinated (or uncoordinated) parts of your own thinking and also help the reader absorb the context and message both.

To be sure, the long form thinking was not mandatory in an email, and so, there was reactionism, flaming and shaming on newsgroups as well, but that was also accompanied on the side by deep thinking and logical reasoning. Certain people or certain e-groups built a culture of not reacting by moderation which was a feature in these e-group systems.

Messaging apps of today, on the other hand, do not support any such features, you can't moderate even if you wanted to, the interface does not encourage writing or reading the long-form and it stresses reacting, sharing or instant response rather than careful, well thought and calibrated response.

Just to take a measure, how many of you reading this long-form post of mine have had the patience to reach this point of this text. Instead, if I would have sent this as an email, you would have.

An ex-Facebook exec, Chamath Palihapitiya, felt guilty of creating a time-wasting monster in Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg also feels guilty at times of fake news, and fake news I argue is not a phenomenon of its own, but rather its spread is a result of this instant reaction that messaging and Social Media apps encourage.

Its high time technology companies realised that their design decisions can't just be slaves to what 'users want' or what will make the platform more 'viral'. Facebook is viral enough, WhatsApp is ubiquitous enough. They need to now design for the more conscious audience or to improve the conscience of and thinking abilities of its audience. I hope Facebook and Whatsapp teams are paying attention to this.

Epilogue - results of survey

I had first posted this spiel on my Facebook wall and instructed people who read till the end to click the 'Love' icon and those who stopped after the first paragraph (which is previewed on their Fb timeline) to click the 'Sad' sign. The quick one day survey got 10 reactions - 6 loves, 4 Likes but no 'Sad' reactions. Mostly those who hit the like, just browsed past the first few lines and hit the 'Like' without even referring to the instructions - which all the more illustrates that we really don't pay 'attention' to the content of Social Media posts and react based on very flimsy reading of the content.

Title Image Credits Álvaro Ibáñez