COVID-19, lockdown, social distancing, nature’s curse, deaths, financial crises, hunger, shelter, unemployment. Does anyone really want all these? Does anybody really like this?
I never imagined my bedtime stories to be calculating the number of deaths in some of the global epicentres. I never imagined my morning sunshine to get filtered through masks and nature’s blessing to get sanitised. As a child, I was always asked to respect, follow and be proud of the Indian flag, and I did it and will keep doing till my last breath. But are we really following our flag rightly?
Courage, sacrifice, peace, honesty, chivalry, prosperity are some of such terms seized by the colours saffron, white and green.
Saffron– Do you have the courage to fight against the current mob mentality for the destructive growth pattern we had? Are you really sacrificing the right things for your blind run?
White– Do you follow sustainability or is it just on every article or a piece of paper? Aren’t we maintaining peace for the wrong action?
Green– Are we really a prospering nation by our thoughts? Is our growth the real growth? Solving one single problem cannot complete the Tiranga, they will remain just colours.
Why don’t we seek inspiration from our beloved tricolour? Why don’t we become courageous enough to create prosperity by nurturing greener and cleaner nature with utmost honesty and always make it roll in our heart like the chakra? At this stage of war, when everyone is worried about the economy, finances, development, GDP, do you want the same growth rate and growth pattern that we had before the coronavirus crisis?
After we attains normalcy, sooner or later, each and every economy will fight back with full throttle to be in the place where we were before and in this wave of economic war, we will repeat what led us to this. The current desperation to break the law, to come out of lockdown, to impact the economy, to blame others will bring us back to the same and possibly the worst stage of the world. We will produce more, pollute more, clear more forests and kill more tiny creatures to fulfill our lust for economic growth.
In life or in business, we always reach some deep valley. A bottom, which we never wanted, which we never planned for. But we still work, we still grow, and succeed by raising back to the top. We achieve this by acknowledging and adapting to change. Change in our decisions, change in a business model, in brand, in strategy or change in a relationship!
Isn’t this the time to change our relationship with growth that never falls? Growth that never fears? Why not partner with the perfectionist of economy and life-nature? The time is to shift the direction of all our actions and to align those with the ideals of a green economy; defined as the economy that aims at making issues of reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities, and that aims for sustainable development without degrading the environment.
Sparrows humming back in your garden, nature, environment, reduced pollution, cleaner water, animals coming back in the arms of nature, fist of life. Has anyone wondered this? Has anybody ever dreamt of this?
In these upcoming times of desperation, if we choose to make our people stand before our economy, if we provide a stable livelihood before stability to rupee, if we pursue nature before we follow our industry, if we prioritise our future before present, if we choose green before red, if we choose heart before pocket, if we choose ‘we’ before I’, we can bring a transformational, sustainable change, and the new future of India which will not become our old choking past. The time to take such crucial sectors out from the paradox of growth and development is here. It is time to take them out from the darkness of economics, to take them out from virtual reality to the realness of the world by adding sustainability.
कुछ तुमने काटे, कुछ हमने जलाए, (Some you had cut, some we had burnt)
आखरी साँसे भी जल गयी | (Even the last breath is in ashes.)
कुछ तुमने फेके, कुछ हमने बिखेरे, (You threw some of them, we spilt the rest.)
कुछ तुमने तोड़े कुछ हमने छीने | (You broke some, we snatched some.)
कुछ तुम्हे आए या कोई हमे सिखाए, (You learnt some and you taught us,)
ज़िंदगी ज़ीने का (On how to live life)
किसी को तो सलीका आए | (At least someone should know how to live)
Think and grow green. This lovely nature is in a dire need of your love, true love. Jai Hind!