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[global oneness project]
[Two Gangas]
I think this change of the Ganga from being the sacred river, the sacred mother,
[Vandana Shiva - Dehradun - Environmentalist and Author]
integrated into every dimension of life to being the ritualistic dissolving of sins on the 1 hand
and the garbage dump on the other has come because of 2 changes that have taken place
really in the last 30 to 40 years of this country's life.
One is the adoption of a development model based on non-sustainability.
And that development model then seeps into people's minds as the organizing principle
rather than the Ganga as a sacred mother as the organizing principle.
How do you bathe that you minimize your water waste?
We grew up being told you can clean your body with 4--
we didn't have mugs at that time; we had lotas.
I never imagined lotas would disappear. They are shaped in the shape of a womb, the kumbh.
The lota has disappeared out of Indian use. Now everyone's got a plastic mug.
And the worst is everyone is carrying a throw away drinking water bottle.
When that kind of message infiltrates on a daily basis
that you are more evolved, you are more developed if you are in the plastic age,
then everyone gets into that.
But there is no simultaneous cultural evolution to say, "And this does not biodegrade,
"this is not like that little piece of leaf in which you could eat
"and the cow would eat it when you threw it away,"
because we lived in such an ecological culture with such tight ecological cycles
that there was no waste generation.
As a child in my home out here, the only thing that came in plastic was the--
and originally, even that wasn't in plastic--
we used to get milk bottles which we used to wash every day and put it out.
Then we started to get it in little plastic pouches, but we'd wash them out
and use them for storage.
And today to avoid plastic is an impossibility,
also because the government on the 1 hand wants to ban plastic
but imports as packaging in which nobody can sell anything without plastic.
The second, of course, has to do with the fact
that such a development model comes hand in hand with the consumer culture.
And for you to become a consumer means for you to become careless
in terms of the impact of your consumption.
So consumerism as a defining identity
cuts off the linkages your actions have with the rest,
and that's how these integrations that the Ganga made with everyday life
have been broken, and that's how a consumer today can throw waste,
because they're doing it as a consumer and the consequences are not part of their thinking.
They aren't meant to be.
There would be no consumerism if consciousness of your actions
was part of what you do when you buy whatever you buy.
It is part of a throw away culture.
And as this throw away culture has grown in this country, you've got the schizophrenia--
the Ganga for cleaning your sins but also carrying your dirt.
[www.globalonenessproject.org]