Let me tell you of an incident when Greenpeace was still legal in India. In a parking lot outside a super market, a Greenpeace guy accosts me and asks for some time to explain what he is doing. I was not busy and said OK. His proposition is this.
Coal pollutes and India should shutdown all thermal power plants. With a flourish, he produces a map of India and says these are all the areas where India has got coal plants and that they are launching a movement to shut them down. One single question from my side.
The belt you are showing is called Dandakaranya and is a thick forest. Whatever pollution these plants make are absorbed by the trees around and it won't harm environment. Now explain me why should I support your stand. Caught like a deer in headlights,
he had no answer with him and weakly he said, let me call my supervisor. I lost interested by then and decided to leave. There are two issues with that discourse.
1. Uninformed activism. When you don't even know what you are fighting about, why do you expect people to support? How long will it take for your passion to become a mania and you get desperate to identify an enemy to your cause and do everything possible to destroy that enemy?
2. Who exactly are those who are using these useful idiots? What happens when these people realize they are being used as useful idiots and try to dissociate from the cause? Do they have an escape route? Nalini, for example - convicted for life in Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.
How many of you know that she is a useful idiot and not a member of the core group? I am not saying this #DishaRavi creature is a useful idiot. She can be the soul and nerve centre of this seditious activity for all it means. The question then would be, what drives them.
All I say is this. Don't fall to mindless activism. Read and understand every topic thoroughly before jumping into it headlong. Let me ask three questions to these environmental activists trying to shut down thermal plants in India. Or for that matter, any protest.
1. What is the end goal?
2. Is the alternative better?
3. How is the world supporting transition?
We people also came through college activism and we people also had our share of troubles. But, we learnt two lessons.
2. Is the alternative better?
3. How is the world supporting transition?
We people also came through college activism and we people also had our share of troubles. But, we learnt two lessons.
1. No one has time for this mindless activism. Our college didn't produce any professional activists in 50+ years of its existence.
2. Support a cause based on the merits, not because it's the Woke Kitsch of the day.
2. Support a cause based on the merits, not because it's the Woke Kitsch of the day.
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