SOME years ago, Navdanya’s Slow Food Café at Hauz Khas in south Delhi was a novelty. A few committed souls would trek to it for freshly cooked vegetarian meals. There would be refreshing juices to wash down the food. In the right season you could get delicious mangoes from an orchard in the hills. It was all so new then that it was worth a story.

But look around today and the “organic” label is just about everywhere. There are innumerable eating places. You can get organically grown vegetables, wheat, rice, tea and so on delivered to your door.

When we covered the Annam Festival in Kerala earlier this year, we found that old-style cooking had many new loyalists across south India. A significant shift was taking place to traditional ways of making meals and eating them. So haunted are Keralites by hypertension and diabetes that they have no option but to hark back to the past.

Going organic is not just about food. It is a different orientation. More and more people want green housing, holiday destinations in the midst of nature, lead-free paint in their homes, water harvesting structures, natural remedies, battery-operated vehicles and much more.

It is a long list of new preferences that have transformed some homes and offices. Garbage is being broken down through vermi-composting. Plastics are being taken out of daily waste and recycled. Grey and black water is separated for recycling and reuse. Architects who wish to remain relevant are expected to be conservationist. They need to know how to incorporate special insulation into their designs to conserve energy.

Are we talking here of mere lifestyle oddities? Is this boutique behaviour? What do a few people with high visibility matter in a country as vastly poor as India?

The answer is that the numbers may be small but the trends are strong and come with advantages for everyone. First-movers in slow food and green construction have opened up bigger markets. The benefits are also not entirely urban. We’ve seen for instance how the Janhit Foundation took 100 farmers into organic agriculture in western Uttar Pradesh, linked them to consumers and saved them from a life of debt and despair.

So while consumers make demands and cities take the lead, the benefits go all down the chain. Changing the way we live is a serious business with many ramifications. But as is the case with most things new, the beginnings have to be small and more often than not elitist.

What has prompted the new thinking and the seach for different standards? First of all we have been learning from the failures of the developed world. We can see what they have got wrong. The growing awareness about global warming, with celebrities and leading politicians taking it up, has certainly made people more eco-sensitive. The stark absence of water in our daily lives is undoubtedly another reason. We all know how short of water we are. There is no river left in India which is clean and horror stories abound about ground water levels.

There is a general sense of a decline in the quality of life. There is greater realisation that the decline results from destroying the environment. For instance, air pollution and the increase in respiratory disorders have been a shocker. Ditto for the spread of cancer – every other family seems to have a patient or know of one.

In relation to food, the preference for organic products was essentially associated with the rich. But the middle-class has done much catching up. With awareness spreading and demand going up, the prices of organic products have fallen. In fact with the current rise in prices of fresh foodstuff, there is not much difference between what is charged for the organically-grown and the rest. So if you feel daunted by a Fab India store or its upmarket equivalents, just go to a government-run Khadi Gramodyog outlet. It is as good and offers great value for money.

Some organic preferences have always existed. Many rural households have traditionally set aside patches where they grow food for their own consumption without chemicals. They have done this for decades. So, they have gone organic much before it became fashionable to do so in cities.

In urban India, activism has played a big role in creating awareness. India’s NGOs are rooted in the middle class and have succeeded in spreading their message of conservation. A whole new generation has been influenced. Campaigns to protect trees like those of Kalpavriksh in Pune and Toxics Link in Delhi have had a considerable impact. Public interest litigation by NGOs like the Centre for Science and Environment's (CSE) in Delhi has been very effective. To CSE goes the credit of getting Delhi’s buses powered by CNG.

These aren’t small achievements. Youngsters who have grown up watching these changes take place now have a different order of preferences. In addition, they are taught in schools about the environment. However incomplete the courses might be they do lead to a new kind of thinking.

A growing number of professionals make it possible to exercise environmentally sensitive choices. Dieticians will tell you what to eat, architects and engineers how to build, travel agents where to go and doctors what medicines not to take.

There are companies which do only those businesses that they regard as good for the environment. Solar power, water harvesting, green construction, wind turbines, electric vehicles, traditional medical formulations, eco-tourism and so on are seen as honest opportunities.

Some of these initiatives owe their origins to the work that NGOs have done. Development Alternatives for instance has pioneered changes in the use of construction materials and promoted traditional architecture. Chandrashekar Hariharan, who founded BCIL, was influenced by Development Alternatives. He went on to use traditional engineering techniques to develop commercially viable green housing.

How Captain Nitin Dhond bought up land that would have gone to the mining industry in the Western Ghats and converted it into two breathtaking resorts, Wildernest and Swapnagandha, is an example of the entrepreneurial spirit that wants to conserve. When Gautam Singh went on the story, none of us knew what he would find. It turned out to be a wonderful surprise.

All this may be just a beginning, but it is an important one nevertheless. The need to be conservationist and opt for an organic lifestyle it would seem is rapidly becoming a necessity.

Sept-Oct 2009 Edition

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