Gandhian engineering-A Food for thought

There is a nice saying ..“Life was simpler when "APPLE" and "BLACKBERRY" were just fruits..!!!”. A nice world without the burdening list of “to-dos” and the pinch of schedule. Alas, but life has taken its course, and any man with a dream to fulfill, has to trade the racing path. So the fruits turn into gadgets and the life into a timetable. Everybody wants to claim his pie in this glorious economic growth and leave his mark in the industry.
Even amidst this smog of industrial revolution, there are some visionaries who dream of sustainable future. Working towards “ more from less” motto, and targeting the large mass at the bottom of the pyramid, they follow a mission called “Gandhian engineering”. An eminent scientist and a visionary leader, Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar, threw this idea at the entrepreneurs and he had a large cult following. The core of this initiative is “Science for Solution, Technology for Transformation, Innovation for Impact”. The idea revolves around highest quality of product / service at lowest price. Dr. Mashelkar also gives an immense importance to optimize production processes to reduce waste, promote reuse and recycle. This is the need of the hour.
He quotes very apt example for sustainable future, surprisingly coming from a boy in rural area. Boy says nearly 120 liters of water is consumed to produce one kilogram of vegetables and how it was not sustainable. That is where Gandhian Engineering will begin. The heart of it is sustainability.
Every process is dependent on the raw material, which by god’s grace is abundant at this hour. But stock of metals, oil n gas would soon deplete, and every core process and the digital world that depends on these inputs, will feel the shortage. In the state of abundance, the thrust to recycle and reduce waste takes a backseat. But We cannot go on just consuming. We need to reuse. Recycle.
Dr. Mashelkar quotes C K Prahlad, that our aspirations should always be higher than our resources. If you feel you are resource rich, the aspirations go down, you are on a downhill. So always use resource critically and wisely. The thought provokes the requirement of a “Green initiatives”.
The three major hurdles we see in such initiative, is one lack of awareness, two unavailability of an easy medium to recycle, and third less access to experts for optimizing our processes. We need to start a movement to reach the masses and motivate them to use renewable energy resources, utilize natural resources wisely. The entrepreneurs are already striving to create quality products for less cost, especially in health and consumer sectors to reach the bottom of pyramid in India. What we need to emphasize is to properly handle the end-of-life cycles for these products. The same also need to be propagated to corporate for responsible manufacturing and recycling.
Million dollar question. So how do we contribute in this greater cause. As a miniscule part of this society, do I have power to take on this big challenge? Why not….We are ideating one such movement through the web media, with our technical skills, for the urban masses to start with. We would try to address every possible avenue to work towards the Greener India. We wish to take this movement subsequently to reach every citizen of India and inculcate the habit of responsible usage and engineering. We will like to put in use our technical experience, in-house expertise. We also encourage other volunteers to help in this cause and contribute as per their competence.
As Dr. Mashelkar say, we live on earth on a lease of our lifetime. Some people do some good for humanity, some people do otherwise and some just don’t do anything, they consume and go away. We want to be of the first kind, and contribute towards our Nation.

How much Green do we need to become?

Green has a become buzz word with everyone talking or doing something about it. Business have started printing Sustainability Reports to show their commitment towards environment and green. So much that some people from my personal circle have quit jobs and have become social entrepreneurs of green activities. Really inspiring.
And above all, there are so many seminars, webinars, podcasts available on green that one cannot be ignorant about our climate and planet. However, what is most interesting to see is that any session you attend on Environment, Green Change, Water prevention etc., there would be a high chance of one speaker who would give example of having bath with one bucket of water or has switched to conventional methods of living. And I have a serious problem with such kind of unwordly remarks. What do they want/expect from common man?

• Do they expect us to go back to medival period?
• Do they expect us to think so much green that even while buying basic commodities of home one should look for carbon footprint?
• Do they mean that world which was becoming flat sometime back is getting territorial again? With the fact that buy local to go green and reduce one's carbon footprint.
• Do they expect us that anything with label green is the right choice irrespective of other important parameters to me as an individual?

and so on. The point I am trying to make here is that people should be made aware becuase that is in the common interest for our planet. We have to go green. Period. But how? Has anyone got any clear view on that. There are various means and roles each country and individual needs to play here.

Reduce carbon footprints means what? I have not been able to comprehend the right definition still. Yes, I have read the official definition but when it comes to buying products the one needs to know carbon footprint also covers the emissions from the source. Now, if I am sourcing from China because it gives me manufacturing and product pricing advantage. Shall I not go for it? Purelybecuase it involves the mode of goods transport i.e. air is causing more emissions that does not mean I should start buy locally. There are certain business challenges like speed to market, pricing, quality and service which come into play while a product is being produced.

Basic point: If I am not going to be in business and make profits, will green really matter ?

Yes, I am in agreement that we should be "responsible" and must consider impact on the environment while doing our daily jobs in life. However, just we being responsible will not help becuase we need to use the technology to our advantage to reduce the impact further. We have left behind medival period centuries ago so why quote such examples.

For example : I read about this washing machine which would use just one glass of water and one spoon of powder to wash all the clothes (http://www.xerosltd.com/). Now that's technology in use & behaving responsibly.

Another example: Grohe has come out with showers with Eco-Button which reduce water usage upto 40% (http://www.grome.com/). Not only this they have whole lot of bathroom accessories which can help save water and thus enable us to become more repsonsibly. Rather than asking us to start taking bath with one bucket of water !!!

There are some printing of paper setting which one can see in offices like double sided printing. Absolutely makes sense. Infact, I was reading some days back about some special fonts to be preferred as they use less ink while printing. Another invention in this area is the "Eco-Fonts" (http://www.ecofonts.com/). Awesome ! Mind Blowing !

Having said all this what I have realised is that we need to go green because it is the question of our survival and future of next generations. But we also have to use our common sense as well not just driven by labels proclaiming green and some NGOs coming in with big sponsors to advocate the same.