Tipping point or…business as usual?

Midnight arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi. Ubiquitous adverts for the upcoming G20 conference to be hosted by India. The slogan: ‘One earth, one family, one future.’

Our taxi headlights pick out emaciated human beings lying on pavements, legs stuck out at crazy angles, heads lolling into the road. Are they dead? No just dead asleep. Utterly exhausted cycle rickshaw pullers getting some shut eye after yet another day of working in 40+ degrees.

We ride the Delhi metro. A cool, quiet, clean, nether region of travel, said to be 30% powered by alternative energy, aiming to be 100% solar powered. Above, people sit in four-lane, all-day traffic jams, vehicles spewing fumes into the heat haze. For Delhi’s automobile addicts, business as usual.

Midday arrival at Patna, Bihar’s capital. A dust storm swirls around us. I borrow the phone of a fellow traveller, a government employee from Delhi (agricultural department) who has come for a pre-G20 meeting.
‘I am here to make sure the famers have a platform’ she informs me. Sounds good. Over 75% of the Bihar population is engaged in agricultural work providing the nation with food grain, fruit, vegetables, spices and flowers.
‘Do you think anyone will listen to them?’ I ask.
She looks faintly amused.
‘Oh no, it’s just like CSR (corporate social responsibility). Our government has to show it consults the people.’
Business as usual.

In the middle of Patna - Tripolia Social Service Hospital. 23 nuns, 45 doctors, a 250 bedded hospital in a well-planned, compact site. Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Paediatrics mainly. Breezy corridors, relaxed parents, happy staff and every incubator in the special care baby unit (SCBU) occupied. Vegetables are grown on site. Hens provide eggs. Cows provide milk and one of the foremost fuels available in India, cow dung.  The Biomass unit sits next to the cowshed. And solar power? Naturally, Sister Manisha tells me, surprised to be asked. Holistic care provided by the Sisters of the Holy Cross. One earth, one family, one future.

Jamui district, southern Bihar.
The relief of staff at Bamdah Mission Hospital is palpable. Their new borehole is working well, the hospital has piped water once again. But staff member Laniel finds it hard to stop what has been his constant work for the past few weeks – he continues to wheel his cycle, back and forth from the well, two water-filled buckets dangling from the handlebars, concentrating on not spilling a drop. Ophthalmologist Dr Samuel Murmu and I make plans for water conservation.

In Patna city, Sightsavers India calls a meeting. 5 years ago they signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Bihar Department of Health. Perhaps the reps from these organisations intend to address the devastating impact of global warming on hospitals and patients? Not so. Invitees are asked to attend to learn about ‘Universal Eye Health, Changing landscape of Eye Health Finance and Policy, Formidable network of change makers in eye care transformation’ etc.
Only 17 people attend, just one ophthalmologist.
Bihar is burning. But in the air-conditioned 5 star hotel conference room it is business as usual.

North-western Bihar. The mercury creeps up to 47degrees. Staff at the MHKS eye hospital in Motihari bless their old-fashioned hospital building – the open verandas provide some breezy respite. But the beautiful lake opposite has so little water that fish are flipping themselves onto the land and dying.
In spite of the heat, gallant workers climb to the hospital roof and install solar panels. A week later they are linked to the grid, supplying clean energy for the hospital and earning income from the electricity board.  

Excursion into neighbouring Jharkhand state. I meet Dr Manisha Oaron. She and her husband run an eco-tourism business. The hope is that income from this business will fund her dental work amongst poor tribal communities whose livelihoods depend on the preservation of the environment. We agree that our professional pledge to Do No Harm has a wider context.
I put Manisha in touch with Azhar Khan who runs Drishti Eye Care Hospital. Back in 2019, 30 people were brought to his hospital who had died of heatstroke in a single day. Azhar vowed then that the protection of the environment would be an integral part of their work as an eye hospital. Each surgical patient is given a fruit tree to plant in their village; you can receive free cataract surgery if you bring in a bag of plastic for recycling. One earth, one family, one future.

In north-eastern Bihar, eye surgeon Dr Amit Anand has a Eureka moment. He has built a guest house on the top of his hospital building in Madhepura. The original idea, almost a decade ago, was that it would be a business venture. But what about this : the first solar-powered hotel in the district, providing organic food from local farms, guests encouraged to visit the untouched countryside with its abundant bird life…and to step through the glass doors connecting them with the eye hospital to meet the rural patients whose families produce the food. Income from the guest house can fund free surgery for the blind. Definitely not a business as usual.

Back in north-western Bihar. Temperatures remain high. Tempers flare.
An outreach team from a hospital located around 100 kilometres away – the Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital (AJEH) - are in the Motihari area. They are trying to collect patients.
Staff from the local charitable eye hospital are incensed.
Why don’t you stick to your backyard? they ask.
Good question. Particularly on the carbon footprint front.
We are just following orders, reply the hot and harassed others.

The orders come from the bosses of the Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital – ‘one of the top 5 eye hospitals in India’ (their words not mine). Their soon- to- be- opened new mega hospital at Mastichak is funded by Shankara Eye Foundation USA – also with a hyperbolic self-description : ‘the world’s largest free eye care program’. Guests from all over the world have been invited to fly in for the October inauguration. Sadly, in pursuit of living up to their Big Brand reputation they seem to be pitting Bihari against Bihari. And, when field workers and patients alike are feeling the sharp edge of the climate crisis.
I am reminded of a quote from an article by Delhi Professor of Economics, Arun Kumar.
“Development that has gone rogue pushes India into the growth mania. It needs to be discarded to prevent future catastrophic events and reduce the nation’s vulnerability, especially that of its poor.’

Of course the professor was referring to development as in the consumer-driven growth of Indian cities like Delhi : construction and services geared to catering for the wealthy, promoting over-consumption, generating more rubbish and pollution; everything done with such fierce competition and haste and lack of good planning and leading to environmental damage that is out of control.

However, charities/NGOs need to pay heed too.
Just because our kind of ‘development’ is supposed to be about bettering the lot of the poor, this does not sanctify the work. What is called ‘upscaling’ in the NGO world can rapidly tip into the kind of ‘growth mania’ described by Professor Kumar.

It was a turbulent summer 2023 in north India. Even in the foothills of the Himalayas where we went for some downtime, we were trapped by landslides and floods and were without electricity and phone connectivity for 3 days. But I am grateful. Because it placed the climate emergency at the centre of all our doings and there it will remain. My dearest wish is that every so-called development charity will follow the same path – ask themselves if their policies and modus operandi are actually fit for purpose in the context of the climate crisis.

For them to do so, however, they would have to discard two things
- Rivalry and
- Business As Usual.
Listen to the words of former Indian army colonel, Sanjay Srivastava. He is a familiar face on Indian TV at times of disasters, like the July flooding in Delhi. Whilst politicians yell and point fingers at each other, his is a noticeably quiet, implacable voice. This is not about Blame and Shame he says. We have a global Climate Emergency. We have the forecasts, we have sensible plans as to how to prevent further disastrous events. We have to act.

True to his reputation as a pro-active disaster and climate risk management expert, the Colonel used 20 minutes of our shared time together in Delhi to teach us how to instruct agricultural workers in Bihar on how to save their lives when lightning strikes. (Lightning strikes are increasing in India due to global warming and air pollution). We will pass on the knowledge to the eye teams in Bihar.
One earth, one family, one future…it has to be more than a slogan.

Lucy Mathen

#climatemergency #NGOcarbonfootprint  #lightningresilientindiacampaign #actionnotagendas