When most Americans think of India, if they ever do at all, it’s as some kind of large-scale tragedy: An overpopulated, impoverished peninsula suffering the ravages of disease, famine, and despair. Some might go farther, assigning blame for these problems to a caste system that institutionalizes discrimination against the poor and dispossessed. India has its defenders, too, among the American public, people who point to it as a repository of ancient knowledge and spiritual wisdom. It’s a source from which we can learn a great deal about meditation, yoga, alternative medicine, vegetarian cooking, and mystical religious practices.
Yet, if you claimed that India was a place from which the United States could learn a thing or two about economic policy and political reforms, people’s jaws would drop. Even those enraptured by Eastern philosophy would stare at you with a certain incomprehension. The most internationally and intellectually sophisticated of Americans would assume you were talking about Gandhi, and politely explain how diluted his ideas about development and governance have become in India’s political system in the more than half-century since his assassination. You’d find very, very few people who would nod their heads, agreeing that America could learn a few basic lessons about how to run its society from India.
But Bill McKibben — the bestselling author of The End of Nature, which helped renew broad public interest in ecological concerns across the U.S. in the late eighties — argues exactly that in his excellent book, Hope, Human and Wild (1995, Little Brown U.S.) Written as kind of an optimistic sequel to The End of Nature‘s alarming message that we are literally destroying the Earth, the book focuses on three places that offer both inspiration and practical steps in repairing the damage being done to the planet.
One is the woodlands of the Adirondack Mountains in New York state where McKibben makes his home. A century ago this area was a logged-over wasteland, viciously exploited and then abandoned as the timber companies moved westward across the continent seeking new stands of virgin trees. Now it’s once again a lovely, healthy forest, teeming with the activity of beavers, moose and coyotes. When left alone, nature shows immense power to replenish itself — a source of great delight for McKibben.
He also finds cause for optimism in the Brazilian city of Curitiba, a model of ecological and humane urbanism where shantytown dwellers can redeem their garbage for groceries, and bus-only avenues conveniently serve all corners of the city, making a car unnecessary. The city, which is impoverished by American standards with a per capita annual income of only $2,500, has created thousands of hectares of new parks and offers residents of all incomes numerous educational and cultural activities. "Curitiba," McKibben declares, "is among the world’s great cities."
The third place where McKibben finds hope that we can learn to live more lightly upon the earth is Kerala, a state on India’s western coast that is one of the most densely populated places in the world. Kerala, with its $300 per capita annual income, makes Curitiba appear like Kenilworth. Yet in the statistical categories that most accurately measure the quality of people’s lives, Kerala ranks up there with the United States and Canada. Life expectancy is almost equal — seventy-two for a North American male versus seventy for a Keralite (and higher for women). Kerala’s birthrate is at eighteen per thousand of population, compared to sixteen per thousand in the U.S. (and Kerala’s is falling at a faster rate). And in 1991, the United Nations certified that Kerala is one hundred percent literate. The remarkable thing about all this, McKibben underscores in his book, is that Kerala has achieved basic living conditions for its people similar to the United States even though the average American is seventy times wealthier.
This blows all to hell the idea that a decent, dignified life is available only for people who can maintain Western standards of living. The people of Kerala are poor — poor even in comparison to people in many other Indian states — yet they enjoy long lives, good educations, and social harmony. McKibben was amazed that in travelling through a place as poor as Kerala he didn’t see desperate beggars or malnourished children. Nor did he see signs of religious animosities, despite the fact that the state is 60 percent Hindu, 20 percent Muslim, and 20 percent Christian — a recipe for fierce friction in other parts of India.
So what is it that makes Kerala so different from other struggling places in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? Partly it’s a progressive political tradition, with leftist parties holding power much of the time and Gandhian activists playing a role in government. But it’s not just that they held power, but what they did with it. Instead of the traditional Western model of economic growth (embraced by most socialists as well as capitalists), they emphasized a fairer distribution of income among people. Instead of encouraging big factories or trying to lure businesses away from other places, Kerala’s leaders tried to work with what they had to improve people’s lives. McKibben says this, "come[s] as close as anything on the planet to actually incarnating‘sustainable development,’ that buzzword beloved of environmentalists." Farmers, for instance, were encouraged to lend their land for gardens in between rice crops, and unemployed youth were paid to tend these gardens. The produce was sold in local markets at prices far below the usual imports. Everyone came out ahead.
"Kerala demonstrates," McKibben writes, "that a low-level economy can create a decent life, abundant in all the things — health, education, community — that are most necessary for us all."
Obviously, Kerala offers an excellent model of development for other places in the developing world. But there are things that we in the overdeveloped world can learn, too — especially as the environmental pricetag for our high standard of living grows more and more unmanageable. Kerala has not figured out all the answers — unemployment is high in the state and so are its budget deficits. Plus, the accumulating power of the corporate-dominated global economy and India’s recent embrace of free market policies will make it harder for Kerala to keep their economic experiment running smoothly. And I’m not suggesting that it’s likely Americans will reduce their incomes to one-seventieth of current levels. But Kerala offers one critical lesson for the world: The Good Life can be pursued in ways other than promoting endless economic growth and accumulating ever more wealth.
Americans may not be accustomed to looking to poorer corners of the world for new ideas about social policy and government programs. But, as we face a future clouded by mounting ecological devastation, we’d better learn to do just that. Thinking globally means not just disseminating our knowledge to the nations of the South, but bringing back some of their wisdom to enhance our own lives.