The Cost of Driving Your Car

If you are contemplating buying your second car, for the home, the better half or possibly a grown up child, read this carefully. When an airconditioned taxi cab (with a chaffeur) is offered to you @ Rs. 15 per kilometre (Meru or Easy Cabs, for instance), you shudder. This is expensive, if used regularly. Much better to buy a vehicle instead.
Lets do some micro economics here:
Assume now, that you are purchasing a mid range car, say one that costs Rs. 6 lakhs and runs on petrol, giving you an efficiency of about 12 km per litre. Assume further that the car will run about 10,000 km a year. These are fair & realistice assumptions. Remember that this is the second car for the family.
Fuel cost per kilometre (including engine oil) : Rs. 5 (just a third of the cab)
Over a five year period, though, there are the following:
Daily washing, quarterly servicing and (inevitable) repairs, battery & tyre replacement and tinkering costs : Rs. 100,000, or about Rs 2 per km
Insurance : Rs. 50,000, Re 1 per km
Loss of interest (post-tax!) on the amount invested in the car : Rs. 3 per km
Loss on sale of car after 5 years (@ Rs. 3 lakhs) : Rs. 6 per km. The more expensive the car, the higher the loss per km.

Total cost of ownership : Rs. 17 per km. The saving to you by using a cab covering 50,000 km over a five year period is Rs. 1 lakh.
Throw in a personal chaffeur and the cost reaches Rs. 23-Rs. 26 per kilometre.

I use this argument against a second car, rather than the first, only because a single car may be seen as vital for, say, a medical emergency and hence not subject to critical economic analysis.
The moral: public transport is not just eco-friendly, it is common economics as well.

Costa Rica: happy and green

I first met Carmen from Costa Rica in UC, Berkeley in 2001. What struck me most about this teenager was just how much she laughed all the time in the month long program she attended alongwith me and about thirty others. In Costa Rica, though, (as I read in a recent BBC report) her laughter and ready sense of humour is hardly an exception.
Costa Rica is a remarkable country. It has no army. Successive governments have poured money into books, not bullets, with the result that the country is almost fully literate.
It is the first developing country to state its aim of being carbon neutral by 2021, in part through the mass planting of trees. In the 1980s, about 20% of its land area was covered by forests. Today, about half of Costa Rica is has rich tree cover. About 90% of its energy supply comes from renewables.

Is being green also being happy ? Much as I would want the correlation established, Costa Rica is the only real example I can find, the correlation established in a report published by the New Economics Foundation, which has combined three variables - what people say about their life satisfaction, their longevity (very high at 78 years ) and their ecological footprint.

Sociologists and some others have extended this argument, making facts that are equally relevant and proven elsewhere (read Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers'). They say that, in addition to greenness, longevity can be connected to happiness which in turn is because of strong social networks of friends and familiers and a high level of tolerance of social divisions and opinions. A popular piece of philosophy in Costa Rica says no argument or quarrel should last more than three days.
We have a lot to learn from this beautiful country.

Laptop & change

This month, my laptop (the first one I have ever had) completes six years of service. Perhaps IBM (now, no longer IBM, but Lenovo) should give me an award for persistence. On the other hand, I have used Windows XP all along (now, no longer Windows XP, but failed Vista, followed by Windows 7), so perhaps Microsoft should. Or, perhaps, the guy who sold me the laptop should be getting some flak from his boss for not tempting me with an upgrade, but then he has gone through three more jobs in the last six years. Then, the dealer (his boss), who sold me the laptop, is no longer a dealer, but has shut shop because of thinning margins.
Well, you get the gist. Everything (pointlessly) changes all the time, of course. Except my laptop. It has now become rather old and slow, much like an old man walking down a high-traffic stairway, holding onto the railing of predictability.
I am not emotional about things in general & would gladly let go of a product if it had outlived its utility or had been worn to its soles, yet there is an underlying environmental responsibility for full usage - after all, like most people I know, all that we use is the Office Suite in its most basic form. This laptop, old as he is, needs to use only about 10% of his potential to deal with me (which gives you an idea of just how tech savvy I am). Much of our dissatisfaction with computers is because of their speed, or rather, the superior speed of newer computers, when contrasted with the one you own. I call this 'engineered dissatisfaction' - a term I use for the egregious efforts of intelligent engineers and product managers who, in their effort to maximise profits for their corporations, encourage people to buy new computers without bothering about what they could do with the old one. They do this knowing fully well that the potential customer is rarely using the full product, but can be tempted with the Apple in the garden (no pun, of course, intended).

By using my laptop over this inordinate period and speaking about it, I am making a statement - to anyone who'd care to listen. Think. Before you buy.

Simple Living

The other day I was at a dinner with folks who are clearly well heeled, if not very rich. They have a tastefully furnished home, a music system for the discerning listener and a high technology kitchen. The main protagonist of my story, a lady with some pretentions to minimalism, was mulling over how important money was to her. “It has its place,” she sniffed delicately, “I live within what we earn. Basically, I am a very simple person.” This argument is decidedly specious : indeed, ‘simple’ may just be the most abused word in the English language.

This got me thinking quite a bit about what simple living means to the middle and upper economic strata; in essence, it means living with just what you need, not with what you can afford. The more I think about it, the more I realise that the difference between these terms is the difference between night and day.
The Mahatma would have approved.

On the Opening Day at Copenhagen, December 2009

This morning’s newspaper is a fascinating contradiction. The front page editorial of The Hindu, and many pieces on other pages, revolves around the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, that will debate on an issue as important as our future and the future of our children. Across the newspaper, though, are advertisements, enticing, cajoling ones, pushing the sale of 2009 model cars of every auto company, as car makers want to empty their stock out before the year ends.

You could believe, with some justification, that, as Governments across the World meet to address the single biggest challenge humanity has faced, that of catastrophic climate alteration as a result of excessive carbon in the atmosphere, the Corporate sector continues to address the only challenge it has ever faced, viz., that of increasing sales, at any cost, even if such sales was only to add carbon to the atmosphere. This is so accepted now that no one could see the contradiction, if it was served on a plate with a salad dressing around it.
Yet, we should begin to. The Corporate sector, to which all of us are dutifully attached in some capacity or the other, is the largest force in society today and the impact of, say, Toyota effecting a 25% reduction in its carbon emissions can equal that of a country. Indeed, as Paul Hawken noted, of the top 100 economies in the World today, over 51% are corporations.

The problem arises because corporations are considered to be amoral in some sense, and need not have values that are necessary for every individual to live in society. Just how this has happened beats me, yet it is true. Therefore, most of us have begun to accept that asking a company, the company you work with, for example, to reduce its pollution impact, is violating principles of a working relationship. Like many things assumed, this is never questioned or, when questioned, dismissed as heretical.

The Hindu’s editorial has a brilliant end note: The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgement on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. Are we, all members of an educated, ‘elite’, intelligent group, aware of the calamity ahead and what it means for each of us? Are we clinging to those dubious pieces of science fiction that deny that our climate is in inexorable alteration, because such prose is convenient to read and a feel-good story?

Are we willing instead, to change things around us towards a sustainable future, to make a substantial alteration to our standard of living and to become the catalyst, using the influence each of us has?

I do not have great aspirations from Copenhagen. Yet, in asking you to examine your own lifestyle, the consumptive and unsustainable way in which your business is run, as well as the future of our planet, and to disassociate all this reflection from business imperative, I am making a request, a sincere and heartfelt one, to do the right thing. As the many leaders debate and negotiate with, contradict and annoy each other, please use your circle of influence within your corporation to make a real, tangible difference to the planet, devoid of political agenda and, more likely than not, in contradiction to short term profit objectives. If the process of climate change is to be arrested, the first step will have to be taken by each one of us, not by the jesters at the court of Copenhagen.

In other words, its your problem.

The problem with solar energy

The more I look closely at things, the murkier they seem to be. Take solar power, for instance, now much touted as the energy source of the future. The Indian Government itself has set a target, under the National Solar Energy Mission, of 20,000 megawatts (for Heaven’s sake!).
Solar energy is clean, no doubt. The problem is in the manufacture of solar cells.

Currently, much of the production comes from a process in which a chemical called cadmium telluride is used, a highly toxic compound known to be a carcinogen and now being actively chastised by many groups working on toxics. Since the life of a solar cell is about two decades (practically speaking), just where are the cells going to go, once their life is done? There is no recycling plant that I know of, in India at least, and the manufacturers of solar panels aren’t exactly lining up to receive toxic waste.

Nanosolar, a Silicon Valley ‘clean technology’ start up says it has the answer to cadmium telluride, an answer it calls CIGS. This is a combination of copper, indium, gallium and selenium, which will be less toxic and perhaps cheaper, if produced on a large scale. The issue here will be just how these metals will be extracted. Copper mines, for example, have an absymal record of toxic waste in spillage, from India to Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Mexico and parts of Africa, including Zambia, where copper virtually supports the export economy and Congo. If anything can be said in its favour, it is that copper mines have been impartial in their record of destruction. Indium is a rare metal & its extraction promises to be messy as well.

For the moment, however, we must take away two messages : the first that the cheapest form of solar power is solar thermal power, which involves heating water with sunlight to make steam, using good ol’ lenses. The second that, the only sustainable solution for all of us is to reduce our consumption of resources.
Many intelligent, educated people believe that our species will innovate its way out of this energy and climate change crisis, because we have worked ourselves out of crises, such as the food shortages of the ‘60s that led to the Green Revolution. This is silly optimism, backed by no data to support it.
There is no ‘clean’, unlimited party on this planet. Reduction, I believe, is the immediate answer.

Kumaran

When I first saw Kumaran, I must have been four or five years old and I immediately took a liking to him, a fondness that lasted many years. The reason was simple: he would shower me with chocolates and toffees, despite (unnecessary) protestations from my parents. 

He used to visit us once a month on a weekend and it was a regularity that I particularly appreciated. The procedure would be the same every month: he would stand hesitantly, just outside our large two-storeyed home, Bungalow 75, in Digboi and clear his throat with a low cough. The servants, who had seen him walk up the driveway, would let my parents know of course and my father would come down, with a resigned air, me behind him in eager anticipation. He would hand over the goodies to me with a warm smile and a somewhat pedestrian conversation with Dad in Malayalam would ensue, about the journey from Duliajan, which was an hour away from our home. 

Dad would ask the mandatory questions: how’s the family, is the job going well, any changes in the organisation, while Kumaran enquired about my brothers, then studying in Rishi Valley.  He always spoke with hesitation and deference; I never actually saw Kumaran sit down, certainly not inside a room, for he saw himself as many levels below us in a hierarchy of native definition. They would talk in that lovely sit-out outside the living room, with its views of roses and dahlias and the beautiful old tree at the edge of the large garden.  

There was a story, of course, a history of kindness and return.  Many years before I was born, my father, whose generous nature found particular inspiration in helping his brethren from Kerala, had secured a permanent low-end job for Kumaran at the Duliajan oil refinery, supported him financially in the early days and played a role in his promotion to supervisor (nepotism wasn't invented then). 

Most people - well, almost everyone really - would have expressed their gratitude at these moments, brought a box of sweets for the benefactor and then forgotten all about it. Kumaran was different. His monthly visit had just a single message: thank you, he would say, often with eyes moist, a gentle smile and that hint of apology that I could never really understand. The somewhat forced conversation - and a cup of tea - over, Kumaran would leave with a promise to return a month later, while my father entreated him to not trouble himself – a trip to Digboi took the better part of a day for the man. 

A month would pass and there he would be again. With my chocolates. 

Then he stopped coming home and, of course, I asked Dad what had happened. He’s got a job in the Gulf, he said, a place far away which, in the early 1970s, it certainly was. I recall him telling Mum that Kumaran would now make a good deal of money. “He will never forget us,” Mum said in her dramatic way and she was right, of course. 

Kumaran would write regular letters to Dad - he spoke of his family back in Kerala, enquired about everyone and asserted that he was saving money well.  It was indeed apparent at some point that he was making more money than Dad did in his last job before retirement as a Chief Internal Auditor but the tone of the letters - the deference and gratitude - never changed. 

When we moved to Bangalore in 1977, Kumaran began visiting us while on his annual holiday, taking a train up from his home town in Kerala. Some things were now different: the chocolates were imported ones, and he brought my parents small gifts - an after-shave, a perfume, a can opener - with a reiteration in the ensuing conversation: it’s because of both of you that I am what I am. Years later, he retired and returned home to Kerala. 

When he came to see Mum after Dad’s demise, he was inconsolable and I saw him some years later at our place again, that low cough, gentle smile, now on a wrinkled countenance. As he hugged me, I found it hard to relate to him, for memories - and the emotions that they kindle - aren't fungible, often they aren't even real and kindness and its payback are within.  I had never seen his family or known him and the connection - kids and teens have a long rope of Excuse  - was primarily through the goodie bag. He sat down this time in the living room and I shortly excused myself. It was the last time I saw him. 

Kumaran was, in the 1950s, just another young man from Kerala, escaping poverty by moving to a strange land called Assam.  A kind man from his home land lent him a hand and it was a clasp that never released.  Oscar Wilde once said: if you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you, but that is the principal difference between dog and man. Kumaran, that unassuming man, now a part of forgotten oral history, proved Oscar Wilde wrong, at least for a child who was watching.  And learning.....  

What made Kumaran different?  It is a question I will never know the answer to.