Environment Studies

Besides my research on dak bungalows I have been also taking lectures on environmental studies for the students of Government College Sector9 Gurgaon. The issues I have raised are greenhouse effect,ozone hole,acid rain and pollution and degradation of the environment.The students in these lectures come from the vicinity of a fast expanding megapolis of Gurgaon and are therefore both passive and active participants and witnesses of a modern (rather postmodern)transition of the city. Over the last twenty five years or so the city has seen massive high rises of office and residential spaces.The culture and lifestyle have undergone fundamental changes.The students have grown up in this milieu and have diverse responses to it. While consumer culture has its effects it also tends to make students passive.However there are some exceptions like Sandy Dancer(Sandeep Paswan) who is a distance education student who has undertaken dance classes at Gurgaon and also has started teaching dance.This perhaps could be one way of coping with the changing culture and environment of the city.The downside of this growth was brought out by Times Of India city edition in which the deteriorating conditions of civic life and services was pointed out by the people living in Gurgaon city. It is perhaps contexts like these that Daniel Bell(prominent sociologist) analysed in the American context.He pointed out that corporate performance has made society uglier,trashier,polluted and noxious.The earlier identity of the private corporation and the public interest has been replaced by a sense of mismatch and incongruence.Talking with Mr. Ajay Mahurkar(IGNOU) I found that Bell links this criticism to a fundamental flaw in the mainstream economics whose individualism (Bell points out) fails when confronted with externalities like environmental pollution and degradation.