22 January 2010, Fort Cochi, Kerala State, India
I read over yesterday's post and discovered that I had not made my main point clear. The point was that Indian culture has a different attitude towards risk than Western culture. We in the west tend to expend quite a bit of effort to minimize risk, taking precautions such as life preservers, insurance, strict building regulations, strictly enforced vehicle laws & regulations, etc. Here in India, you see situations every day that would be prevented by law, regulation or general cultural attitudes in the west.
We took a 3 hour trip today on a rattan covered boat through the backwaters today. The boat was powered by a man in the front with a bamboo pole, and another in the back. The backwaters are tidal rivers and canals throughout Kerala, with coconut palms, mangroves, cashew trees, betel nut trees, pepper vines and mango trees on the surrounding land. There's not much fishing, as the fish have become quite scarce due to pollution and reputedly also due to climate change, although I would guess that climate change is a scapegoat and that pollution and overfishing are probably the real culprits.
Although Kerala pollution is much less than the pollution we saw in Tamil Nadu, it's still much more than one would see in Europe, Canada or the USA. Why is that? Part of it is due to poor handling of sewage. The rest seems to be due to the lack of inhibition against littering. In my country, it's the "hicks", the "yahoos" that litter, but there aren't that many hicks left, as our citizens have become more sophisticated over the last few decades. For non-Americans, I would like to explain that those are derogatory terms referring to rural, uneducated people who have backward attitudes. The vast majority of our citizens would be horrified to see a companion throw an empty plastic bottle on the side of the road or into a body of water. Here it seems to be much more acceptable. I think that the only way to solve the litter problem is with education and publicity campaigns (billboards, television, radio). As Catherine said, it's the young people that will really take such a message to heart, so it might take a generation to change.
Although Kerala pollution is much less than the pollution we saw in Tamil Nadu, it's still much more than one would see in Europe, Canada or the USA. Why is that? Part of it is due to poor handling of sewage. The rest seems to be due to the lack of inhibition against littering. In my country, it's the "hicks", the "yahoos" that litter, but there aren't that many hicks left, as our citizens have become more sophisticated over the last few decades. For non-Americans, I would like to explain that those are derogatory terms referring to rural, uneducated people who have backward attitudes. The vast majority of our citizens would be horrified to see a companion throw an empty plastic bottle on the side of the road or into a body of water. Here it seems to be much more acceptable. I think that the only way to solve the litter problem is with education and publicity campaigns (billboards, television, radio). As Catherine said, it's the young people that will really take such a message to heart, so it might take a generation to change.
