It’s been a few years since I saw India as a world leader. So the question is, where is the darkness going? But the question was answered by reading The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson – and my memory was refreshed about the promise of this country and its relevance in the year 2021.
The novel, which The New York Times’ Ezra Klein called “the most important book I’ve read this year”, is a muscular attempt by a master of science fiction to see a way through the climate crisis: one hard to please. way global balance. . In chapter one, a heat wave in Uttar Pradesh is combined with deadly humidity, leaving a “wet-bulb” temperature at which the body can no longer cool itself. The result is a catastrophic death from heat – but also a national rise, and the beginning of a climate revolution.
Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, Orbit, Rs 1,050, p.: 576.
India is now emerging as a hero, dragging the world on its feet on decarbonisation and ecological rehabilitation. “We are watching what India is doing,” China’s finance minister admits in a later excerpt. “They’re moving into all kinds of things now.” Robinson ultimately aims to excite readers with a vision of “all kinds of things”: an abundance of wonky strategies, social alliances, scientific moonshots and radical-flank operations, all working together to take down the carbon economy. . . He traces many of these ideas and actors to the present scenario of India and others into its future. A picture of India as a moral and political example is formed – as it was 75 years ago, and since then – its religion in the Anthropocene, embracing its new endeavor with destiny.
Reading the Ministry for the Future in Delhi ahead of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, I found this picture shocking and suddenly reassuring. I spoke to Robinson about the script for the future of India, which is at the fore in the fight for the future of the world.
India is not the only ‘hero’ in the book’s future – but you have chosen it as a society that rises from disaster, and goes through crisis. Why India? Is this the country’s sheer risk of climate disaster? Or was there a positive association that guided your choices?
Maybe it was a little bit of both. The risk is definitely there: the Ganges Plain, the back wall of the Himalayas to try a high pressure cell; In addition, the densely populated and strained electrical grid. This can add to the disaster. I don’t think this is news to be noticed by anyone. But India’s positive outlook as an emerging superpower was equally important to me. Along with China, it is one of those ultra-large countries that are important to human history in this century.
The book portrays a national quality that I had lost in recent years: India’s progressive, active interest and constructive role in the world. Did any of this cultural, historical heritage guide your writing?
Yes, he did. Since my college years in the early 1970s, I have been teaching and practicing to a lesser extent the Californian form of Buddhism. It is a long road that eventually leads to India. And I am a close student of Henry David Thoreau – he was one of the first Americans to learn from Indian philosophy, and it is good that he had an influence on Gandhi as well.
Of course, it is difficult or even impossible to speak with any insight about other countries; They are always so complex that even the citizens of that country cannot keep a good eye on everything. America, for example, is now an incomprehensible mess; But with lots of hope for better times. But no matter which party is in government, all of them will have to join this effort, otherwise they will suffer. And the closer it is to the equator, the sooner the suffering will begin.
The political change you write for India shows that historical nationalism is a serious obstacle to climate action. But the book also presents potential for countries – China, Russia, the US and the rest – that view climate action as vital to the national interest, or national survival.
All national leadership is dedicated to safeguarding the interests of their nation first; The world at large comes after that, if ever. This is a great danger in our time. I think the national leadership has to understand that the sooner their country’s policies and industries are greened, the sooner they are going to have a greater relative advantage in the new world of technology to come, if one is well-versed. To survive.
In other words, dragging one’s heels, and burning all the fossil fuels you possibly can, while other nations advance in the development of green technologies, is a recipe for national failure. The most courageous countries will be the most successful later in the twenty-first century. This cannot be stressed enough: The first green followed by the later would be best.
I’m curious how you did the research to envision India’s future of redemption.
It was mostly from reading, which I do for several hours every day. Plus, there’s some help from acquaintances in the technical world, who read the manuscript in early drafts. My studies in Indian history go back to the time I wrote The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternate history with a large Indian component; That reading took place from 1998 to 2001. That reading took me to The Wonder That Was India, by AL Basham, and The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad Chowdhury, and Stanley Wolpert’s New History of India, among other books of the time.
Over the years I have read a lot about Kerala, Sikkim and Ladakh as well. I know these may no longer be the mainstream of Indian society, but they are examples of the great diversity that India exhibits politically and socially.
Were you informed by a living person? For example, Vandana shouts Shiva.
I met Vandana Shiva at a convention in California in 1991, and she was very influential. I still think he is very important to agricultural practices and equality, but I do not agree with his staunch views against genetically modified organisms – as long as we are humans, we are modifying genes. the law, not the case; And we need to move on; And it’s safe. To complain that science is involved in genetics is to confuse the good of science with the bad of capitalism. To return to the positive, she has been a huge force for good for most of her career.
Finally, I want to say a word for Indian science fiction, with the idea that every culture needs a vision of its future being perfect. The stronger the Indian science fiction, the better its vision.
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