Day #17: Building Blocks for a new Economy - Precautionary Principle

5th April 2020: Social distancing is a precaution that more than half of humanity is practicing today.  We are doing so because we share the fear of our Governments that we may die in case we don't follow the same. Several social activists, analysts and scientists opposing such a massive lock down as part of their argument in the past week have pointed out other illnesses and health and lifestyle challenges that cause locally as much if not more deaths as this virus is doing (or projected to do), and yet how we haven't  locked down for the same. 

It is the easy infection, inability to deny, immediacy of fatalities and concentration of the death that has shocked the governments across the world to lock down much of the world. Remember, we weren't asked to any precaution when large scale mobile phone towers came up around us and we were (and are) all subjected to more radio waves around us and within our homes than ever before. We have large number of untested chemical pesticides, that cause several degenerative diseases and no government locked down our supermarkets from selling such residue  laden food. We have had nuclear power plants causing radiation in the township around and several cases reported over a period of time, but,  governments haven't done much in asking citizens to take  precautions. If we go farther back, remember how long the governments of the world kept denying that smoking doesn't kill, until it became too stupid to keep denying? Air pollution, heavy metal concentration, effluent dumping in rural areas, nuclear waste dumping, water released into rivers and seas without effluent treatment...this is an endless list of compromises and decisions.

Governments all over the world have placed commerce over healthcare precaution consistently, even more so on environmental and animal concerns.  If you are dying due to exposure over a period of time, if your symptoms  of infection are not visible or could be reasoned as being caused by more than one factors, if it doesn't kill many people in your surrounding at the same time and if all this is not happening in quick succession, even corona would not have solicited such a dramatic lock down globally.  

Today we know that the Corona virus came because bats from their wild were disturbed, we have been warned that when forests are destroyed and wild animals disturbed, we are releasing bacteria and virus into the air that we don't know - last year we heard of the melting of the permafrost and similar warning from scientists. We know also that people with lifestyle based diseases such as diabetes, cancer, etc., are more likely to die because of Corona. Though these are early indicators and as we generate more data, we will have several inferences, the fact cannot be denied that the disturbance of the wild and not taking precaution against the long-slow-death causes among us have contributed to this virus. 

Global trade has been one of the biggest driver to reduce precautions by governments and communities. Protecting commercial interests of companies of their respective countries and ensuring their profits has been the primary driver of all the global trade negotiations across the world, conducted in close doors by lawyers. These negotiations have obviously been driven by the rich countries with more lawyers and always  against the interest of the poorer countries that are forced to accept terms, not because they cannot see what is happening, but, because they can't afford so many lawyers and are intimidated by the large volumes of complicated rules and regulations that rich nation's lawyers produce. America has become a global super power as much by its defense establishment as much by the terms negotiated by its lawyers in international trade deals with poorer countries. 

So, labourers in Tirupur that toil for international hosiery brands, have to live in inhuman conditions from which they were sent away without any protection 15 days back to their respective homes hundreds of miles away by walk, the river in Erode has been polluted due to chemical dyeing for the same brands and in the process destroying the health of everyone around, wetlands of Chennai have been squatted by IT companies that offer cheap stenography labour for richer countries, that this squatting resulted in Chennai being repeatedly flooded in recent years is an incidental suffering the poorer sections of the city need to borne, that we have  our water rich surrounding to the city and once rich food producing region today dotted by car manufacturers from all over the world because it is cheaper to get abundant water here, we have air in the entire Vellore belt choking the lungs because global leather industry has long  found that it is cheaper to process it in this region...and the list can go on. It is not as though the global commerce demanded that we compromise our people and environment's health, we as a society and government just didn't take adequate precautions. 

That is why today when we see an opportunity to rebuild the economic edifice subsequent to the pandemic, precautionary principle becomes an important building block of the same. 

Precautionary Principle is defined as, "When human activities may lead to morally unacceptable harm that is scientifically plausible but uncertain, actions shall be taken to avoid or diminish that harm." In plain speak, that means, you don't mess with the things that you don't know much about just because it is scientifically possible, so play safe. Morally unacceptable situations are further defined as, 'threatening human health, serious and effectively irreversible, inequitable and causing pressure on future generations, imposed with disregard to human rights'.  Fundamentally this is an ethical proposition that can contain much of the grave dangers that have been caused in the name of growth, progress and development of economy in the past several decades.  

Today across the country, people stood in their balconies and doors to light candles because the Prime Minister asked them to do so, to symbolize that we are fighting the corona virus as a nation. So the people who breath polluted air, drink contaminated water, live in poor sanitary conditions, work in inhuman habitats, wear and eat chemical laden clothes and food, came out  and stood with lamps and lights to show solidarity. They did so because we as a nation agree to participate in precautionary practices and common good rituals. We will do so as long as it doesn't affect our livelihoods or threaten our security.  It is in our culture to be precautionary if we knew the danger as much as it is in our nature to participate in a ritual to show our solidarity with the community. Such people deserve to not be harmed by morally unacceptable technology or economy. 

1. More on Precautionary Principles here.
2. A brief sketchy analysis of the Corona victims in the US here.
3. More on Global trade and the link between wild life and virus spreading by Dr. Vandana  Shiva here.