Putting a price on nature

Putting a price on nature

SANTOSH DESAI


As a child during the summer holidays, we would as a family embark on an LTAfuelled trip to our native place by train in a journey that lasted two and a half days. A recurring feature of the trip was the act of keeping ones eyes glued for the solitary water spout on the platform as the train eased its way in, and racing to fill up our water bottles and running back before the train began to wheeze its way onwards . The taps were filthy, as were the surroundings . But the thought of hygiene was very far from our minds; this was drinking water and by god, we were going to drink it, carefully of course, for we didnt want to run out before the next station arrived.
Today, it is unthinkable for most of us to drink water from such a dodgy source for we know better. We carry our bottles everywhere, which are in any case available everywhere.
Going under the description of mineral water , there is nothing remotely natural about most of these bottles but they give us a sense of reassurance. We read occasional reports that suggest that in a lot of cases, the water we drink from these bottles is little more than tap water, but the act of opening a sealed bottle makes us feel that we have done our bit. Beyond that, who knows
In moving to bottled water, we have tacitly agreed to pay for something that was available to us for free. What was available to all for no cost, is now available to those willing to pay a price. In this case, the rest can continue to get it for free. But by creating a hierarchy of suspicion, we create room for differentially pricing what was once free. So we pay a rupee for water that comes in a plastic pouch, a few times that for an unbranded bottle, a few more times that for a known brand and then of course, we have the mysteriously priced Evian, which is perhaps the value you place on yourself. What we see here is the conversion of something inert and universal into something charged with different levels of meaning and available to only those who understand this and are able to pay the corresponding price. What this also implies is that the need to improve the quality of tap water reduces as the most vocal and influential segments of society no longer agitate for a change in this respect.
Similarly, when we build new roads that take us faster from one point to another, we create a system of tolls that convert a public good into a conditional private one. The desire to travel faster, which rests much more in a small affluent segment , creates an apparently universal need for better roads and leads to everyone having to pay more for using these new highways. Since this is part of the discourse of development, it would be churlish for anyone to oppose it or how else will we manage to improve our infrastructure in a short time
Since the state owns and operates public goods, the question of whose interests does it look after when it chooses to act in a certain way becomes particularly contentious. Land acquisition is a case in point. When the government exercises its right to move people for the purpose of industry, it is privileging the needs of industry over those of the individuals. Now, it is the role of the government to take such calls on the basis of longterm benefits and costs to all concerned. But it is curious that the displaced are always the vulnerable; we rarely hear such proposals being even put on the table in urban India. Why, we have celebrities stalling a flyover on the grounds of noise when it runs too close to their house!
The push towards private ownership of the public is a gradual, seemingly natural process. It begins with mistrust of the natural (water, air, food) and takes the shape of making a compelling case for modifying the natural , for a price of course.
We extract the commercial from the social, by creating a sense that all is not well with things as they are. In a lot of cases, this is simply the price we pay for progress. The question is, who really pays this apparently inevitable price
Implicitly, in this model, resources get sucked upwards towards those who have the means to pay a differential price. The idea of development is inherently skewed towards those ready to receive it only people with cars can value expressways. For the rest, it is back to the tap water at railway stations. It didnt kill us, did it