মোবাইল পিওন নিয়ে এল
মেঘের চিঠির গর্জন
হাত বাড়িয়ে চোখ বলল
বসন্ত উৎসব অর্জন
চোখের জলে পা ডুবিয়ে
কুড়িয়ে নিলাম বাড়ি
জানলা দিয়ে বাইরে তাকিয়ে
হঠাৎ সেই ছাড়াছাড়ি
মোবাইল চিঠির জলের রেশে
হয়ে উঠল বাগান
সব শেষে এক নিমিষে
বাগান গাছের ঐকতান।
মোবাইল পিওন নিয়ে এল
মেঘের চিঠির গর্জন
হাত বাড়িয়ে চোখ বলল
বসন্ত উৎসব অর্জন
চোখের জলে পা ডুবিয়ে
কুড়িয়ে নিলাম বাড়ি
জানলা দিয়ে বাইরে তাকিয়ে
হঠাৎ সেই ছাড়াছাড়ি
মোবাইল চিঠির জলের রেশে
হয়ে উঠল বাগান
সব শেষে এক নিমিষে
বাগান গাছের ঐকতান।
Since the time, I have started working on rural energy transition from 2003, one question that bothered and disturbed me was my inability to find out a psychological structure behind rural energy definition.
Over the last twenty years of struggle, every work that I have been doing related to energy transition or rural energy transition had its core being based on people. If it was, is or has been based on people, then ideally, a real, symbolic, imaginary definitional space of rural energy transition should also be there. I struggled to find it out for 20 years. Then, I came across the new nomenclatures of just, people centric energy transition and a close reading of Lacan helped me to find out finally a broad structure to my last twenty years of work on energy transition. The broad structure of the last twenty years of my work on "Energy Transition" or if I may call it as "People Centric Energy Transition" can be largely seen through the below structural flow shown in the exhibit below :
In today's time, there is a normalcy of excess pleasure, desire to consume pleasure again and again. There is a pressure within the society to consume pleasure more and more. Mass scale cinema with spectre, big budget, high promotion, story, characters, plotline often are consciously playing to this psyche of excess consumption. This excess consumption through the aesthetics of cinema often leads to a harassement. In such a harassement process of cinema, the excess and the passion of excess in a cinema hurts the object. Knowingly and unknowingly the cinema watchers can become such an object of a 1000 crore hit or a flop film. So, often a great film can create such a hurtful object of passion or might not. A hit, flop, average, mediocre film can create such hurtful objects unknowingly even through best crafts in a cinema. Hence cinema can create passion which then hurts and leads to harassement even for a fan of a certain cinema or for a one time watcher of the same cinema. Even before the art and craft of cinema comes in, the excess of pleasure, passion can create hurtful harassement.
The society as it evolves often demands such passion led hurtful objects. In many developed societies, such hurtful excesses are reduced through human right declaration and definition for necrophaliacs. Such right spaces reduces excess of consumption, pleasure, harassment of objectified passion.
It is over here, even before technical craft of a cinema comes, the characters, stories of characters, plots of a film can win over the excess in a society of excess. Hence characters, story plots of Dunki characters of the latest SRK film does this and wins over Pathan, Jawan and Animal even before the art, craft of cinema sets in.
Within a society of excess, Dunki regulates our excess through the characters, stories, plots and makes us more human within the passion of an Animal, Jawan, Pathan. Dunki slowly and steadily inspite of its stretched cinematic art, craft, wins our excesses by making us laugh and cry at the same time. In hindsight, the cinema of the camera of Dunki turns out to be the watch tower of a pleasured society and questions its trajectory in the long term.
The last two consecutive weeks were quite active and refurbishing in terms of memory revival. As a part of the Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte production shows on two back-to-back Saturdays and Sundays, I was in Shimla and Kolkata. The first show of Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte happened at the famous, historical Gaiety Theatre of Shimla.
The second show happened at Bharatiya Sanskriti Samsad within the heart of Chowronghee at Kolkata. The team performance evolved, peaked, and attained brilliance in the course of the journey. However, my memories of travel from Shimla to Kolkata only strengthened the belief that truth is always partial. I realized the traumatic truth of unconscious memories of city spaces with which a human being has to live and that is both an absolute and partial truth. This was almost a practical demonstration of Lacan and his psychoanalytical lens where the unconscious is dominated by language and grammar or Hegelian dialectics of recognition. The irrational unconscious has its own grammar and language which is also often Heideggerian, Kantian, and Platonic. If that irrational unconscious has to be unraveled, and deciphered through the metaphors of text, and language then it is often Saussurean as the language of that irrational unconscious space is very linguistic in nature and not defined by psychoanalysis. Within the dying corpse of psychoanalysis, the shows of Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte opened up more of the irrational unconscious within me. I imagined the triad of Lacan (real, reality, imaginary) not through practice but through a linguistic system of texts coupled with music.
Lacan when he returned to Freud, reimagined Freud and made him alive by separating him from the dying remnants of Psychoanalysis. Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte script, texts, words, and linguistics made me return to Freud, not through the popular, mainstream space of ego, libidinal suppression, dream, and projections of clinical on the nonclinical realities. It made me see the triad of Lacan of real, reality, and imaginary through the grammar and language of texts and the system of interpreting and reading those texts coupled with music, track, rhythm, travel language and grammar.
The travel of "Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte" made me return to my memories of Shimla, Kolkata through Gaiety Theatre, Mall Road, Chowronghee through a linguistic and textual practice of Lacan. I understood how to read Lacan through "Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte" even though Zizek also had done the same thing. He pushed us to read texts, the system of texts through the lens of Lacan and his works.
The travel of Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte helped me to practice it more and I understood what Lacan made and how he saved Freud through the poststructuralism of 50s when brain science, medicine, pills and hedonism took the space of psychoanalysis.
I am sure, the next shows of Yuhi Sath Sath Chalte will help me understand Lacan a little more.
Brazil lost to Croatia during the last Qatar World Cup Knock Out match after getting an edge over Croatia. In a similar way, India lost to Australia in the ICC Cricket World Cup on 19th November, 2023 after taking first three quick wickets while Australia was chasing India's score.
The Qatar World Cup saw 31 best teams of the World out of the more than 200 football-playing nations which involves 250 million people of the World. ICC World Cup 2023 saw two best teams out of 10 qualifying teams within the 104 member countries of the World and 108 cricket teams. There are 4200 professional cricketers amongst 30 million registered cricket players of the World. The simple numbers show that Football is a more equal, libertarian, humanist sport in comparison to cricket. The numbers also show that the degree of competition, rivalry, and passion is much greater for Football than for Cricket.
Then, ideally, if assuming hypothetically that my love for both the games and both the teams are equal (the teams being the Brazilian Football Team and the Indian Cricket Team), then from a sheer number or humanism or sports ethics perspective of egalitarianism, my sense of grief from the Brazilian Football Team loss should be higher than the loss of the Indian Cricket Team.
The loss of Brazil kicked out my favorite football team from a competition that was fought in a more fair, egalitarian way in comparison to the Indian Cricket Team's loss from another knockout match of a Cricket World Cup. However, then to my surprise after Sunday, 19th November, 2023, I felt lonely in a similar way as I felt on 9th December of 2022. In this case, somewhere, the loneliness may be because in spite of my sense of patriotism for the country, I was more outsider to a kind of spirit that makes the sport reductionist in a knockout match while everything else surrounding a knockout match of a cricket world cup stands above the game or the sport itself.
Yes, I stood up to sang the National Anthem (which I do for every Indian Match in any sports platform wherever India is performing) but after the match, I felt lonely but happy for the Indian Cricket Team which showed consistency, true sports art and craft. I felt the tears of Rohit in a similar way as I felt the tears of Neymar on 9th December, 2022.
The last Sunday match definitely made me lonely but not lonelier. I realized it is a satisfactory feeling to be lonely with your thoughts of being an outsider to a spirit around a game which reduces the skill, art, and craft of the game in front of all other subsuming spirits of business, profit, brand, nation (not as a nation soul of Rishi Aurobindo but as a nation-state of Rishi Aurobindo), imageries, dreams, celebration, loudness. I realised actually by being an outsider to these spirits, I had become more of an insider now to the eternal core of the game itself.
At that very moment of loneliness, I sensed a sheer epiphany of chill with a transcendence of my feelings of a void which were similar to Neymar and every Brazilian or anyone around the World on 9th December of 2022 who were and are equal insiders of the game. They are the insiders to the sports and its beauty of humanistic bonding threads beyond borders connecting sportsperson : the tears of every sports person who looses out in a knockout match even after their best submission, self dedication to the sports and the turf ground itself.
I became lonely by being an insider but I realised how Neymar, Rohit were and are worshipped and remembered equally by many insiders like me who are patriots but also can understand the nation soul of Rishi Aurobindo. They are equal insiders to the game of sport by playing, worshipping, reading, researching and understanding it across and over the years.
Yes, therefore, I realized, being lonely and an insider to the sport and game, is never good or bad in its entirety. It is in this moment of realization, that I could sense the following. The understanding was that the loneliness of an insider to the game of Football or Cricket who gets to a conversation with their therapist - "Football" or "Cricket" is actually not pathologically a loner in the society or within the game. Rather, this loneliness is a cure to the ever widening outsider world of the game of "Football" or "Cricket".
This battle between the Insider and Outsider will continue to stay for ever and hence I realized that it is never as good as it gets to be very good or as bad as it gets to be very bad while being or staying lonely. Indeed, such an insider existence can be healing even while feeling the tears of Neymar, Rohit at the same time!
The clarion
call of Mission Life by the Honorable Prime Minister of India imbibes Social
Tipping Dynamics within the multicultural context of India. This is because
Mission LIFE focuses on a social movement to – save energy, save water,
adopt sustainable food systems, reduce waste, adopt healthy lifestyles, and
reduce e-waste. The core principle of Mission LIFE is to create a mass movement
to reduce mindless, destructive material, resource, and energy consumption to
make people more pro-planet against the backdrop of ongoing human-induced
climate change. This is more pertinent as climate change is already leading to
disasters like floods, drought, and heatwaves posing humanity towards a journey
of mass extinction along with the species on the Earth.
Societies
for the cause of the conservation of the planet for the future can only be
mobilized through a sense of reflection within human beings by being role
models and examples by themselves. When there is a change in the inner
consciousness of humans across the world, it is expected that societies will
also change accordingly. Such a change will thereafter be useful in impacting
the behavior of people towards saving energy, and water and will facilitate to protection
of the planet for the future.
Hence, this
change in the behavior of the people will gradually lead to a tipping in society,
leading to a mass movement for saving energy and the planet for the future.
Therefore, if Mission LIFE of India has to be successful and contribute to a
net zero economy goal by 2070, social tipping has to set in. Only when the
social tipping will set in, people through a mass mobilization movement will
start saving energy, and water. As the social tipping sets in people will start
enhancing renewable energy usage and reducing energy demand through demand
management measures using behavioral changes and action. This growth in the
usage of renewables through social tipping has already been observed in various
other countries in the recent past.
Global literature shows that the fast growth in renewables
has led to an economic tipping point for adopting renewables. However, a
corresponding reduction in fossil fuel demand and a system-wide energy
transition have not happened. This is because social tipping dynamics have
still not set in to move away an energy system completely from fossil
fuel-based energy systems to renewable energy-based systems at a global,
national, and regional level.
Various actors, tactics by different actors, and a range of
conflicts have acted as a hindering factor in enabling this shift from fossil fuel-based
systems to renewable energy-based systems of the future. Tactics are often being applied by
international, national, regional, and local pressure, and interest groups to
hinder such shifts. However, no clear relationship exists between the tactics
of pressure and interest groups and the actual shifts, and transitions. In carbon-intensive
regions of Europe, it is observed that the role of national institutions, and responses
to global and international pressure groups have determined the shifts from
fossil fuel-based systems to renewable energy ones. Often, the shifts in the
systems following social tipping dynamics work like a chaotic pattern of a
natural ecosystem with multiple forces being at play to determine a shift or
transition catalyzed by social tipping dynamics. Just like an Ecological
System, in such a situation, small changes finally create big impacts in
society when it comes to shifts from fossil fuel to renewable energy systems.
If Mission Life has to contribute to the net zero goal of the
future, it has to be cognizant of these small nudges within society. These
nudges are also going to be impacted by Public Policy leading to changes in
people’s choices, behavior, and actions. Evidence of this lies in the fact that
in Germany, as strong public policy and industry support got aligned with a
decrease in the support of nuclear energy, the nudge worked, and solar energy
sector started to grow with a shift in choices of people to solar energy taking
them away from nuclear sources of energy. Gradually, when the demand picks up
through these nudges, the costs of clean energy transition will also go down in
the long run by reducing the upfront costs of solar installations.
This will therefore enhance the clean energy transition
through a social tipping with a spiralling effect within the society in the future.
Once, such a transition takes off, people’s conviction and belief in the clean
energy systems go up further strengthening their future action for clean energy
choices and adoption. This phenomenon has been observed in the case of the transition
to electric vehicles, and electrification of heating and cooling systems in
residential areas of developed societies. However, it needs to be tested for
developing societies with multiple cultural layers like India. This is because, in a developing country like
India, subsidies for fossil fuels, energy infrastructure subsidies, the higher
gestation period of fossil fuel-based energy infrastructure, and multiple
social lock-in effects can delay the effects of social tipping nudges and can
hinder the transition to clean energy choices by people. The behavior can also be impacted by
International Crises like War which can impact people’s future preferences for
energy choices and adoption. For example, in the winter of 2022-23, energy
demand in Europe went down expecting future high prices due to the escalating
war between Russia and Ukraine. Similarly, the energy demand of people across
Europe and the World reduced during Covid 19 but again it rebounded back in
2021 at a level which was similar to the energy demand levels of 2019. Hence,
the impact of social tipping dynamics as a nudge and its impact on energy
choices, actions, and behavior of people are often impacted by a global,
international crisis like a War, Terrorism, Public Health Crisis, or Natural
Disasters. The role of MISSION LIFE as a contributory nudge to attain a net
zero economy by 2070 through social tipping dynamics will therefore also be
dependent on these extraneous shocks and crisis events whenever they happen.
For a multicultural, federal, country with a wide variety of
political economies between the center and states in India such nudges can
get more and more complicated in the national and state contexts of India. It
will therefore need a transdisciplinary lens of Social Tipping Dynamics to
understand where MISSION LIFE of India can or might reach in the future
in terms of its contribution towards the net zero goal of 2070 of the Indian
Economy without compromising India’s developmental, quality of life
goals and aspirations for the future with a sense of equity and justice for all
sections of the society.
What is a People - Centric Energy Transition? For, the last one year, this question intrigued me when I joined the academic administration space for a full-time position in 2019. Even in the academic administration space, the core demand to understand rural energy transition has never gone away since 2003. In 2003, when I started my journey in the Energy Transition space at the Public Policy Research Unit Laboratory of Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi Campus, with the guidance of Late Prof. Sanghamitra Das, transition to me appeared to be just a set of numbers in DOS coded STATA and in MS Access of 2003.
By analyzing the number patterns as a project research intern and by not going for an ICICI/CITI Bank Econometric Modelling Job or Internship, I was trying to understand the probability of chance of switching from firewood to other cooking options in rural households across villages of Uttarakhand (Uttaranchal at that point of time).
Even after twenty years, the basic tenets of the story-plot have not changed. In the course of this journey, my Ph.D in between the journey also tried to prove a hypothesis that rural energy transition in the cooking paradigm of rural households of Bihar in a larger sense was or has the predictable chance of being nonlinear.
By nonlinear, I meant that if income or expenditure rises by a certain amount within a certain rural household in Bihar, it does not necessarily mean that the same household will switch to LPG or clean cookstoves completely and stop using firewood. The thesis dealt with how households behave and how they decide about the switch. It analysed the contexts in which people of rural households in Bihar choose a clean cookstove or LPG and switch from firewood. The contexts proved that the switch to LPG or clean cookstoves from firewood are often spatially chaotic or follows a diffusion pattern of information within a social structure which is chaotic in nature. Here, by chaotic, I also mean that their diffusion patterns are nonlinearly dynamic over time across the different household spaces.
So was my PhD thesis a take on - "People Centric Energy Transition?"
"Did I work on "People Centric Energy Transition" during my research internship? Any work that I have been doing within the domain of rural energy transition or energy transition has been touching upon people, households, and society. Hence, can they be termed as - "People-Centric"? As always, I stay confused within the dialectics of thoughts that at what entry and exit points of research can a work be called -"People Centric"?
Is there any definition for these entry and exit points?
A thorough search of literature and reading shows to me that there are no well-defined entry and exit points. Then the question is and was - "Why in 2003, no one was coining any research project on rural energy transition of people as - People-Centric Energy Transition?"
Questions do not end over here as the next one comes up as - "Why therefore in 2023 People Centric Energy Transition metaphor has come up for similar story plots within the space of rural energy transition?"
To move further, why did IEA at a certain point in time come out with the term - "Just Energy Transition"? What knowledge entry and exit points of research make this terminology - "Just Energy Transition"? I stay only bewildered and perplexed with no definite answers. Hence, my search for a cyclicality in terms of defining entry and exit points and understanding frameworks started to begin sometime in 2019 on the various metaphors of the same content that defines rural energy transition. Are these metaphors of - People, Just coming with a substitutive or complementary effect to the definition or they are mutually exclusive or substitutable?
The journey continued from 2019 till 2023 and then again I decided to do some more exploratory research on - "People Centric Energy Transition" to understand the evolutionary metaphors of rural energy transition more transparently.
Hence, I could see a sense, trend, and pattern of cyclicality in terms of defining certain preexisting core ideas over time and space within the domain of Energy Transition. Thus, is it so, that terms and ideas are finding out the space metaphors of rural energy transition or the space metaphors are defining the terms within the domain of Energy Transition.
Hence to cure all my confusion, I finally came up with the below-mentioned framework of - "People Centric Energy Transition" -
The framework largely arises from Lacanian thinking which has three subdomains - a) The Real or Normative, b) The Symbolic, and c) The Imaginary. Often the Justice domains of Energy Transition are visualized through a Real and Normative lens. Within this domain, the policy perspectives are largely addressing questions of fairness, value systems, capabilities, and the tensions between them. In this framework, the role of individuals, agencies, policy agents, and societal fairness is also talked of through different metaphors of policy languages and paradigms.
The Symbolic subdomain of People-Centric Energy Transition largely takes the narrational lens through the economy, ecology, and societal transitions. Owing to that, this subdomain largely has been following analytical paradigms of logic, order, and linear transition structures in explaining what is people-centric energy transition. While taking this approach, policymakers, agencies, decision-makers, and agents working in this subdomain are often moving towards an ordered energy transition paradigm. Such a paradigm is often a traumatic impossibility leading to the imaginary subdomain which is a world of scenarios and fantasies, fiction which can become real too in the long run.
Finally, therefore, arises the imaginary domain which is the gap between the real and symbolic self within the paradigm of People-Centric Energy Transition. The imaginary segment of People-Centric Energy Transition is therefore also a lot about Energy Culture which often throws out paradoxical outcomes with multiple truths and possibilities. Hence, like a Lacanian frame, the Imaginary Subdomain of People-Centric Energy Transition acts as a bridge between the Real and The Symbolic.
Thus, what emerges finally is that - "People Centric Energy Transition" is like a Parallax and a Split amongst various subdomains. Within such a Parallax, People-Centric Energy Transition domains will continuously evolve with changing politics of space, time, knowledge, and wisdom and the cycle will continue forever in an evolutionary way.