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The Courage to say No | Nandan Saxena | TEDxJMI


[Music]
so I’ll ask you a simple question how
many of you and you have you raised your
hands how many of you have toilets in
your house oh my gosh everybody Medici
is gonna be very happy to that okay so H
of hearth is going in the right
direction and how many of you use it
everyday
wow this is absolutely amazing recently
we had gone to this picture-perfect hill
station called Chell in hamachi and we
have friends there
the monkeys the land gurus and some
human beings so once a human being is
the homeopath who practices there was
our friend and he said okay let me take
you to a nature walk which we did next
day he said okay we will take you to a
particular village what the karana
I said Wow let’s go at the karana which
is about one hour of a meandering drive
downhill in the valley we met a very
interesting gentleman called togusa and
the village is actually called the
karana which is taka Rana and that was
dirt Haku Sahab of the village he shared
a lot of stories with us he shared a lot
of food with us and after some time I
said excuse me but with the washroom the
exchanged glances amongst them and he
assigned a very sweet licking looking
child and he said you take uncle and
another girl you take auntie
okay we said and they took us out out
money in the jungle
in the forest and there is a very
hallowed tradition which the geographers
amongst you and the nature photographers
and birders know it’s a secret which the
techies and the engineering departments
and then crc guys are yet to learn and
I’m sharing it here it’s called BTB you
know what is BTB resins none
nobody knows BTB okay one what is VD be
loud behind the bush
you’ve got to booth go and do your damn
thing to it behind the bush
that’s BTB now we’re filmmakers me my
wife Kavita in an express seven years
I’ve done all kinds of news channels and
stuff so many years before we started
making our own films so we thought that
okay that’s not an issue but there was
an issue my mother my mother was with us
and she said what is this happening am I
supposed to be going out there and
ultimately she had to but she came back
and took on Tucker Saab she said you’ve
got such a beautiful house now don’t you
have the money to build a toilet how I’m
hygienic if we go outside how unsafe and
the tacos have said you city guys are
very dirty people you are on hygienic
how can you imagine sitting at the same
place every day
it stinks year after year you sit and
shit at the same place and usually it’s
next to your bedroom we said yeah so but
then my mother she was a schoolteacher
before she retired and she’s a fierce
fighter she didn’t give up he said no
but this is not the way you have to
understand this is not safe this is not
hygienic at all he said okay let me talk
about hygiene now so where does your
shit go you flush it 25 litres of water
goes down at an average about a thousand
liters every family maybe more every day
and we are a big city very big city
where is the shit going to the Yamuna
what do you do after that
you clean the Emunah to give us potable
water he says does it make sense
we had no answer absolutely none we were
silent because all our upbringing all
our science technology education and
there is a simple wisdom of a village
person who says how can you keep
polluting your lifeline which gives you
potable water with your shit then you
clean it so that Faridabad can have
water to drink then they put this shit
then they clean it because Brindavan and
then Mathura and then Agra they need the
water to drink what kind of stupidity is
this he says this is not science this is
not modernity this is not technology
every day we do so many things which are
counterintuitive shitting is one I mean
at the wrong place there are other
things what happens to the garbage that
we keep piling all these nachos which
come in very neat
packages the lathes and the you know all
kinds of things and that packaging is
not why I would be gradable 500 years
and that will still say layers what
happens to the landfills where we are
filling up everything the landscape them
put a green grass stop and put some
sprinklers and say that ok children can
come and play there and then that
mountain of garbage comes toppling down
like it it did at gossip or recently
last month Delhi the capital city of
India then we understand that okay this
is not the way to go this is not the way
we want to end up your children do not
need to play on a pile of garbage what
kind of life is this what kind of a
quality of life are we giving our
children if they have to play on a
garbage heap this people who live around
that garbage heap are all dying of
various ailments I I can’t even name
them it’s it’s horrible the leachates
going from that garbage of polluting
your groundwater aquifers it has
chemicals it has biomedical waste the
garbage heap has sanitary napkins it has
a lot of plastics it has a lot of heavy
metal kind of thing because all kinds of
industrial waste all who gets mixed in
now how can we sig regret this from a
garbage heap we can’t
once it has ended up there it is going
to be there and that is going to pollute
your groundwater aquifers wherever you
live gossip or might be very far from
jamia but when the water underground
water aquifers get polluted then jamia
is not far that is the issue we are all
linked this entire biosphere we are all
linked
when the honeybees die somewhere else we
are going to die when we talk of
Technology when we see that okay we are
going on a part of progress and
development then what is the paradigm of
development where are we going
do we even stop the question where we
are going do we know where we have to go
why are we running first find out that
okay this is the direction I need to
take and this is the direction goes to
the garbage heap this goes to the $22
the drains that are polluting the river
Yamuna that is the potable water for
Delhi I don’t want to go there I want to
keep my water clean I want to keep my
soil my earth green because that is what
is going to keep me alive the notion
that science is value neutral is an
ocean scientists can be manipulated
science can be used by any corporation
or a politician or a nexus to ruin your
happiness so we’ve got to really take
off this set of glasses that we have
these glasses are antiquated these
glasses are useless now and in the name
of science people are selling us all
kinds of ideas people are selling us all
kinds of things from atom bombs to
genetically modified food which I don’t
want because once my river is polluted
like Singapore it imports water from
Malaysia and apart from that it cleans
its own urine which goes into the
whatever little river they have and they
purify it to drink now we are into the
21st century and India says we are going
to be the superpower of the 21st century
we have Israeli technology here but do
you want to drink your own clarified
urine I don’t
I’d much rather that my flush does not
send all kinds of excreta into my river
I am NOT game to painting that stuff and
using it let’s watch something which
changes this paradigm and takes you to a
people who do not follow this this
science they have real science which we
have rubbished
as nonsense we have rubbish that okay
you’re outdated what kind of a thing is
this you guys are Aboriginal people
living in the forest
what do you know we know everything
[Music]
got to LA hi Ella since to Allah it’s
TKO monotony who tomahto a panini load a
map obsidian Johnny it got to legal
before Norma beaten Gina be a
catastrophe honest I in a de parada hop
off economic critical Zachary dr. Corey
ed gave my integer said correctly
Mahinder Sakura Sakura Naruto Tinga
Tinga keno for Iman Danica Pinochet kuna
da mo kokoro kokoro feeding us a curry a
manicure OCD is Hakuna Matata for oi and
a 30 millimeter thick for a novice in
millimeters a pony doubled up a foreign
demon and a defector a poppin demon a
[Music]
Pomeranian de la fake or Aimable a kin
en de la Torre de ba Madoka Toro an
americorps en lasa Karina to laguna la
sabaneta bamadoro
[Music]
so that is another paradigm sustainable
use of whatever resources you have and
not coming with the hubris not coming
with this false sense of pride that the
entire cannot the entire nature the
entire world entire universe cosmos is
made for this person called the human
being no we are just part of this
creation we are just one miniscule part
and we don’t own it all we’ve got to
exist with a lot of other species we’ve
got to let the honeybees live the
physicist Stephen Hawking has said
something very disturbing and he’s
usually right
he says the human beings have only about
a hundred years left to populate another
planet you can take a pick how many of
you like Mars
nobody likes Mars how many of you like
the blue planets the earth so you have a
choice now whether to keep it the way
our forefathers had so that your
children and grandchildren can enjoy the
nature or you can go and book a ticket
on somebody’s spaceship to Mars and God
help you that is the question you have
to ask yourself you have to have the
courage to say no you have to have the
sagacity to question and tell these
people that no you can’t even get your
rivers in order and you keep polluting
them with all kinds of filled with heavy
metals and shit I don’t trust you with
any genetic modification of food I don’t
want to be Allah
draft so this power is in your hands to
say no that no you are not lab rats
Sharia
[Applause]
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