The Hindu Business Line : The next twelve months

One always wants to have every best wish for the New Year, the evergreen hope being that it will be better than the year that has just passed into history. But will things turn out this way? It probably will not, if you consider the planet’s climate, for instance. The process of warming up has already begun and, as the scientists have been emphasising, even if the emission of carbon into the atmosphere is controlled rigorously from tomorrow on a real-time basis, the ice will continue to melt and the seas will continue to rise, imperilling the lives of thousands, perhaps, millions, living in low-lying coastlands.

True, the winter has been good in parts of the sub-continent, but this cannot rule out the damage that has already been done to the eco-system of the globe, for which no one but our very own forefathers are to be held responsible. Perhaps, not our forefathers so much as those of people in the West — pioneers, who have, ever since the Industrial Revolution got under way in England and Europe in the early 19th Century, and to the blissful ignorance of all and sundry, been chipping away at the delicate balance of the Earth’s atmosphere with their phenomenal material progress.

Disturbing the balance

This balance, or the “state of equilibrium” pregnant with the possibility of Life, which has been unique to our planet in the wide, open universe — or at least that part of the universe, which the human mind has been able to discover till now — is being disturbed to such an extent that the “equilibrium” is becoming unstable. There is no earthly, or unearthly, reason why the New Year should be insulated from the destabilising process, which means that the planet’s climate will, inexorably, become a bit more unfriendly to the continued existence of human life than it was last year.

This is one certainty for 2008. The other is that terrorists will continue to strike in various parts of the world, propagating their sickening worldview which, essentially, relies for its success on the impact of violence. There is no point wishing the world well in 2008 on this score because, as history has shown over the past decade or more, assassins will not merely continue to pursue their vocation with vigour but will pursue it with even more determination in the next twelve months.

Frankly, it would appear that the star of global terrorism is still in the ascendant, and it is more than likely that the theatre of operation will focus even more determinedly on the crowded cities of the developing world, where issues become less important than the impact made with the detonation of death and destruction. Indeed, there is a growing perversity in this entire inhumanly gruesome business, so much so that one should not be surprised if terrorists now strike somewhere in our own country just to restore a semblance of balance vis-À-vis the Benazir Bhutto assassination!

Waiting for miracles

Some might argue that, given the gradual deterioration in the planet’s climate and the certainty that terrorists are waiting to make an even bigger strike somewhere, this is all the more reason why every best wish is needed for the betterment and safety of the world. So why not just pray and hope that 2008 will be a better 12 months than that which has just passed? Why not, indeed, on the ground that a wish is a wish is a wish and, sometimes, even miracles do happen where none is expected. Almost certainly, the suicide-bombers are wishing that 2008 is an even more successful year for them than 2007!

RANABIR RAY CHOUDHURY

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