Renowned Indian writer Amitav Ghosh was awarded the
2024 Erasmus Prize for his powerful writing on climate change. Ghosh’s 2004 novel, The Hungry Tide, set in the Sundarbans, was one of the early works of fiction by an Indian writer to chronicle the continuing saga of environmental degradation. His recently released collection, Wild Fictions, features essays written over the last 25 years in which he bears witness to a crucial rupture of time. Amitav Ghosh is in conversation with Outlook's assistant editor Vineetha Mokkil. He talks about the reasons for the planetary crisis and the need to take action without giving in to despair. He points out that young people have much greater awareness of what is happening than people of his generation or the generation in between. They realise that they have been sold a bill of goods. The world they thought they were coming into is not what they imagined. So they engage with the world, think about it, and some of them write about it or create art about it.
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#ClimateChange #ClimateAction #ClimateCrisis #GlobalWarming #AmitavGhosh #Author #Writer #HungryTide
2024 Erasmus Prize for his powerful writing on climate change. Ghosh’s 2004 novel, The Hungry Tide, set in the Sundarbans, was one of the early works of fiction by an Indian writer to chronicle the continuing saga of environmental degradation. His recently released collection, Wild Fictions, features essays written over the last 25 years in which he bears witness to a crucial rupture of time. Amitav Ghosh is in conversation with Outlook's assistant editor Vineetha Mokkil. He talks about the reasons for the planetary crisis and the need to take action without giving in to despair. He points out that young people have much greater awareness of what is happening than people of his generation or the generation in between. They realise that they have been sold a bill of goods. The world they thought they were coming into is not what they imagined. So they engage with the world, think about it, and some of them write about it or create art about it.
Follow us:
Website: https://www.outlookindia.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Outlookindia
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outlookindia/
X: https://twitter.com/Outlookindia
Whatsapp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaNrF3v0AgWLA6OnJH0R
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OutlookMagazine
Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/outlookindia
#ClimateChange #ClimateAction #ClimateCrisis #GlobalWarming #AmitavGhosh #Author #Writer #HungryTide
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NewsTranscript
00:00One of the things that's happened in recent years is that the government has opened up more and more forest areas to mining
00:08to also, you know to the tourism industry while displacing indigenous communities
00:13You can't make fiction into as it were the sugarcoating for you know
00:20For research or for you know a whole world of facts
00:25I don't think anyone would want to read fiction of that kind suddenly
00:28I would not at the same time you can't forget the real world that's around you and you know, and this world is
00:35Intruding upon everything all the time. So once you see that reality, you can't really unsee it can we
00:42Expect a novel is something in the works in terms of fiction anything any fiction coming up
00:48Well, I'm in the process of finishing a novel
00:55You
00:57Hello and welcome to outlook talks today we have with us the wise and erudite writer Amitav Ghosh
01:03Thank you so much. Mr. Ghosh for taking the time to talk to us. Thank you for having me
01:09So your recently released book wild fictions is a collection of essays, which was written over the past
01:1625 years and in that you write about the historical forces that have shaped the world the politics
01:24the connections between human actions and climate change and how we have arrived at this point in time so as a
01:32keen observer of the
01:34The earth as well as the human condition. Do you see hope for us or are we actually doomed?
01:41I don't I absolutely do not believe in this hope and doom
01:46Binary, I think that's that's completely the wrong way to think about it, you know
01:52There is a certain future coming up ahead of us and that future is going to be totally disrupted
01:58it's not going to be anything like
02:00The world that we knew already the world that we are in is nothing like the world that I knew growing up. For example, I
02:08Mean when I was growing up, but this time of the year the skies were beautifully clear over Calcutta
02:14You know, the air was more or less clean we had
02:18It was completely different
02:20But you know the end of the world as we knew it doesn't mean the end of the world per se. I mean, you know
02:29There's going to be a new world and you know
02:33People
02:34Throughout history have learned to adapt themselves to new worlds
02:38So that's nothing new and we ourselves will have to learn to live but you do
02:43Would you say that this is the time of monsters?
02:46When the new world is struggling to be born, yes. Yes. The new world is not yet born and the old one is dying and
02:55In between is the time of monsters. This is something that Antonio Gramsci said back in the 30s and I think it's
03:03I'm not the only one saying it
03:04it's like everybody who thinks about these things is saying it more and more often because we can all see that, you know,
03:12Everything that was normal before has now suddenly become
03:18Abnormal and you know, whether it be in politics or in weather or in you know, why the climate impacts or whatever?
03:26And the really striking thing is that these things are not disconnected
03:31you know the
03:33Climate change in some sense or the planetary crisis as I would put it the broader planetary crisis
03:39The these things are part of a
03:42part of a historical pattern of geopolitics, you know pattern of geopolitics where
03:48The great majority of the world was really subjugated by a tiny minority
03:54so
03:56all of this is in some sense the outcome of a historic pattern of
04:01Inequalities speaking of inequality the development everything is being done in the name of development
04:07So the model that we are following in India as well as across the world is clearly not working
04:13for most of us and for the planet
04:16But what is the alternative?
04:18You you spoke about the you know
04:20Pre-modern times at your lecture the CD Deshmukh lecture in Delhi, which you had delivered recently
04:27What what is the alternative? What is the alternative to this development model? You know, you're asking me questions, which are sort of
04:34out of my pay grade
04:37I'm a
04:40Imagine as you know an alternative
04:43Because you are very good at imagining the unthinkable and the future. So what is it that?
04:51Can work and this is clearly not working
04:55This is clearly not working
04:57It's it's collapsing and yet at the same time it has an incredible momentum because it's making a few people very very rich
05:05You know at the cost of the rest of the world
05:08But then you could say that this is exactly what this model of development is always done
05:13The whole plan is to make a few people very rich while impoverishing everyone else
05:18So there's nothing there's nothing to be there's nothing very surprising in it
05:23If we look at the growth of inequality both within and between nations
05:28Over the last three years of neoliberalism, it's unbelievable in the United States now
05:351% of the population owns almost
05:38almost half
05:41The entire economy, I mean, it's a it's absolutely staggering and
05:46That is one of the reasons why we are heading towards these incredible political disruptions
05:52You know that we see occurring
05:55across the planet
05:56Do you find it strange that we still have leaders, you know, for example, the Donald Trump who is now returned to power?
06:03Who still deny climate change call it a hoax and still go ahead, you know full steam with all this
06:11extraction drilling mining
06:13Isn't it odd that you know, the world is literally burning in front of our eyes
06:18And there we still have people in charge for denying the obvious
06:23It's much more complicated than that. I mean Donald Trump is not exactly a climate change denier
06:29I mean he may pose as such right now, but way back in 2009. He actually signed
06:37He he signed this public
06:41newspaper advertisement in the New York Times
06:44Calling on the government to act on climate change because you know real estate people most of all face a great deal of exposure
06:51In getting insurance and so on in relation to climate change. So he's very well aware of what the problems are
06:57So when in fact he says this
07:00When he calls it a hoax and says drill a drill baby drill he's saying he's actually saying something
07:07Which is not quite
07:09Apparent because look at Keir Starmer. He's he and the Labour Party are said to be
07:16big I mean big
07:18claim to
07:19I mean, they're certainly not climate deniers. They claim to recognize the harms that climate change might cause
07:27At the same time yesterday
07:29He put out he he stopped his own MPs from voting on a climate change bill, you know, that would have limited
07:37The oil industry. I mean the fossil fuel industries and in many ways
07:42So, you know, this is the this is the weird thing that many
07:47many leaders and of affluent countries on the one hand they pay lip service to climate change and
07:54On the other they go they go on as business as usual
07:59So for example Norway in this whole period and Norway is an immensely rich country
08:05You know, they have a huge sovereign wealth fund. I mean, they've grown rich from there
08:11From the fossil fuels that have been found, you know inside and on along their coast
08:18Norway is now opening up more and more
08:21of its
08:22coastal areas to
08:24Fossil fuel exploration now if an immensely rich country like that
08:29Can proceed I mean how much richer can they get? I mean, you know the mind boggles. I
08:35Mean if an immensely rich country like that
08:38continues to consume
08:41enormous quantities of energy emit enormous quantities of greenhouse gas emissions and
08:47at the same time these people continue to lecture people in poor countries about
08:52cutting back on their
08:54You know on their carbon emissions and so on. How does this make sense?
08:57So the existing political structures that we have the political parties themselves
09:02They're not able to you know, forget self-interest interest of specific nations and come together to tackle
09:10Climate the climate crisis, right? I mean they haven't really shown any sign of coming together
09:18Even the left but especially the left
09:21The left parties are also not stepping up well in the United States certainly
09:28there is a left wing of the Democratic Party, which has been
09:33You know fairly sort of forward-leaning but on climate change, but even even for them
09:38basically
09:39they are
09:41proposing their trust in these
09:44market-based solutions and
09:47As we all know climate change is itself the greatest market failure this is universally acknowledged
09:53So, how can you expect the disease to be the cure? I mean, it's
09:57It's so contradictory
09:59So you've been writing consistently fiction and nonfiction through the years and you've been sort of warning us
10:05What is to come sometimes you make these uncanny predictions before things happen like the tsunami for instance
10:12So I we're just wondering what made you think deeply so deeply about
10:18Climate change as a writer, you know, you you've been like the lone voice for a long time
10:24well, actually in India, we have a very wide a very large community of
10:29environmentalists and thinkers who
10:32Who've been thinking about these things for a long time
10:35The problem is that the mainstream media sort of marginalizes them, you know
10:40So they don't really have a presence
10:43within the
10:44Within the mainstream, but you know, I simply because I happen to have already published several books
10:51You know
10:53So it's only in that sense that I'm that I was an early voice
10:58however, I will say this that you know
11:01the the research for The Hungry Tide really was a turning point in my in my life and
11:08Some of the essays that are in this book Wild Fictions comes exactly from that experience because already back then in 2000
11:17many signs of
11:18You know, the planetary crisis were already evident in the Sundarbans
11:23for example
11:25You could see the effects of sea level rise. That is there was saltwater intrusion deeper and deeper into the
11:32into the channels of the of the estuary
11:36You could see biodiversity loss simply sort of happening in front of your eyes
11:41The last time I was in the Sundarbans a year ago
11:45it was really kind of shocking because
11:50Didn't see many birds and you know the you
11:54The bird population of the Sundarbans used to be enormous, but now you see fewer and fewer
11:59So all of that adds up. I mean you can literally see you know
12:03these terrible impacts occurring and
12:07You know, the mangrove forest is just so important for the entire environment of the Bengal Delta
12:14You know, it's a sort of breeding ground for fish here in the Bengal Delta
12:20Fish are absolutely essential to the lives of people
12:24who depend upon an enormous variety of fish for their protein intake and
12:30That's you know, we see that dwindling day by day and
12:36More than that the mangrove forests protect
12:41The interior from the impacts of cyclones. This has been its historic role. This is why Calcutta despite being in a very
12:49Cyclonically active region has managed to get through repeated impacts of major cyclones
12:56And you know climate change is actually intensifying
13:02Cyclones, I mean cyclone Amphan
13:06Intensified
13:08at an unbelievable rate in like 24 hours it went from a tropical depression to a
13:14Category three. I think it was I forget but you know
13:18So we are seeing more and more phenomena of this kind and at the same time
13:23We're losing whatever sorts of resiliency we had in the past
13:26In in the great derangement you had one of the points you had mentioned was that you know
13:32not enough art and literature is being created about climate change and
13:37To make people aware of the reality of the plight they are in
13:42So that was published in
13:452016 the great derangement
13:47So with now do you think that enough is being written and also that you know
13:53When the words have the power to sort of move us into action
13:57to do are they powerful enough to
14:01Raise awareness to make us act
14:04since 2016
14:06There has been
14:07You know, I would say an enormous outpouring of writing as well as art
14:12in relation to in relation to the planetary crisis
14:17I don't know what part my book played in it, but certainly, you know
14:21Every week I get people sending me many manuscripts saying, you know, your book inspired me so you have to read my book
14:29You know, which is of course impossible. I can't possibly keep up
14:33But I think there has been a big change a big recognition that you know, something is very seriously gone wrong
14:40And you know young writers are grappling with this. I think you'll see generally speaking
14:46that young people have a much greater awareness of
14:50You know what is happening?
14:52Then let's say people of my generation or even the generations in between
14:57And they realize that you know, they've been sold a bill of goods
15:01You know that the world that they thought they were coming into
15:05is not
15:07What they imagined so, of course they engage with it. They think about it
15:13and some of them write about it or
15:16You know make art about it, right?
15:19In a previous interview recently you had said that I think of I see climate change in terms of karma and Dharma
15:26This was a recent interview. Can you speak a little bit about that?
15:30I'm sure everyone who thinks about these issues gets this question. I mean, are you an optimist or a pessimist or you know?
15:38Do you believe that everything is going to be all right or everything is doomed and so on as you asked me right at the beginning
15:46So, I don't think it really matters whether you
15:50Whether you I don't think optimism pessimism again is the right binary for thinking about this
15:55even if the even if the
15:58Future is profoundly disrupted as we now know it will be
16:03It doesn't really matter. We have to carry on doing what we can that's our duty, you know
16:09I mean we should not imagine that it's because we think if we can make everything
16:14All right that we can fix everything as such as it were that we should that we should
16:20You know address these issues
16:22We need to address these issues because exactly as I said, it's our duty what we you know
16:29What we uh, you know in our part of the world call karma and dharma, you know
16:33But it's hard to to be not overwhelmed, you know, like it is overwhelming to see, you know
16:39Constant floods constant weather events disrupting your life
16:43So in that sense you have to be then, you know stoic
16:47to sort of
16:49Take that all in and also act not just despair, isn't it? You shouldn't
16:54I know it's overwhelming because it's something on a planetary scale. It's hard for our minds
16:59It's hard for us to get our minds around it
17:02But it's important as you say not to be overwhelmed to try and maintain a grip on such on the reality such as it is
17:11And not to escape into like a fantasy world is
17:17That's the temptation, you know that we just slip into let's say because it's too hard to face
17:23We just think for ourselves as being somewhere else, right?
17:26What role do you think people's you know?
17:28There are a lot of people's movements trying to protect the resources of indigenous communities in different corners of india across the world
17:37What role do you think people's movements can play like on a realistic because they are dealing with you know forces which are far
17:45More powerful than them and which have far more resources
17:49Let me say that first of all these people's movements are very important
17:55And one of the reasons why say for example, I have been aware of this crisis for so long
18:02Is because way back even when I was a student
18:06There were all these
18:07uh, you know
18:09Science for the people movements, you know, many of my friends who were scientists were involved in them
18:14They were producing critiques of let's say western science and technology and these were scientists
18:21And they were warning of the consequences
18:24And you know, that was a very major part of
18:27You know my education just being exposed
18:30To these movements these movements became really energized after the bhopal disaster
18:36you know, so that was also a very major part of
18:39the radicalization in relation to these
18:42Issues that that occurred at about that time
18:46And since then, you know
18:48These movements have actually really percolated to the ground level many of them
18:52Have become very important
18:55at the ground level
18:57One such group that I can think of is kalpavriksh which is based in pune. Yeah, and is uh, you know, it's
19:06it's been directed for a long time by
19:09Ashish kothari who's written also some very brilliant books about these issues. So, uh, yes, I think
19:18Many of these movements have been trying to establish links with
19:23Adivasi communities and so on but as you say, you know, they're facing overwhelming odds
19:28Because one of the things that's happened in recent years
19:32Is that the government has opened up more and more forest areas to mining?
19:37uh to also
19:39You know to the tourism industry while displacing indigenous communities
19:44What we are seeing in india is really
19:47Uh now an all-out assault
19:50upon the environment and on indigenous communities
19:54uh, you know
19:56The what they're planning in great nikobar island is uh, just straight away ecocide
20:01There is a dutch philosopher called mara van der loopt who has just come out with a new book called
20:08Hopeful pessimism. So the book is titled. I don't know if you've seen it. It's very new
20:13It's called hopeful pessimism and she argues that you know in times desperate times in very difficult times
20:19People are pessimistic
20:21But out of that pessimism a certain radical hope is born and then that becomes a very powerful force to bring them together
20:28and to act
20:30would you agree with that you think that is so such books actually there's uh, you know, there's a
20:36Uh, there's a book called radical hope and another one called radical optimism. I think so
20:41and basically the arguments are the same that uh, you know out of this, uh,
20:46despair some kind of
20:48Hope is born for action in relation to the future
20:52The problem is I don't even know what action means at this point, you know, what exactly is action going?
20:58What exactly does action mean?
21:00uh shutting down, um
21:03you know
21:04uh the energy
21:06Infrastructure, I suppose that's a certain kind of action
21:10but
21:11certainly, I don't see any kind of
21:16Enthusiasm for that in the global south
21:19I don't see that happening. Uh, you know in the west
21:23action is basically conceived of as
21:27being focused on uh
21:29Uh fossil fuel corporations
21:31And I think they're right, you know, they're right to focus their uh, you know, they're their activities on fossil fuel
21:39consumption
21:40but
21:41In the global south where in fact the per capita consumption of energy is still very small
21:48and when uh
21:49The vast majority of people use only as it was survival energy, you know
21:55Uh, there isn't the same kind of feeling uh at all
21:59so
22:00Essentially, I do think that until the west figures out
22:05That it has to lower its energy consumption. And when I say energy consumption, I mean that
22:11Uh all kinds of energy not just fossil fuel energy, you know
22:16So until they figure that out, I I don't I don't really see what what action actually means, right?
22:22So now I have a craft question about your writing
22:26So you write non-fiction and fiction both very well
22:30Uh, you've been writing a lot of non-fiction for the past few years
22:35Can we expect a novel is something in the works?
22:39In terms of fiction anything any fiction coming up? Well, i'm in the process of finishing a novel
22:45Yeah, and I can tell you, uh, you know, i've been as you say i've been writing a lot of non-fiction
22:50And getting away from non-fiction was really bombed for my soul
22:55Because uh, you know the subjects i've been writing about are all so uniformly
23:01depressing and sad
23:03so, um, yes, it's very nice to get back to writing fiction and
23:08You know, it's been really
23:10How shall I say?
23:12I
23:13It's it's it's really been exciting to do that. Yes
23:16So when you write fiction, this is something that I've always wondered about because you do so much research. There's so many facts
23:24Uh, do you ever feel like you know, there's too much world to take in as a fiction writer not as a non-fiction
23:31I mean, you're the
23:32Both are the same person, but i'm saying when you write fiction. Do you feel?
23:37that uh
23:38You need to distance yourself from the world a little bit
23:42I mean, you know when you're writing fiction you're in a different kind of space that only writers of fiction or poetry
23:49Or music can be in and one should never forget that
23:52You can't make fiction into as it were
23:55the sugar coating for
23:58you know
23:59for research or for you know
24:02A whole world of facts. I don't think anyone would
24:05Want to read fiction of that kind suddenly I would not at the same time
24:09You can't forget the real world that's around you and you know, and this world is intruding upon everything all the time
24:16So once you see that reality, you can't really unsee it, you know for the sake of writing fiction
24:22or whatever
24:23You have to try and find some way of bringing them together. Thank you so much for talking to us, sir
24:28This is wonderful talking team. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very good conversation. Thank you