Shruti Krishnamoorthy

Homogenisation of the Heterogenous

What do you think is more important for the development of a tree? Shooting for the Sun and rising higher or holding on to its dear roots. All of it started with the roots. The roots of interconnectedness. The roots of interdependence. The roots of progress. But, if globalization sprouted from the seeds of goodness, why are we losing so much more than what we are gaining?

This planet is known for its variety. This planet is known for its flora and fauna. This planet is known for its coexistence. This planet is praised for its different people, cultures and beliefs. This planet is known for its heterogeneous nature. Then why are we making it infamous by pressurizing it to be homogenous?

Classifying species in the plant, animals, human beings and everything in nature clearly points out to us that everything is different. Very different. Take a tomato as an example. There are many types of tomatoes available, namely, the cherry, salad and beefsteak tomato. That’s not the end. Sunrise bumblebee, black cherry, sun gold and Sweet 100 are just a few of the motley variety of cherry tomatoes. Even within a variety of tomato, size and shape could vary. Landscapes of the world vary; imagine if all the places in the world were flat land? Everything shows us variety. And this variety brings us together. It is this variation that is the reason for the brilliance and uniqueness that surrounds us. But, we human beings, homo sapiens with dissimilarities that vary from individual to individual, are famously promoting the infamous trend, Homogenization...

Isn’t it just astounding that all 7.6 billion of us have different finger impressions? The intricacy that must be involved in differentiating all our impressions. Woefully, that might possibly be the only variation on the planet if we continue to lose all the uniqueness at this rate. India, a country which has the fastest rate of urbanization and economic growth in the world, is a classic victim of this homogenization. With urban migration taking place at its peak, India is constantly losing its cultural diversity in the form of loss of languages, dialects, cultural diaspora and beliefs and thoughts. The People’s Linguistic Survey of India conducted a survey over 2 years from 2011 that found out that out of 1,100 languages spoken in the country in 1961, 220 of them have disappeared. That is a dramatic figure of 20%. Clearly that is a greater percentage than the percentage of growth we have achieved. These languages are dying due to them not being given recognition, displacement of communities and the absence of livelihood for speakers. This a consequence of vertical growth of a tree that leads them to get farther away from their roots. This is the effect of the first wave of the epidemic of globalization.

To meet the demands for the increasing population and affluence, land use been changed from forestry to natural pastures for agriculture, residential purposes and manufacturing units. This has led to deforestation and flattening of landscapes like hills, mountains and plateaus that have thwarted the natural ecosystem, creating mass imbalance in the environment that makes it difficult for species to survive and lead to extinction of species. In the economic forum of agriculture, the demand for the same type of food product has also forced producers to increase supply of some agricultural produce. With differences with regions and nations, in the past, the world had different tastes and native staple food habits, which caused the market to naturally produce the food product with the most demand. The demand for different food products was evenly spread. That is not the case anymore. With increasing demand for certain crops, that are predominantly western, the variation in produced crop has also decreased. Agriculture is stressed to produce homogenous varieties of food items which may not be conducive to the local climatic conditions. Homogenization has not even spared our diet. Many of the local region-specific food varieties are getting replaced with Western standardized palates.

Now, moving to the section of homogenization of the physical landscapes of the world. To meet the physical landscape conditions for construction to build roadways, railways and metro lines. Dynamite or such explosives are used to even out the land, so that it can be used for the city’s expansion. Well, let me tell you this; the physical landscapes are not the only aspect that these explosives destroy. They shatter nature’s gift of differences in the shape of the earth’s surface too. A study conducted by the Scientific American stated that ¼ of the land area is been desertified as a result of changing land use, overgrazing and evening of physical landscapes. This has led to loss of productivity and increased the vulnerability of and to erosion. Destruction of landscapes would not only lead to variation in temperature and pressure change with altitude, it will also affect weather patterns and climatic conditions of regions, in the long term. Pretty much the world will have similar atmospheric conditions; what else have we left as different? Maybe just our fingerprints. This is the second wave of the epidemic, globalization

Sadly, at this rate, it seems that the worst is yet to come.

The most disastrous wave could probably be the final wave. This wave could be when the future generation, the future leaders of this planet, would be been tuned to think in a homogenized manner. Thanks to the educational system that has succeeded in tuning the brains of these buds of hope to suit the needs of globalization. We have seized their thoughts and beliefs, severed the umbilical cord of their relationship with their mother tongue and made them all study courses in the same language, English. There are faults in the way the world operates in the workplace. Again, evoking an example of India, only 22 languages are accepted in the Indian constitution amongst nearly a thousand languages spoken in the country.