Planet A. Planet B.

The problem is not that the infrastructure of Bengaluru or Gurgaon or Mumbai or even Dubai or New York is inadequate for the load it has been put under.

The problem is that the lifestyle that we have adopted is unsustainable for the delicate ecology of this planet. Regardless of how much you ramp up the infrastructure, the problem of absurd consumption will remain. Any city you ‘relocate’ to, any new township you build, any fresh business districts you construct will eventually turn into Bengaluru. Like how Bengaluru eventually became Mumbai. The problem is human greed and the virus-like behaviour we indulge in order to satisfy it.

As Agent Smith says to Morpheus in The Matrix:

I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species, and I realized that you’re not actually mammals.

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way can survive is to spread to another area.

There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus.

Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague…

Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror.

P.S: This does not mean that we have the best infrastructure and the most benevolent government that has done its best for its citizens and that there is no room for improvement. It just means that the solution isn’t only more of that (though dog knows a lot more of that is required even before we can claim that we’ve done enough), but also, parallelly, a more conscious consumption of resources by us, the citizenry of this planet. Unfortunately, as seen by our missions to colonise Mars, our solution to ‘There is no Planet B’ is to create a Planet B rather than treat Planet A well. That, I must say, is literally playing into Agent Smith’s definition of who we are as a species. Sad. But true.