The air was abuzz for some days, weeks and months during the recent past with India aiming at becoming a five-trillion-dollar economy by the year 2022 and get into the bracket of world’s three or four top economies. Going by media reports, the country’s current economic health has been witnessing a slow down as a result of which many leading industries are resorting to lay off the workforce in numbers that is cause for concern. One of the factors being highlighted in this context is a steep spike in the sales of automobiles, particularly four-wheelers and transport vehicles manufactured by the majors of the manufacturing sector. While the immediate consequence of the steep shortfall in the sales of motorised vehicles is also a sharp rise in the land’s unemployment, the other obvious consequences of a steady rise in the sales of automobiles looms large, namely cluttering of roads across the land’s urban spaces, polluted air, vanishing parking space and so on. In a fire-fighting measure of sorts, the automobile manufacturers are mulling exploration of rural markets for their bulging inventory.
Having got accustomed to the all-too-familiar life style, marked by consumerism in its widest meaning, the land’s people, particularly the urbanites, shall find it well-nigh impossible to unwind and undo the many consequences, the most critical resource that is bound to become scarce in rising graph being drinking water, making civic authorities spending sleepless nights. The plight of rural populations is bound to be grim if consumerism grips the rustics.
