Many may have readthat beautiful short story, that’s told in the great tradition of a fable. Written by Count Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian writer in 1886, ‘How Much Land Does A Man Need’ gives a soul-searching insight into old Russian moral values and reveals the frailty of human nature and its all consuming lust for having more and more.
It is the classic tale of a greedy peasant named Pakhom. Although Pakhom enjoys health and family happiness, he feels dissatisfied when he learns of the grand fortunes of his relatives. He decides to go on a quest for more land, only to find that with each new acquisition new problems develop. Moral of the story: in restlessly trying to grasp at bigger things there is the ultimate danger of overreaching oneself. Man can only go so far before he destroys himself. Ultimately, one needs only that much land that’s enough to hold his mortal remains.
In the human weakness for more material acquisitions is the propensity to encroach and endanger nature’s preserves, disturb ecological balance & order. Cloudbursts and floods are becoming more & more frequent and severe not only due to climatic changes, (which increases atmospheric moisture and causes more intense rainfall), but on account of human factors like rapid deforestation & unplanned urban development that reduce the land’s ability to absorb water. Relentless urbanization, construction in vulnerable areas, particularly on slopes or near riverbeds lead to altering drainage patterns and make these communities more susceptible to flood damage. Natural ‘Emergency’ is upon us.
While Tolstoy movingly wrote on human avarice and greed even in the late 19th Century that seems to hold good today, many age-old predictions/theories as in the ‘Mathusian Theory of Population’ (1798) seem to be ringing true. Can we take lessons from these ?
‘Covetousness is all consuming, gain is an insatiable need,
Man’s wants are unstoppable, is there any limit to desire
At the end of it all – ‘How much land does a man require’ ?
Working on Living 