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The Grand Aligner.
MY SUSTAINABLE ENCOUNTER WITH BIJAN MISHRA
By Albert Schiller
Orchestrating the Practical Sustainable
Transformation.
What timeless principle underpins a 35-year career, proving that sustainability
is an enduring blueprint for profit? Bijan Mishra’s illustrious journey has been
instrumental in shaping India’s evolving sustainability landscape. His path began
not with a predefined mission, but through immersion within diverse industri
al segments, including mining, thermal power stations, renewables, and steel
plants. During this tenure, he first realized sustainability would become “more
than just work”, evolving into a core identity. He observed that in a country like
India, where “opportunities and learnings come every day”, one could directly
“correlate the output or the productivity with the sustainability”. This correla
tion became fundamental, as he understood that sustainability “has to go in the
long run”.
From India’s unique perspective, he recognized that “everything... is related to
livelihood”. This insight was pivotal: “When you are taking care of the livelihood
of the things, then you have to take care of the nature as well”. This established
the linkage between “resource, productivity, livelihood, and the damage”. His
career initially involved researching the “health aspects of livestock” impacted
by pollution from thermal power stations and various industrial activities. This
early work, investigating emissions and their impact on the “life cycle impacting
the bovines and comes to the human life chain”, triggered a crucial thought. He
questioned “whether these learnings could be transferred into understanding
and implementing the different management techniques, plans, and technolog
ical innovations” within industries that significantly contributed to environmen
tal degradation. This foundational research ultimately facilitated his shift from a
specialized project to large-scale industry engagement.
The Genesis of a Sustainable Calling
“Sustainability has to go in the long run.”