The founder of Aravind Eye Care, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (Dr. V), was a man on a mission. His motto was to eradicate needless blindness and he set about doing it with engineering precision. The Aravind Eye Care hospital system that he founded is now the world’s largest hospital system for eye care, serving 60% of all eye care patients in India through 347 hospitals across India, besides operating in 30 developing countries worldwide.

Dr. V created a sustainable system in which over 50% of the patients pay nothing or highly subsidized rates and yet the operation is cash positive. He developed a high quality, high volume, low cost delivery model for eye surgery. When the cost of equipment became a bottleneck for reducing the cost of eye surgery, he founded a manufacturing arm, Aurolab, which brought down the cost of intraocular lenses by a factor of 10 from international prices. Today, Aurolab provides all the equipment needed for the Aravind Eye Care hospital system, in addition to exporting to over 160 countries.

I spent yesterday at Aurolab and Aravind Eye Care in Madurai, TamilNadu, India, speaking to them about another form of needless blindness obscuring the cruelty and environmental destruction embedded in every morsel of animal food we eat. My goal was to secure the promise of a default Vegan policy at Aurolab and Aravind Eye Care so that as an institution, Aravind Eye Care does not condone this needless blindness in our food choices, while respecting personal choices.

The extreme land use requirement for animal agriculture and the knowledge that the 2-3 trillion trees that we have cut over the past 10,000 years, if restored, can literally reverse climate change, swayed the audience at both venues. The good news that if the world goes vegan, this can help put out all six planetary fires, i.e., resolve all six planetary boundary transgressions, was an added bonus.

In India, the land of masala chai and coffee as well as the Land of Ahimsa, the inevitable question of how would we substitute dairy milk for chai and coffee came up. Fortunately, I had secured samples of PlantYum masala chai and coffee from the founder of PlantYum, Shalu Nijawan, in Bengaluru, so that people could taste that they would not be missing anything.

Upon further reflection, the very idea that the Greatest Transformation in Human History would be thwarted by masala chai and coffee addictions is truly ridiculous. Having given up drinking chai and coffee nearly two decades ago, I can’t imagine that our generation would lose our planetary home for that.

Perish the thought!

Now, we need to follow up and help Aurolab and the Aravind Eye Care hospital system become India’s first institution to enact a default Vegan policy and usher in a truly sustainable era, eradicating needless blindness in their food choices.