Memories of the Jalianwala Bagh massacre are inscribed in a similar fashion in the collective subconscious of the Indian people.

The Imperialistic imperatives that engraved these horrors into the racial memories of colonised people have not ceased to be, as is evident from our research into the making of a product that has come to define the consumerist culture and which dopes millions into a sense of false wellbeing, namely chocolate.

Like multi-national companies today, United Fruit made alliances when and where it could to survive. As long as it did not unduly offend the mores of its home base, it got away with much overseas. United Fruit as international corporate monopoly eventually collapsed, and this should serve as a lesson in the vulnerability of businesses that operate in lawless and wholly self-serving ways. There still are companies that exploit the human and natural resources of foreign countries, especially in the Third World and use lobbying and political contributions for highly questionable ends. That is the way business is done in many or most parts of the world, but thankfully the multinationals aren't all malevolent, and they must now answer to more stringent laws than United Fruit ever faced. Many companies in the business of chocolate are developing more responsible production processes and making organic chocolate.

Our other story explores honey as a product that has climbed the graph of consumer preference and business charts. During our investigations we found that in the United States alone the pollination performed by honeybees is worth about $19 billion per year. The bees however are disappearing and with them will go our eco-systems, if we as consumers do not take responsibility for air, water and soil pollution, pesticide dispersal, and garbage disposal, which are all tearing up ecosystems. Human activity is seriously undermining the ability of nature to regenerate recycle and purify. Consumers have to learn to value these services that nature and the environment provide, free of cost. According to the Worldwatch Institute's latest report, State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy , some countries have begun trying to value them properly. "Costa Rica, for example, pays landowners to preserve forests and their biodiversity, with the money coming from fuel taxes and sale of environmental credits to businesses. Mexico and Australia, have also set up systems to assign values to formerly free services" and in recent decades, economics theoreticians and researchers have suggested a variety of reforms that would make economics truer, greener and more sustainable. The reliance on GDP as the key index of general wellbeing cannot continue to dominate assumptions and thinking about economic matters, specially in the popular consciousness.

It is crucial, for consumers and producers alike, to realise that "the economy resides totally inside the global ecosystem, which gives the economy a place to operate, supplies all of its raw materials, and supports it with many critical services. In physical terms, economic activity is basically converting bits and pieces of the ecosystem to human uses: trees and forests into lumber and houses, grasslands and other habitats into farms to feed the billions of humans" and the number of humans in the world has exploded from about 1 billion to nearly 7 billion, while in the last 200 years, Gross World Product has risen by nearly a factor of 60. The ecosystem has suffered as a result, hence climate change, dwindling rainforests, water shortages, and extinction of species from tigers to bees.

Last year, more than 90 major corporations, including General Electric, Volvo and Air France, called on governments to set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the European Union has set up a carbon cap-and-trade system.

Waste minimisation is another way to reduce the scale of disaster overtaking our world. Every year we dig up and process more than half a trillion tons of raw materials—and six months later more than 99 percent of it is waste. This can be stopped if consumers take a closer look at their consumption.

Consumers need to remember the 'precautionary principle' that asks, "How little damage is possible?" before every purchase decision. Today we're seeing the principle adopted more and more widely. The Maastricht Treaty that created the European Union in 1991 puts the principle at the centre of its environmental policy, and San Francisco made precaution official policy in 2003.

Studies in hedonic psychology reveal that higher incomes only improve life satisfaction up to a point and the more materialistic people are, the lower levels of happiness they report. There actually appears to be a correlation between rising consumption and the erosion of the things that do make people happy, especially social relationships, family life, and a sense of community. Hence we need to make the economy better at satisfying human needs, not simply bigger.

8th of March has been declared the ' International Women's Day', but what exactly does it translate into? A UN report in the 1990s noted that "most poor people are women, and most women are poor". "All over the world, women earn less than men for equivalent or more work. They lack access to land and credit, and they do more than their share of child- and elder care, volunteer work, and other unpaid labour. There is evidence that this gender bias actually suppresses economic activity. In response, a few governments in industrial countries are trying to develop policies that take unpaid work into account. Muhammad Yunus' Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is using the terms of its loans to help to ensure that wives are legally entitled to their share of a couple's assets. The microfinance movement appears to have given millions of women a valuable economic boost.

In India, we have not yet given women 50% representation in the democratic processes of the country.

But there is always a tomorrow, and there is always hope if the tomorrows continue to flicker on our horizons.