Ego-Wise...: Development...!?!

As far as the ‘development’ is considered, what I look forward to is a conscientious effort of a rational society with the help of an ethical corporate model governed by an altruistic political will towards a lifestyle that would be a combination of civilizations like Bhutan and Norway, however idealistic or unpractical that might seem to an acquisitive eye! And this hypothesis owes to my personal disposition, life experience and understanding of human values and dogmas at large, majorly from Indian context, quite obviously.

As it is, we are the most value-rich yet hypocrite (pro-poor) society this planet has seen and couldn’t be a better option than us to make an interesting case-study with all the history we had, present we live in and future we envisage (or brag?). I should consider myself fortunate having landed in this ‘God’s Own Land’ where majority of the problems have a simple solution of leaving it to the favorite Deity and make a deal of offering something in exchange for every wish granted… so very enigmatic! Anyway that is not the subject matter for now; I will cover it elsewhere if I must.

Today I am all about development and let’s not lose the track just like any other infrastructure project that, after tons of design revisions, heaps of budget amendments and plenty of rescheduling; reveals the fact, right after the completion of it, that there was a fundamental misassumption in the proposal…! (Curious can refer to (m)any PWD project(s) in general and ‘Hinjewadi’ bypass in particular.) Standing upright on my status and position, I am not allowed to do that, anyway. So let’s move forward…

You must have heard of the rocking chair, haven’t you? I bet you have because being an Indian and living with many others of the same mentality (read – nationality), I know it for sure that the second best love of Indians is… relaxing! This age-old, ingenious tool of relaxing is quite popular in this part of the world, isn’t it? What an irony… this same rocking chair symbolizes our developing (?) status today!

There is a cliché with the analogy of Rocking Chair that goes like – “Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.” Well, I do not know much about worry as it is not that dear to me (I prefer meditation!), but I always get tempted to replace this ‘worry’ thing in the quote with ‘development’, whenever I hear it. You ask ‘Why?’ Oh… simply because, I strongly believe that after a certain stage Human Evolution has stopped and what we are doing for centuries together is worst than beating around the bush. We believe that we are making progress by rocking the chair, but the chair is stuck to a point in time and just moving back and forth on the pivot of ignorance… which is a bliss after all as they say! And with the waning chair that has rocked more than it could, we are ought to break it and fell and fell really hard, shattering ourselves to irrecoverable pieces… and species!

Scary picture, is it? It certainly is. It could be scary, it could be devastating, it could be shocking or it could be… so obvious. But you can change it if you want to. Yes, you certainly can change it for better by changing yourself! And that’s where Bhutan and Norway are going to show us the way… One with discarding the rotten concept of GDP and replacing it with GNH and the other by constantly ranking top in the HDI Index! Let’s make these two, characteristically poles apart but principally homogeneous, societies our Guru of Modern living. India has the greatest opportunity to make it and make it really big in the inclusive holistic sustainable development while being a role model of it, owing to her History, Geography, Wisdom and Spirituality. All we need to do is keep aware and remember Grail Knight’s advice to Indiana Jones – ‘Choose wisely!’