Innovation, Invention or Annihilation

I would hate myself for quoting the one of the most hated villain of Harry Potter – “Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged”. But what was dangerous in that context is very much relevant in today’s context.

The meaning of progress might differ from person to person. For someone moving towards betterment, some might define it as finding solution and solving problem or for some it is just moving from status quo. We might not realize but in today’s world the term progress sugar coated in jargons like innovation, invention etc has reduced to nothing but giving push to “status quo”. A slicker phone, a device that could take command from your eye movement, making Nano devices into Pico, femto or atto device – it’s just how far you can think. It’s all about what next, not about what purpose the progress is serving.

Many of you sneer at me for being so anti-technological. You would love to brand person like me as anti-progress, traditionalist etc etc. Remember the middle century, when church used to persecute scientists. That was the religious crusade. Today is the world of science crusade, anyone having doubt about so called scientific progress deserve social and political crucification. I would still put my thought forward. Take a step back and think what purpose these 250 years (taking industrial revolution as base) of scientific progress has served? At first lets just talk about the indicators of Human Development Index (HDI), which is a generally acceptable criteria.

Mean year of schooling of the world as a whole is not more than 5 years (lowest being less than 1 year for Burkina Faso and Highest for UK 13.8 years). In Ancient Greece, China and India children used to get on an average 5 years of education. Worldwide life expectancy is 71 years but there are around 30 countries whose life expectancy vary within 45-55 years. That’s certainly not better than what we had in before and early Christian era. We have made phenomenal progress in terms of getting cure of diseases and controlling spread of many communicable diseases that has contributed in increasing life expectancy. But at that front also (which is actually a genuine scientific achievement) we have nonetheless become prisoner of our own so called broad mindset – “progress for the sake of progress”. Once we didn’t have enough problem to find solution we started creating problem and that is what is happening in world of pharmaceutical research today. One pill for every damn problem, who cares for the source of the problems or the consequences of solution being creator of more problems.

Moving to the next indicator – that is GNP per capita. Talking about wealth, are we wealthier or well off today? Wealth is a relative term and counting them in terms of rupees or dollars would be as misleading as terming Voldemort as source of all evil. Your wealth should be able to fulfill all your needs, wants and desires. If we quantify those criteria then certainly we are much poorer than our predecessors and our wants and desires are multiplying faster than increase in our wealth.

So all in all we are not better off than what we were before. There was a time when progress was necessary to save children, to ward off diseases, to remove ignorance etc. I wouldn’t list hunger, as earth has always provided us enough to lead a healthy life and men has always found a way to get it from nature either its primitive agriculture, hunting or gathering, technology has broadened the choice of food and that doesn’t mean it has made it better. So there was a time when technological progress was a tool to problem solving. When we had less problems, then technology transformed itself problem solver to problem creator. More the merrier, and hence it remained relevant, not only relevant it has become next god. We might talk and talk about human achievement but a cursory glance at our surrounding would tell us that nothing has changed. The more we are connected, the more distant we are, the more we are safe, the more prone to danger we are, the more we achieve, the more we are losing, the more we solve, the more problem we are creating. It’s just a battle of moving to and fro from your status quo. You move an inch forward and you are hurled 2 inches backward.

The hell has opened. I am ready to be crucified :P

Fact, Fantasy, History and us

I have always struggled with queerness of history. How do you come to term with something whose interpretation is wide open, whose horizon is limitless? Physical Science mostly deals with inanimate objects that can be categorized, characterized with clear distinction and any change in those characters can clearly be captured and predicted. History could be termed as an imprecise science that has to deal with human being and that’s what make it wide open for different interpretations by different people or groups.

What makes me wonder is how we come to conclusion and arrive at a sequence of events that are woven by historians based on inadequate evidence. Perhaps that’s the reason that different interest groups are able to come up with their own version of history. That’s the reason we have left, right and different other ideologies that differs enormously in their interpretation of historical events.

Mankind has always looked for an identity to cling upon, in short term its religion, caste, race etc and in long term it’s always their history. That’s the reason history has always been subject of political scrutiny. It has been tool to influence mind and gain political score and that’s what has been happening in India today.

History of India is as complicated as (even more than) its geography and its diversity. In 1947 when India breathed its long overdue free air, it was a broken nation, nation with widespread poverty, hunger, illiteracy and was mired in deep muck of caste, creed, regionalism and communalism. It has nothing to be proud of except for some moment of Gandhi and Nehru. It was nothing more than a free beggar in a wide world street. Nothing changed much in subsequent years, thanks to the inherited colonial mentality and administration (Though honest effort of many leaders cannot be denied). We remained poor and scorned by western nation and denial continued. Denial of what we are, what have we become, and we instead clanged on some ancient glorious past to get past the inferiority complex of holding beggar bowl in front of the shiny suited captain America. What does it matter what we are at present, when we have inherited a glorious colourful cultural past and these new wealthy western nations are nothing but some money seeking uncultured lot with no past at all.

It all reminds me of a scene from Harry potter and half-blood prince where Marvolo Gaunt (Voldemort/Tom Riddle’s grand Father) who was living in the filth and obscurity but was full of pride for being heir of Slytherin that made him in constant denial of his present situation. But at least his pride was based on facts, but I am not even sure of what versions of our history have ability to tower all our misery and pain – version interpreted by left or version interpreted by right?

I don’t claim to have all those intellectual capability to refute or corroborate any version but as an ordinary Indian with limited intellectual capability I would like to raise just one question that has troubled me from my childhood. With 5000 years of glorious history why we have so few achievements that we can count on our finger tips? With hardly 400-500 years of history why achievement of USA has filled pages after pages. With same age as ours China has much more to boast than us (at least it was never ruled the way we were). I tried to find these answers in many history text books but I never could. It was same as the advertisement on Doordarshan when India’s only achievements were counted in form of Sachin Tendulkar and Aishwarya Rai ( not even a real achievement), we didn’t have much more than Aryabhatta, Chanakya, Varahmira (those certainly are real achievements) etc.

We claim to command 1/3^rd of world’s GDP till 1700 (more or less).  What happens when a country’s citizen have so much money? They usually try to find new avenues to employ that money and that paves the way for innovation and invention. Nation and citizen thrives on those innovation and inventions and money keep getting multiply. But did that happen in India? I could hardly find mention of flourishing trade (its negligible compare to other nation, and mostly fictional rather than solid proof as we have in case of other civilisations). If that was the case India would have been different in 1757, when East India Company finally consolidated its presence in India.

A near closed economy with hardly and research and development, where did all the money actually go? Were we rich or prosperous? There are significant differences between those.  A prosperous nation can boast of prosperity and industrious citizen with ample activities going on in its economy. On the other hand a rich nation can have all the money with large section of its masses keep facing misery and poverty, as happening in modern gulf countries. And that is what the gist of social and economic life of last 1500 years in the history of India.

Our present lethargy is product of past 1500 years of near insomnia. I am proud of tolerant culture of India that made it receptive to different ideas, cultures, religions and people. But that receptiveness has also infused letharginess into our DNA that made us indifferent to happening around us. We readily yielded power to one elite section and kept ourselves busy in finding minimum sustenance for living. All riches went to rulers and all misery to ruled. That has been story of past 2000 years and it is still going on. The dazzling wealth that India has boasted did not belong to ordinary Indian like us but to the handful of ruling elite. That’s the reason we never could become inventive country despite of having enormous wealth. Ordinary Indians were busy in arranging basic sustenance for life. There is not much difference in ancient India and China but what small differences were there that made China a nation while India a consortium of fiefdom. I am not saying everything was wrong, I don’t even know if that’s true but one thing I can be sure of that something was wrong that made us to subjugate for hundreds of year despite having all the wealth and power.

My purpose here is not to belie or belittle India’s past. My purpose is to seek every question to cover 360 degree view of our history instead of just one sided view. We are not a mediocre nation and string tied to our history would not let us cross the line of mediocrity. History is like nostalgia that is good to cherish but could ruin us if we don’t let it go. As a nation we are still underachiever, we are performing below our potential; we have miles to cover before becoming a nation of achievers. We are here to create history for future generation not to submerge in deep and unknown water of our history.