What has stirred me to make this post is not something I talk about too often. My earlier attempts at discussing this in various other fora were disasters, as the people who listened to and read what I was trying to say didn’t really approve of my views. They felt that I was a regressionist and that I was trying to advocate a rather backward, retrograde way of life without understanding what I was attempting to say.

However, I am still not giving up in my attempts to discuss this issue and hope that atleast this enlightened community would appreciate, understand and share their own take on the issue rather than ridiculing me outright. Some time ago I had attended a seminar on "Spreading the ICT Revolution to Rural India" and the proceedings have stirred me into making this post. The seminar had participation from eminent well meaning people who all mouthed how much ICT was relevant and necessary for the development of the rural people. They sincerely believed that ICT was necessary and they expounded the benefits of such ICTs for the development of the rural masses.

The question which their presentations aroused in my mind was whether the rural people really wanted these ICT initiatives or were we simply thrusting them down their throats thinking that what was good for us urban folk will necessarily be good for the simple rural masses? On a different track I also started thinking of developments in the field of science and technology and where it is all leading us?

The first question reminded me of my earlier avatar about two decades ago as a development worker trudging along to the remote villages in Tamil Nadu and trying to organise the rustic women into self help groups and promoting micro finance by making them understand the benefits of saving and entrepreneurship.

Actually one of the reasons for my leaving behind the rather lucrative career of a development worker was a question posed by a rather old villager on one of my frequent visits to his village. "Do you think that we really need your concepts of development? Are you sure that we are not happy as we are? Did we ever invite you to come and develop us? It is you city slickers who want to burden us with your ideas of development. We were perfectly content with our lives and our sparse meals. We were happy ploughing the fields as we knew best and truly lived in harmony with nature until you development workers entered our villages with your doles and your loans and burdened our women folk with loans and debt. You are creating a cancer which will ultimately lead to the destruction of a simple contented way of life and all the traditional knowledge that goes along with such a simple way of life."

Actually the old man set me thinking and it was then that I realised that we were tampering with the lives of these people and our approach to the whole thing had been rather top down rather than bottoms up. We inspite of all the efforts at a bottoms up approach that the NGO wallahs boast about are really trying to impose our will on people who are different from us, who think differently from us and whom we assume are lesser developed than us. We suggest that ICT is good for them or that micro finance is good for them and when they say 'OK let me try', we say that the methodology followed was a bottoms up approach, forgetting and little realizing that it was we who suggested the same in the first place and that the suggestion was thrust upon them leading to a top down approach.

Who are we to suggest or decide what is good for them? When our own parents and elders tell us what is good for us we rebel but expect the underprivileged or deprived as we call them (terms which I hate using) to accept what we suggest. We seem to want to complicate the lives of those who are currently leading a simple but contented way of life while we who try to teach them of the benefits of ICTs or Micro Finance and development continue to remain dissatisfied and wilt under the pressures and stress of coping with life.

The city slickers and the so called civilized folk have actually never taught me anything new about life and have only plotted and schemed to make my life a complicated mess while I must admit that all that I consider really useful and the only things worthwhile that I ever learnt were those that were learnt from such simple rustic folk and were not found in any text books or lectures.

In this context, I must share something interesting that I happened to come across when reading a book and want to share it with you. In a book which was basically on participatory ethnic research, that I read some time ago, the author Ms.Mikkelsen interacts with a rustic named Mzee Joel Kithene Mhinga of Buganjo village in Northern Tanzania and tries to prove to him that he had got his historical facts wrong about the genesis of the Buganjo clan. In response to this the villager comes out with a classic statement that I shall continue to remember as the best way to express the point I’m trying to prove in this post. "I know you do not know what I know, but why do you not want to know that I too know what you do not know? You may have quite a lot of book knowledge, but I still believe that the anus does not teach the mouth the sweetness of food"

This issue also reminds me of the lyrics of a Pink Floyd song:

"We don't need no, education

We don't need no, thought control

Hey teacher! Leave, those Kids alone"

The second question that came to my mind and which I’d like to discuss here is the role of science and technology in development. Mankind in its search for materialistic happiness has marched on a path of scientific and technological growth, which has ultimately not brought man the kind of pleasure, and benefits that he seeks.

Man must realize that the search for happiness is invariably linked to the desire of the Soul to remain in a free state in an environment of ultimate reality and without the barriers and illusions of Maya or the interplay of the 5 senses. When the soul is unable to fulfill its desire for bliss it ultimately keeps trying to innovate and try out new methods to achieve bliss. This leads to a kind of restlessness caused in the mind. Breath & breathing, which is the connection or bridge between the soul, the mind and the body, then becomes restless and starts seeking newer transient pleasures.

Therefore mastery of Breath can give man the bliss, which he is seeking. When man searches for materialistic happiness he is taken for a ride and ultimately does not find the happiness he envisaged. It is therefore implied that man is chasing a mirage and his quest for scientific and technological advancement will never end. The more advanced he goes he will find that there is more for him to conquer. This will ultimately make him disenchanted.

All technology used by man, be it mechanical, electrical, electronic or Digital were all meant to assist man and make his stay on earth pleasurable. However, if one carefully observes, it will not be difficult to find that all of man’s technological creations cause as much harm if not more as the good they do to mankind. Whether it is the car or the aeroplane or nuclear energy or ICT, they have caused as much harm both physically and metaphysically, by impacting with the environment, as much as they have done good and made life easy for the people.

I am not trying to portray a negative picture of science and technology but only point out one of the characteristics of all of man's scientific and technological creations. When mastery of the art of breathing can make us travel instantaneously and appear or disappear at any place or time, man is trying to attain mastery over supersonic travel. When mastery of the art of breathing can even create gold out of mere rocks and stones through what the ancients called Alchemy man is trying to discover new chemicals and toxic substances, which harmfully affect and effect the environment. Man has the best super computer within him but wants to out do each other in creating a gigantic super computer in the material world.

Indeed man is materially rich but spiritually impoverished and dissatisfied.

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