The other night I was quite sleepless, when I heard a voice. Hey! It was God himself. He began questioning me, Son do you really think that we need technology? I was confused. What kind of question is that God? Isn’t the technology good, hasn’t it made the life of people easy? We are advancing technologically and that is taking us ahead. We are changing the world, making it a better place to live. We have won over many diseases which killed so many people earlier. The people of the world are better connected now, well educated and informed. The quality of life has improved a lot in the past few decades. We have come a long way, and that is all because of technology. So what is it which makes you question the need of technology?

He replied with saying that definitely technology has made life much easy, but at the same time hasn’t it added to the troubles of everybody. The technology has been made for humans, but the by products and pollution is making life miserable for every creation of mine, be it humans, animals or plants. Don’t you think there should be a right balance as to how much emphasis is there on the advancement of technology and on the advancement of whole of the mankind? Are you sure nobody dies of starvation, diseases, are all the people using the technology developed by you? And do they even need these so called advanced technologies?

This all made me think about it. Surely I support technological advancement, but at the same time it is true that we are lagging far behind in providing basic amenities to the common man. Talking about India in particular, do we really need a moon mission? I feel that this is an over-ambitious project when we can not even feed the people of our country. What good will it to do to the people of our country if we land up on Moon? Obviously nobody is going to take a poor man to the moon. An empty stomach does not need any ambitious projects, it needs food first of all and opportunities to earn the bread. How is the common man going to benefit from any space missions? If the thousands of crores of money, which is spent on this, can be diverted in developing basic infrastructure of our villages, won’t it be the true advancement? Technology is by the people and for them.

What are we going to achieve if we make a few metropolitans cities the most developed in the world. Even if Delhi becomes the best city in the world, would it compensate for the poor condition of the other small cities and villages in India? Can this be counted as development? Let me cite an example. Flyovers are being built all across Delhi, Metro network is being spread. Thousands of crores of rupees are being spend on this, but have we realized where and why did the need arise for such construction. That has arisen of the fact that Delhi is getting more and more crowded. Now, the people in Delhi have not suddenly outburst with children. The population from the surrounding states is moving into Delhi. But again why did they have to move? That is because they don’t have an opportunity in their home location. Had there been a proper infrastructure and opportunity, they would have certainly stayed back at their home. We need to provide them with that. Rather than treating a problem at the outer crust level, we should go to the grass root level and treat it, which is going to be the permanent solution.

Many villages in India still don’t have electricity; the average education of the people in India is still shameful. Even the basic amenities such as hospitals and schools are not present and we like to talk about the advancement of technology. Why can’t we build one flyover less and divert that money into development of an entire village? We have to focus on raising the per capita income of the common man, the average minimum qualification of the people of India. Only then we can benefit in the long run. Having the top doctors, engineers, billionaires in our country does not matter, especially when we know lots of people are starving to death, illiteracy rate is high, the per capita income is so low. There should be a distribution of wealth and the gap between the poor and riches need to be narrowed down. This doesn’t mean snatching the wealth from the riches and distributing in poor, instead provide poor with an opportunity earn money. The opportunity will only be provided when they have good education, and they do not need to leave their homes for a living. Rather than concentrating the wealth and the development in metros, it should be distributed well amongst the rural areas which form the majority of our country and yet are forgotten.

Since I am writing this and you are able to read this, it means we both are technologically advanced or at least we have an access. So we might not agree with these thoughts, but come in the place of the common man, and then ask yourself what do you need? First comes in place the physical needs like hunger, then emotional needs followed by social needs and the last one is technology needs. Obviously we have our other needs fulfilled, that is why it is easier for us to think of technology, but had our stomachs been empty for a few days, technology would not have been on our minds. Let us not compete with the developed nations of the world by being over ambitious with space exploration projects, or building world class infrastructure and shopping malls in the metros; instead let us concentrate on bringing the poor up by giving them fair chance. Let us make life better, also of the people living in rural areas. Only after that we can be a developed nation in true sense.

This God is within every person and you can also converse with him provided that you want to look at the world with a kind heart leaving behind just your own selfish motives. He is none other than your own inner soul. I am not personally against the technological advancement, but somehow feel we should not just follow suit with other nations, because there is a whole lot of difference between them and us, both economically and socially. We have a different culture, different demographics, limited resources, huge population and we are far behind them in most aspects. We can not compete with them by sending an unmanned or manned moon or mars mission, or using the best weapons in a war, or building the tallest building in the world, or having a 100 kms shopping mall. We will only compete with them when we are well educated; when nobody in our country dies of starvation or diseases which can be cured, when the development in rural areas is as good as metros, when we win over social issues such as child marriage & child labor. The overall quality of life should improve and then this world will be a much better place.

Cheers