The Biggest Hurdle with Sustainable Development is that we are Blatantly Ignorant about it!

Sustainable development is a concept that is widely preached but seldom practiced. Although we are aware of the 3Rs of sustainability (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle), there is something that hinders from adopting them in real life.

Let us take the case of the ongoing exercise of renewing electoral identity card in India. Could we not have thought to make it a soft process? 

Recently a couple of A4 sized printed pages were delivered at my home for this purpose.  I believe the same would be happening silently across India. With a total of 815 Million eligible voters (as per 2014), as many number of pages will get printed!

If 3000 A4 sized papers can be made from one tree, nearly 3,00,000 trees will be needed to make and print 815 Million papers (excluding the power consumed to print, packing material of the papers and transport  heads).

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi became Mahatma, because he led us by examples. What stops us from setting examples?

In a recent study conducted at the Department of Ecological Informatics, IIITM-K, we have realized that the concept of sustainability as understood today is something that is in the conscious sphere of human mind. Changes in subconscious sphere of mind are a prerequisite to bring about change in human attitude and behavior.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267695518_Semantics_of_Sustainable_Development_The_8_Degree_North_Assessment  

Can Entrepreneurs be Manufactured?

Late yesterday evening while strolling through MG Road, Trivandrum, window shopping; I happened to me meet one of my friends, who is an Engineer by training. The last time we met was during the wedding reception of a family friend in May 2014. Since both of us had some time to spare, it was not difficult to find a place to sit down and talk. 

Our conversation drifted over myriad topics as diverse as family health to the social and environmental state of past and present Trivandrum, the opportunity cost of Governance and public administration, etc. 

I shall find time to make anecdotes about various topics at a later date. For the present, I will dwell on the essence of our conversation on declining educational values.

Individual ambitions and inability to work as a team led to mushrooming of discipline specific Universities particularly in Kerala, India. Together we failed to count the number of Universities in in Kerala. This can partly be ascribed to lack of strong political leadership. While individuals driving these stands to gain, students, who literally are Guinea pigs lose. 

Another queer thing that came up was the current interest in “creating entrepreneurs”. Entrepreneurship is something that is innate.  Apple, Microsoft, Alibaba, etc. and major Indian business houses, was brought up by passionate entrepreneurs, who never received any formal training!  No wonder it is rightly said “I was born intelligent. Education ruined me”. The icing on this cake is also taken up by smart entrepreneurs. There are tuition houses for this!!!! 

The embedded message in promoting entrepreneurship almost always gets overlooked. Academic houses cannot guarantee what the student will do after graduating, the best they can do is push to see, if a student can create a job for himself .I could learn from my friend that there is a huge difference in approach of promoting entrepreneurship across the Atlantic.

Have we as a society ever though the returns on these efforts? How long do we feel can we close our eyes to reality? We are sitting on thin ice. As rightly said by Lester Brown; the world is just one poor harvest away from chaos. There are pressing issues and things that we can contribute to. If technology could help us print food grains, we would have enough time to experiment.

Knowledge era has reduced education to a commodity. However, with tomorrow will dawn wisdom.   

We soon realized that we had consumed three cups of coffee each and time was well past 8 PM. We decided to pick up the threads from where we left next time when we meet. 
It was a refreshing experience.

Information Technologies and Social Transformation : Human Attitudes

The Penny Farthing is an appropriate representation of the benefits of Information Technology (IT) to corporate houses and the social development; respectively. 

 Realizing the returns on investments in IT, corporate houses became innovators. Appealing personal utilities and convenience made individuals, early adopters, while the

 Figure 1. A penny Farthing                                     Government, which is the only sector 

                                                                      to care for social development ended as late adopters and laggards.  Government adoption of idea/concept stems from either political considerations or recommendations of advisers. Whilst it is easy to reason the rationale behind politics induced decisions, the latter has to be sufficiently scientific and rational.

        

However, deficiency of intellect, particularly to harness the potentials of IT for societal development is prevalent and blatantly visible at key nodes of the Government. With counsel from such deficient nodes, the benefits of IT to the social sector trails like the farthing (the smaller wheel in figure 1). It is high time that the Government takes bold measures to correct this anomaly.   

             

Information Technologies and societal Transformation had gained attention as early by 1980s in the western world. Kerala, with its distinct social conditions, should lead the nation and set trend in leveraging the benefits of IT for societal development. Gandhiji’s Talisman, when applied in this context, renders any technology that is incapable to address the common mans need; useless.