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 Common
Man's Millennium? Science and Technology Roopam has given birth to a premature baby. Both the mother and the baby girl were at a risk, till technology took over. Roopam�s husband Kartik is a lineman at the local Gontur railway station and they cannot affort state-of the art health care of the big metros. The local gynecologist told Roopam and Kartik that they need not worry. The baby would be put inside an incubator, where she would be all cosy and warm. For a week, after fighting between life and death, Roopam and Kartik are going back home with their baby, who still now is without a name. In Kartik�s family the name of the baby has to be given by the eldest lady of the family, which was her grand mother Phoolmati Devi. She stays in Uttar Kashi, the ancestral home of Kartik.
So
before going back home they stop their tonga and stop by a local
telephone booth to call up �dadima�. The issue was a name for the
new issue. Dadima suggested that the baby should be named �Arjun�,
as he showed his brave-ness from day one of his life.
Today,
our life is all about science, but does everything in our life demand
technology? Embracing technology has always been a concern for society
from time immemorial. �How much do we allow technology in our
life-streams?�, has always been a concern for the common man. �Would
technology not risk our jobs and livelihood? Would technology mean our
existing skills are all gone, down the drain? Would technology mean we
would have to re-train ourselves?�
Here
is an interesting study by the Henley Center, an UK forecasting group,
who had attempted to analyze human beings� reaction with respect to
technology.
Although
this data does not suggest the likes and dislikes of the common man, but
it definitely throws some light on how we react to science and
technology. It would be a gross over simplification to narrate that
technology has done nothing for the common man. Now that a common man
can make a reasonably priced technological investment; we are not that
skeptical in introducing basic devices like the TV, the audio system,
the washing machine to our daily lives. Science and Technology, although it has not reached one and one due to organizational and governmental inconsistencies; science itself has no stones unturned. Medical advancements, media awareness, communication facilities, entertainment, audio-visual education, ease of travel have all resulted from the encroachment of science and technology in our lives.
UNDP and Indian Institute of
Science recently implemented at Hosahalli near Bangalore a
Bioelectricity plant to help irrigation waters. The innovative
experience uses a strategy for improving the quality of life in villages
based on local resources such as land and water. Specifically, the
project concentrates on technologies that generate bio-mass and convert
bio-residues into energy. Management strategies have been developed to
use these technologies as part of an economically sustainable package to
provide lighting, drinking water and services such as the milling of
grains. At the same time, new jobs are created in the agriculture sector
as it expands through the assured supply of irrigation water. With innovative projects such as these going on, we are gradually approaching a phase in which technology would really have a say in common man�s lives and gradually shape his future. We have to understand that each technological initiative that occurs on the face of the earth would gradually percolate down to the bottom lines and everybody would stand to gain. �
Subrata Mukherjee Common Man's Millennium |
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