Sustainable development

It’s a term that’s becoming common.  It used to be just development (vikas) earlier…  whatever I read about post independence India during Nehru as prime minister as history, and later saw in publicity campaigns during Indira Gandhi (PM) era, i.e. till mid 1980’s;  and even till the beginning of 1990’s.  The last 20 years seem hazy as a single theme or person didn’t dominate in India’s eco-politico scenery much (or blame lack of clarity on ignorance).  Anyway… since its my blog, it will be my POV (point of view).   This lack of direction seems to be probable future trend for coming few years as well.

Obviously this macro haziness, about what direction to develop would impact micro levels.  So if you ask a single individual – what his/her goal is – majority of people might find it difficult to precisely state it.  Similarly what should be the priority of their nations development goal be? 

I’ve been trying to figure out – this direction – the development of SD=sustainable development, that each individual and society should have.  (Here I am limiting the scope to just India as a nation, which is a huge 100 crore plus population).

But thinking about 100 crore (1 crore is 10 million) plus people, it would be easier to take a smaller group, or my local community or local region.  Some understanding of direction to move ahead would seem a requirement for each sovidual (society as whole and each individual).

Lets start from just one individual, yourself.  Ask yourself – what is MY goal?

Where do see myself in 5 years or 10 years from now?

What all I want to achieve?

What all would consist as my personal development?

The same needs to be done for a group/community, or your local region as well as for nation & ultimately the whole world. 

But when you try to answer these questions as an individual, you will realize how big a challenge exists before us all. 

      Just as its important to have some ideas as where you want to be in near future and few years ahead (micro), its imp. To have group goals (macro) as well…  lack of direction in development of a nation, what will it lead to? I leave it to your imagination.  India or your nation may have some such directions, but are you aware of them?

How to resolve this lack of idea about direction, purposes, goals etc. ?

Lets start with yourself – what are your individual goals? What kind of developments you want to achieve?

Its not an easy question to answer.  Because, its easy to say, abstract things, such as happiness, peace etc.  what is happiness and how can it be achieved should be answered to make it concrete enough to go ahead.  Similarly breaking down a large goal into small steps to set plan/set deadlines also needs to be done.

Priorities will have to be set.  What can be eliminated should have to be deleted from such a list, and from remaining most wanted list, grading of priorities will have to be set.  How to achieve any one of these goals will now throw up multiple means/ways to achieve it.  Thus which way to go to achieve it also will have to be set.

For example, I want to eat a healthy meal next time as fitness/health is imp. Priority – will throw up multiple food options.  If you don’t eat meat/fish then, as mentioned earlier, you can eliminate non-vegetarian options straight away.  But even then, based on your taste, resources you will have to select a smaller list of options and select one at a time, and work towards preparing it (before your next meal time).

Similarly you will have to plan for your future goals, further away than just next meal.  Similarly group level goals too will have to be planned. 

These are not easy and previous plans would have ended up in smoke.  So what’s lacking?

The skill sets to achieve individual and social goals… which definitely needs to be improved. 

The aim of education should be to provide such skill set.  Rather than trying to develop rot-memory, as our education system does currently.

An imp. Aspect of childhood is, say from 6 to 16 years, the school time period, is lack of responsibility to be part of productive contributors of the society… thus these age group children should be able to use this time period like a laboratory.  Where experiments can be done – and they should be provided with time, resources and guidance to deal with failure.  Overall, they should be given training to practice setting sovidual goals, through small projects.

Then a future generation wouldn’t be trying to find few people to govern them.  They themselves would be actively involved in governance (as sovidual goal achievement is governance, right?)

This future generation would be thinking, how would I like to see my local region in 5 years from now? What all facilities should my neighborhood have? And work towards actualizing them.