This year has been particularly challenging for India on many terms considering the gamut of events that engulfed the marauding elephant. First it was the world recession that wittingly put India's markets to test, then a drought that hit a few states badly, then the Maoist(naxalite) rebellion, then the dragon (China) spewing fire down India's throat, the drubbing of the Indian cricket team at the hands of its arch rival (Pak) in an ICC event for the very first time and now to top it all flooding in some parts of the country including the same very places which feared death initially due to thirst (drought) and then fear death to the fury of water.
Most of the factors mentioned above such as recession, Chinese show of muscle power and India's loss to Pak in the ICC Champions Trophy are matters that tread international boundaries and have no significant correlation among each other. However, the rest of the factors which concern the home ministry, have an uncanny thread holding them together in the eyes of the virtuoso.
Whether it is the drought, the maoist rebellion (revolution as some romantics may call it), the deluge that has millions of people gasping, the commonality as I see it, is the set of people whom it affects. The drought seemed to have affected the states of UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, WB, AP.So did the maoist revolution and so did the deluge. Of course, the deluge affected more people in Karnataka and drought remains a common feature in certain parts of Maharashtra & Rajasthan, the fact can't be ignored that there is certainly a trend in the way things happen in UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, WB and AP. Almost the same subset of problems haunt them. I am left flabbergasted at the nature of the truth - most of these regions are in a perilous state of constant conflict for survival.
Now I would focus my attention to another portion of the world which has an uncanny similarity with the nature of the above set of Indian problems. Lets talk of the eastern contours of Africa - Kenya, Somaliya, Sudan, Uganda etc. The threat of a famine is writ large after the failure of rains in these parts. Worse than the hunger is the thirst that's bothering, in many parts leading people to dig wells using their hands. Then the meteorological dept's prediction that there would be more than heavy rainfalls in the coming months in these places, carries a sense of paradox in itself. While the rains would certainly help save failure of crops in the pastoral areas, what remains worrisome is that more people are expected to die due to flooding and then the barrage of post flood diseases. Having said this, a bigger worry is the internal war that seems to ravage these countries, providing a perfect breeding ground for some militant organisations.
The similarities of problems between these countries of Africa and the Indian states are brazen. The cycle of drought, deluge, militancy in these places seem anything but ephemeral.On delving a little deeper it easy to see the nature of these places - African and Indian, have something in common to them and they are : all of these places are agro based societies, rich in mineral resources and depend on nature for livelihood. But then there are a few other things in common - ineffectual governance, corruption, abject poverty & iliteracy. Each of the second set of commonalities when grossly mismanaged significantly blow up the problems to unfathomable levels and leaves the societies anything but impregnable.
But then I found something more intriguing in this story of penury and disquiet and that leads me to question the larger fabric of the human race leading from the origin of species. Its no wisdom anymore that human species originated in parts of Africa. And if latest research is to be believed, the human race migrated to India - which mostly happened through the eastern coasts of Africa, and then migrated into parts of Middle east and Europe.
We can hence attach another set of migration that happened with the human beings in genral. And that is the movement of wisdom. Considering human race originated in Africa and has survived so long, and wisdom about life came to them first, Africa should have been the most prosperous of all continents today, esp. the eastern contours of the continent which saw the first movement of human race. Indeed its just the opposite. Now coming to India which of course remains one of the oldest civilizations of the world, and the latest research proving that contention. Patliputra ( Patna in Bihar) as we know was home to one of the world's oldest & greatest universities, which means at least the entire eastern belt of the country should have been the most prosperous. However, its just the opposite. In fact the problem seems to get repeated elsewhere. Regions which claim home to Harappa & Mohenjodaro- which mastered the art of organised living, are some of the most ravaged in today's world and mostly remain war torn.
As I contemplate deeper, the above set of observations lead me to draw the hypothesis that the newer the civilizations the wealthier they are - in terms of wealth ( as in pure cash), in literacy, in the peace concerning their international borders, in the disquiet among people within, in other words Civil Enlightenment. The arguments that I would like to produce to support my conjecture would be that America which was discovered serendipitously and is one of the latest civilizations with much of its documented history not ranging beyond a few centuries. Today as we know America remains the most powerful nation in the world - in pure terms of GDP, educational institutions, military might etc. In fact the region which is attributed to having given birth to modern day enlightenment i.e Europe is only second best to the US when it concerns world matters.
So what is it that makes younger civilizations prosperous and is there anything that we can learn from them ? I believe its the ability of the young to learn fast and capture the best practices from the old and give them a new dimension through a more disciplined approach.While the fittest of the human races have survived for thousands of years, the next level of survival would only come from addressing poverty, illiteracy & health at the heart of all of which lies development.
Today Survival of the Fittest has an all together different tone. Its not about who can survive the wrath of the nature. But Survival of the Fittest would be defined in pure economic terms which would be defined by how effectively the civil society shapes upto the future.
