Daily Post 1483
BIHAR ELECTIONS: THE SOCIAL DILEMMA
The battle is for a better living and it has always been so. Not only there but across the country and across the globe. What is seen by the naked eyes should be felt and one by all, expressed by at least the majority and then only it becomes a reality. Migrant or non-migrant is not the issue. That it took much less than a generation of proactive leadership to create a Singapore and might be even lesser to create an Estonia, the most innovative country on earth and even less for Shenzhen, the tech heaven of China, the wealth creation there, can match GDP of couple of countries. Can any of these models be a final blueprint of change or we continue pegging for the barest minimum and missing it out every time.
An endemic social crisis is the manifestation of what the state has lost so far, while having the wherewithal required to be a leading agrarian and educational state, if not anything else. The farmers and students could have been the game changers and others would have hopefully followed. The leading sector theory of economic growth with education propelling it and other ancillary economic activities simultaneously would have changed the economic and social landscape. Gainfully employed, people would have had less time for politics. It is truism that more energy, money, technology, time and hard work you provide to any sector of economy, the more it prospers. Let’s finally transform developmental administration into development once and for all.*
Goal can happen on paper, but development happens on the ground, whether it is agriculture of Punjab or tech of Bengaluru. The 8 Millennium Development Goals gave way to 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the names can change and so can be the formats, but a goal is first a vision shared by all. Do we have socially shared goals? Are the people aware of the ride they are on? The route and also the destination. Or everyday is yet another day of drudgery. Goals are what is achieved and not what is touted & discussed and lacks the viable mechanism to deliver. Going back to the drawing board every five years, when the drawing board itself is missing is not the beginning of any solution but of making the problem messier.
It is a contradiction in terms that a technology less state is battling it out in the first digitally propelled elections, in a pandemic infested world. The Social Dilemma on Netflix showed social media’s true colours and the machinations behind it, to get you addicted – dopamined as we call it. What it would mean to the people in Bihar – a social media enabled elections, that only the posterity would decide. You need a messiah to pull you out of crises. Does the social crisis gets aggravated by the social media or is it an effective healer? Democracy will triumph if it throws up a ruling mechanism, which can solve this social crisis, the local resources enabled economic way, truly driven by path breaking technology.
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AGGRAVATES BOTH THE GOOD AND THE BAD. WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?