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Saturday, September 12, 2020

DNA OF A GREAT NATION

 

WHAT MAKES A SOCIETY OR A NATION GREAT?

Great nations which comprise the advanced societies of the world, have one thing in common; the dignity of labor, and pride in vocational craft. India has a long way to go in the realm of achieving this. Add to this, the loss of land, grazing area, and materiels such as bamboo, wool etc; stuff that man for all his smarts cannot replicate, is a serious matter and we cannot afford to be cynical. The enclosed video shows something ostensibly simple, but I have been unable to identify anyone for producing this for our Spashram RiverMountain Retreat for some years. You would be surprised at the challenges, this seemingly simple device poses! While the technical skills are relatively easy to find, the materiels pose a different level of challenge, for you will not find the right bamboo! In advanced societies on the other hand, there is tremendous indepth skill in something like carpentry, and in access to the right materiel. Carpentry or stone masonry is a scientific subject in the west or Japan.

I was once told by the famous bureaucrat MS Gill, the ex Chief Election Comissioner that as a young administrative official he was deputed to Scotland and spent some time with a village council. He was amazed to listen to the council members discussion on the relaying of a village path with cobble or flagstones. He said with a chuckle that this discussion took four hours! Unlike the casual approach taken in India. This was because the council members realised that the path was meant to serve for decades. Further it would serve village members as well as visitors including tourists. This was not an exercise to take lightly. Imagine the level of awareness and education such an attitudinal change warrants in our country?

In another instance, I had been running into a challenge to perfect a firewood chimney (which uses drift wood not cutwood) .Very few hill communities actually have real knowledge and tend to bumble their way around this task. The Khasis of Meghalaya are adept however in building the inner neck. The person who helped me out was one of the foreign tourists who came to travel with us. He was an engineer and he gave me a fomula.When I asked him how he came by this..I mean it is not a usual subject to study the formula for building a chimney! His answer was the Hamish community which has the reputation of being an insular, ultra orthodox community. Now smoke from the chimney is efficiently sucked out! So for all the high techniques,.the simple stuff needs development. Nagaland in India's north east infact where I was conducting said tourist, is exemplary in its presentation of food agro products . Let's admit that for all the prosleysting, the Church has helped in marketing techniques, presentation and production including of such items as beeswax which are so useful but impossible to find elsewhere in India easily.

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