Even though our motherland, India (Bharat), inhales her oxygen from the sylvan milieu of her lush green rural life and the agrarian economy props up the financial status of the nation, ironically, the shocking scenario of ‘deserted villages’ has been a dark shade of massive urbanisation and large-scale industrialisation owing to an exodus of rural migration in quest of greener pastures.
Result: an abominably abandoned agriculture and obliteration of ecology and environment, let alone ethnic and cultural deflation. Our amiable planet, Earth, which is supposed to sustain our civilizations, is in fact being ravished by the wanton spree of urbanisation, industrialisation and extensive business activities.
In the name of development, consumerism and massive urbanisation, the ‘human’ in the human beings has become an ‘endangered species’ today. It is high time we restored the humanness before we get ourselves out and out ‘robotised’ with the robots. It is also necessary that we must get our act together and make life beautiful in our natural habitats with natural reservoirs, green fields, abundant birds and animals, needless to mention about the cute butter flies and the buzzing bees, who contribute to storing of ‘honey’ also fondly called ‘nectar’- our ‘lifeblood’.
While ‘insensible use’ (misuse) of science and technology can be proved to be a ‘bad master’, its ‘rational use’ (both economically and technically) can enable us to re-dwell ourselves in our natural habitats, provided our mindset changes.
Following internet facility and smart phones, business firms too agree and realise that all the employees are not required to sit in one place and in one time and can work at leisure thousands of kilometers away and can deliver more and more efficiently. Thus, employees can be left to operate in their natural habitat without losing business growth and control.
Further, many businesses need not be in the urban clusters. Easily such industries/economic activities can shift to the rural areas thus, creating good quality employment at village level which in turn will naturally attract better infrastructure facilities.
Food industry, minimally processed foods, ready to cook food, household goods, handicrafts and decorative, needing heavy labour concentration, can all shift to the natural habitat and deliver healthy foods and good quality products to the urban clusters as well as to the rural areas.
Education and research organisations, including many health-related organisations, can easily head for the rural habitat where cost of land is cheaper and the staff and students can get much better quality of food and working environment. Further, the psychological conditions in rural areas can be refreshing and creative.
With internet technology being very much a reality with possible drone delivery, it will become pertinent that producer- to- consumer direct link will happen in many items. Rural/natural habitats in that case will have all the more reasons to be highly relevant and productive.
The other aspects of natural habitat development and popularization will see a spurt in growth of unconventional energy harnessing in the areas of solar power, biogas generators and organic natural farming. In fact, reversal of population flow will make rural areas as urbanised and stylish as urban settings because of the quality of people that flow who have already lived in urban setups.
The fallout of reverse flow will have many positive implications like:
(1) a sizeable slum-dwelling population in the urban areas and the left-out village population would have a better quality of life;
(2) decrease in population pressure in urban areas and increase in productive population in rural areas, leading to better health and life;
(3) increased habitation in rural areas will result in more regulated land and water utilisation optimising ecology and environment;
(4) crime rates in urban areas can come down because of reduction in high density urban slum living which creates mental stress and plenty of sociological problems;
(5) urban population can get healthy food from the rural areas in all categories of fresh vegetables and fruits, minimally processed foods as well as ready- to- eat food, and
(6) last but not the least, students can get more interactive with nature if educational institutes, colleges and institutes of higher studies can be shifted to rural areas.
The State must evolve a reverse-flow mechanism and make policies and also offer incentives to facilitate such an amiable venture. The Urban Development and Rural Development Ministries as well as industry and education stakeholders must club together to chalk out plans to achieve targeted reverse flow in a time bound manner.
(Dr Rout, a management expert, can be reached at rout.jagdish@gmail.com. M- 09439569999)