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THE DEVELOPMENT DILEMMA
Musafir Singh
Development, the credo of the age, has become a dubious proposition. The elan with which it was inaugurated is ebbing out. The short-term euphoria that it vouchsafed to mankind is turning into a long-term incubus. Humanity now stands on the cross-roads. Any further movement on the same path-line may spell doom and any backward movement may signify a humiliating defeat of the humanhubris. How to wriggle out of this dilemma is now the nagging problem that engages the mind of many an enlightened thinker.
It is now evident that development is not all milk and honey that we had taken it to be. It also contains elements that are inimical to human survival itself. The development economy seems to operate on the ecological canvas like cancer. It is running berserk, has become a law unto itself and tends to defy all controls. Man has become a passive tool of his own creation. He feels helpless and powerless before the forces he himself has unleashed. The Frankenstein monster threatens to devour him. The apotheosis of the physical standard of living, the status label attached to consumerism is robbing man of his dignity. his real nature and has displaced him from centre to periphery. His temporocentrism has blinded him to the fact that the earth's resources are as much the property of future generation as of the present. The wisdom of "consumption for today and conservation for tomorrow," hardly has any appeal to his conscience. The reckless and ruthless exploitation of non-renewable natural resources to augment economic growth rates is accelerating their exhaustion, When these resources are completely depleted, the future generations will see its inevitable end. The plea that science and technology by then would be able to find their substitutes to help maintain the present modus vivendi is hobnobbing with a chimera. The all-round pollution caused by insatiable consumption of the natural resources is rendering the planet an inhospitable place to live on. All life-support systems are being imperilled and their capacity for re-generation is fast diminishing. There seems to be no wisdom in working out an extra-terrestrial paradigm when we have made our natural home uninhabitable. "space traval is a Tulsi-Prajña, Ladnun; Vol. 23 No. 3
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| SR No. | 524593 |
| Book Title | Tulsi Prajna 1997 10 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Parmeshwar Solanki |
| Publisher | Jain Vishva Bharati |
| Publication Year | 1997 |
| Total Pages | 188 |
| Language | Hindi |
| Classification | Magazine, India_Tulsi Prajna, & India |
| File Size | 8 MB |