I have always indulged myself observing people move through
their life and make a living for them. The strange dependence that human beings
have with each other is interesting to observe. But in this strange society, we
all are bound by moral values, laws and expectations. I can never completely
understand this mere presence of poverty that stares and the meaning of it. If
it even means anything to be poor in a society and make your way through
struggle, or born rich and stumble through pitfalls of social disaster. The
examples of such scenarios are abundant in our society.
Source : sscl.wordpress.com |
I consider myself very lucky to have spent my childhoods in
between urban and rural areas. I was exposed to city life and rural lifestyle
parallel. This has made my experience rich in those terms. More importantly, I
could very much say that the society that I was living in was an experimental
one. It was the convergence and harmony between village and urban technology,
living hand in hand. I lived in the midst of Agricultural Research Centre which
had at that time, the most advance technology for research and science purpose.
This was during 90s. Later in my life, I
was told that the whole project was evolved to help the community make their
living sustainable.
You can imagine that this had tremendous impact on how I
wanted to live my life in future - in the midst of research and technology,
helping society figure out a way to be efficient. Interestingly, though it was
90s, I happen to touch and feel laptop before PCs. My father would bring this
foldable DOS OS laptop and I would watch him type in WordStar. The first
command that I ever learned was the BACKSPACE key, which my father would
repetitively use. At one instance, I was so eagerly watching him type that, I
hurriedly pressed the key before he did, which amused him a lot and made him
run to my mother to explain the drama. (Similar incident happened once I took a
scissor and hold a cotton to clean my wounds. It was something taught in our
first-aid class and it amused him more, thinking I would opt for studying
Medicine in future. But BACKSPACE key was more interesting than a scissor and
cotton. ) These days, he often consults with me his problems on outlook mail
and excels sheets. J These things make life very interesting.
Anyway coming back to my main point, I would sometime visit
research labs full of PCs and get lost observing the FISH theme screen saver.
It was the most inspiring and interesting time, which would remain with me
forever. The house I lived in was simple and well equipped with furniture and
resource supply, I never thought there was anything more that I would need in
my life. The place was beautiful with changing climate, which made it all
interesting. There were times, when the sky would be filled with brown flies
and frogs all set to feed on them. We also had 7 important channels, delivered
to our house through DISH antennae. All
I wanted was to work like my father and contribute to make this society
efficient in terms of economy and culture. Ohh!! How I miss those days and simplicity.
But I guess, I had to move on to explore the horizon. So among my many friends
I was the first one to live the place and move to city for my further degree.
Since then, I have never found existence of any community as vibrant and
efficient.
This is what brings to me the main topic - Struggle to build
an efficient and growing community. Its bliss these days to even find any,
though there existence is rare. After almost 3 years of start-up experience and
struggle, I can see why it’s so difficult to have such systems. There are so
many variables and difficulties in establishing a profitable business of value with
efficiency. I guess more time is spent in experimenting and learning what works
and what doesn’t and you need to change as it comes around. I find the
management of resources and involving them into goal-oriented project, the main
challenge. You have to look at the value your company is presenting to the
business and how you are doing it. You need to communicate with potential
partners to create better opportunity and scalable business. During all this,
you need to clearly know the distracting factors too, because that is important
for growth and sustainability and those factors have potential to make it or
break your company. Similarly with the community, there are many factors which
encourage the members of the community to participate and move alone, but
negligence to counter the distracting factor could heavily falter the growth
and demise of the community. I think that is what happened to the place that I
lived during my childhood, though the place exists, I hear it’s not as interesting
and vibrant as before.
So the final thought, how can we build a sustainable
community? Can they be designed? If so how? Here are few thoughts of mine.
First of all, the landscape of the community is very important because that is
going to define a lot of things like economy, culture and population. The space
where people live is very important, as they affect the emotions of people. I
believe that space can affect human’s senses in lot many ways then we can
imagine. Along with landscape comes the important role of resources and there
management. A community is a combination of people with variety of skills and
interest, which can be channelized for betterment of the society. Any rejection
of such human resource could result into migration. Then comes the efficient economy
of the society and how they can be managed without much lose. The continuous
flow of financial transaction between people is one of the parameters to
consider the health of the society. Off course the culture is important which
binds people together with the feeling of oneness and one. Absence of culture
could result in frustration and dissociation of the community because community
is the higher realization of individual which is as important as individual.
The last statement could be controversial as it raises the
debate between individualism and communal behaviour, but there is some
practical implication where both fail to answer deep rooted question of life
and society. Being open-minded can only be the way to resolve this issue rather
than following some hardcore philosophies.
As you can see, the
question of community design is important in today’s society. It can come in a
form of an organisation design or community design. I believe both follow similar
line of thought.
Deep, very well thought and well written. Right now, my parents live in a community housing where the points you discuss such as resources, expertise in different fields are present and people who live here are progressive. There are rooms for conflict however, and it is always advisable to find common interest than individual interests. So far this community is very strong and you can learn more about them at this webpage.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bcoho.org/
At last, I think a lot of commitment and perseverance is required.
Thanks Sumana, ya while I was writing it, I did remember u mentioning me abt the place.. will check it out for sure.
ReplyDeleteMany interesting things to read in this post. Well i also had a hint of different lifestyles of life, from village to the most sophisticated cities. Anyways builing the community u r talking bout is wat human being have trying to do for decades i guess. All I can contribute to it is by trying to be more helpful towards people who needs help.(hope they won't abuse my help).
ReplyDeleteKeep Up your good work!