Why and How of Science for Villages

Devendra Kumar

About the term Science for Villages, sometimes a question is asked, “Is there a different science for the urban and rural?”  No is the answer, if pure science is concerned.  But certainly yes if it is about the applied science or technology.  Science and Technology (S&T) can be used for productions ranging from goods and conveniences for public weal to those of destruction and annihilation.  Similarly the application of S&T for villages can be different from that for the cities.  Here by villages, as different from cities, is meant a decentralized system vs. a centralized one, a face to face society opposed to a conglomerate where individuals lose their identity, where people live in close proximity with Mother Nature as different from one where they lose contact with the living earth and the changing seasons. 

There is a belief that as S&T helped humans to gain conveniences and comforts, the people seeking better opportunities chose to move from villages to cities.  This may be so, but at the same time it is also true that humans as social animals do feel happier in an atmosphere where they can have the warmth of convivial interaction with fellow beings.  Also components of the great creation, humans prosper and flower better when their relations with Nature are closer.  Intimacy with nature and with fellow humans gets definitely distanced as urbanization takes place.  Due to this the humanity, its civilization and culture, is degrading and many complexities develop and problems erupt in the world.  Under the circumstances as undefined sense of loneliness descends on the people as a reaction to which peacefulness manifests itself at various levels of human life.  The progressive urbanization of the world population has thus become a cause of many a malady. 

The basic issue is that can we not now orient S&T itself, t give us a society where we have the amenities of S&T without being wrenched away from our natural habitat which affords optimum conditions of development in proximity with Mother Nature and fellow humans?  This is not impossible.  During the ages, we have passed through stages of food gathering, cattle and animal grazing, settled agriculture, trade and towns developed serving a network of small, medium and big villages and now arrived at the age of megalopolises.  All these stages were primarily dictated by the tools and modes of production developed through S&T of the time.  With the use of the fossil fuels, first of coal and then of petrol, progressively depleting these non-renewable resources meant for all time to come, we have increased production and hence our wants at a rate never seen before nor possible in the future as the mineral resources are exhausted.  This gave progressively enhancing speed to production and movements of goods and people and made the world closes for exploitation of its resources by those who had the wherewithal to do it.  The global perspective in managing things with a long range view and having a culture of one world family is however, yet to be achieved.  This now as we near our entry into the 21^st century, when science has helped in the realization of the holistic economy of nature and the unity of the multifarious systems that sustain the planet, we have to move ahead to the next stage of development where renewable energies derived from sun, wind, water, biomass etc. replace the fossil fuels as sources of energy where profiting in the short range but ultimately non-sustainable systems will be replaced by eco-friendly processes.  Where the disparities of wealth, knowledge and power between nations and nations as well as amongst the people themselves, will tend to diminish; where fullest expression to the creativity within everybody will be sought to be given opportunity.  In this it is necessary to synthesize our progress in outer physical comforts with our inner spiritual growth.  This is the direction of “Science for Villages.” 

Source: Science for Villages, Dec. 93-Jan 94.