….retrieval

When we look back at the turn of the 20th century,

we are flooded with a general feeling that the old

times were good. The people were good, and its

reason too was obvious, they were God-fearing,

believed in goodness, visited holy places,

undertook pilgrimages, and, it was joint family

system, which was helpful in nurturing fellow

feeling, empathy and compassion.

 

As the time passed, modernism took over, which

meant the fall of the agrarian life, and the onset of

the mechanical age. The peace of the village life

was lost to the lure of the market town. As the

times moved forward, the village was discarded

and the people started migrating to the city.

Villages were left barren and this process has kept

pace even today. Migration from the villages to the

cities is still going on unchecked.

 

What I am going to focus here is how the quality

of man has dwindled over time, as machination

has increased. Prosperity appears to have grown

but along with it, men who enjoy thousands of

amenities, have lost something very precious. I can

draw a line too, with which many perceptive

readers may not be in agreement. There was a

generation which started working during the

seventies. Before them, there was a generation of

great scholars who inhabited the universities. The

2 nd generation starts with seventies, in which the

young men who joined services, were still touched

with some sort of idealism. Actually, sixties and

seventies were the times when in our country the

socialist movement was in full swing, and reading

Russian literature was in vogue. These young men

found idealism injected into their blood and their

thought too.

 

The generation which took to work in eighties too

was touched by that idealism. They had a feeling

of being true to their profession. These were the

times when people felt that copying was a moral

aberration. Teachers still believed in teaching the

students most of the times without getting any

remuneration. Morality was still a subject of

debate in Colleges and Universities.

 

However, nineties saw an abrupt change in the

sensibility of the people, and it transformed the

sensibility of the time as well. This was the

moment when ultra-modern times had set in.

Desktop had given way to the laptop, mobiles to

smart phone. These were the times when people

realized there was a city called Kota in Rajasthan.

Now, the race was between money and success.

The more the money, the greater the success. The

students were after packages. Teachers were after

tuitions. It was a world of the go-getters. Those

who had money could get seats in medical

colleges.

 

It was here that the growing civilization

completely shed its idealistic credentials. Now, the

teachers, the students and even parents had only

one passion. Job. Money was no consideration.

And during these times, we gave legitimacy to a

thousand things which were considered taboo in

previous times. The most important thing were

money and success, followed by a sense of

freedom, which shook the family from its

foundations.

 

Today, the teachers have lost all idealistic

orientation. Religiosity has increased, though its

internal content is missing. There is more and

more knowledge and great and great success, yet

students and even teachers lack basics of human

behaviour. In other words, knowledge has given

them fat marks sheets, top positions, without

bringing to them the most precious virtue which

was essential to make life meaningful: wisdom.

 

Today, we have a generation which has no faith in

wisdom. We have administrators who have no

faith in creativity. Paperwork, data, and keeping

the teachers busy is the basic framework of

educational policies. We know a thousand things,

without understanding the basics of human

character. The electronic revolution and now the

AI have further reduced the man-hours which man

could use for himself. The great issue today, in my

opinion is, man has no time for himself, for his

family, and for his mind. It is the phase when

philosophy is dead, the philosopher is dead. The

academic has been reduced to a paper tiger. He is

forced to become a scholar where his only job is to

cut and paste the available knowledge, which

makes no sense to the man in the street.

 

We are passing through the worst phase of human

development where facilities have increased, but

man’s humanity is in decline. We need to arrest

this fall. We need to return to a routine where we

have free time for ourselves. Where we could slow

down the pace of time. We need to revert back and

retrieve the values we have lost in our passion for

growth.

 

Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, with an opus of 180 plus

books, is Laureate of the Seneca, Charter of

Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky awards. 

His name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. Anand

is a towering literary figure whose work embodies

a rare fusion of creativity, intellect, and moral

vision.  He is an alumnus of SCD Govt. College, Ludhiana (Punjab)