some thoughts..

some thoughts which might seem slightly disconnected...im just putting them down so that i can keep track of them....

What is the Yardstick to measure Growth? When can a situation be labeled as stagnant and how does one escape stagnation? Humans have a tendency to measure Growth through productivity. Isnt the ability to adapt rather than produce mindlessly a more feasible method to calculate growth? Does one need to erase their past to forge ahead or does one need to build on the past, literally and figuratively.

A few years back, the world saw the launch of a 2000 dollar car by one of India’s largest Automotive Manufacturers. It was the culmination of a mammoth effort combining creativity and immense technical rigor. It was an idea which took fruit out of a necessity for cheap personal mobility. One must question the idea of personal mobility at a time when cities in Developing nations are pushing people to embrace Mass Rapid Transit Systems which are certainly more efficient and cheaper to use. But for a country like India, personal mobility signifies a quantum growth in economic stature for every individual.

Before we get to the apparatus for personal mobility comes the apparatus for living. The household full of consumer goods designed to make our lives easier, faster and more efficient. The products are designed to help us grow as individuals. The potato peeler does a specific job, and so does the coffee maker. The washing machine doesn’t wash our dirty vessels, the Dishwasher does. The mobile phone is one such apparatus (if it may be termed) which makes a phone call, can shop for us, can manage our bank accounts, can play our music, can capture memories, can be our weather man, navigator and news channel. The idea of a mobile phone is not too different from a Swiss Army Knife which is the perfect adventure gadget capable of performing a host of functions.

We are trained subconsciously to select items which are the ‘Jack of All Trades’. We see these consumer products as a solution to our ever-growing problems in an ever-shrinking world. Its all about the doing a ‘Lot’ with a ‘Lot Less’. The time saved to perform a particular task can be directly utilized to complete another task and so on. The space saved is space which can be utilized to store other consumer products.

Is our world is reaching a stage where we press a button and expect a result? Is that where our world was supposed to reach? Maybe so, maybe not, who knows??