Net Parade

 

This photograph heavily gives off the "team-work makes the dream work" vibes. The people photographed are fishermen of the Koli Community in Virar, Maharashtra, en route to their voyage.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead had said that the first sign of civilization is a healed femur. This powerful quote summarizes how humans despite being relatively new-born for a billions-year old Earth came into power. With the ability to operate through co-operation.

Like Ms. Mead said, surgery, medicine and technology may be ground-breaking developments, but only because someone cared enough to stay back to help a comrade, especially in the age when running and hiding were the primal skills of survival. Team-work doesn't just make the dream work, sometimes it also keeps you alive.

From lone wolves to hunter-gatherers to tribes and civilizations, cooperation has made life collectively easier. People have worked in teams to devise plans, wage wars, build empires and mutiny for their rights. From colonialism to the wars of independence and agriculture to Chandrayaan-3 all of it was made possible because of team-work and cooperation. Ironically, the Non-cooperation movement called by Mahatma Gandhi was feasible only through the cooperation that us Indians showed for the cause of freedom.

Unfortunately, today such camaraderie remains confined to trades that require hard labour and precision, like war, disaster relief, surgery, oil rigs, mining, etc. This came about with the advent of modern technology which lessened the need to rely on team-work for accountants, IT professionals, drivers, or HRs. 

It is regrettable that the very thing that took us from chaos to civilization, is now limited to essentiality. This ideological shift from collectivity to individuality has consequences, not just for the 'social animal' but for the environment, too.

However, there is still hope. Not in the laboratories or the megacities, but along the coasts, in the jungles, on the hills and across deserts. The so-called tribals, regressives, conservatives of the hinterland are an excellent example of the very spirit of human endeavour that has kept it afloat for the last few millennia.

These people cooperate everyday with other humans as well as the nature they live in, not just out of need but as a way of life. They are still able to live sustainably because of this very nature, something that the modernist and developed world yearns for but cannot achieve. Unless, they are ready to unlearn the urbanist ideas rooted in personal and individualistic goals, and learn to focus more on the greater good for the community as a whole.

This does not mean that the urbanists are devoid of any attempt at cohesion. Democracies like India have a rich tradition of local, grass-root level self-governance systems. Notably, this served as the very basis for the deep Gandhian influence on our constitution makers culminating into the 3-tier, Panchayati Raj system of governance.

Yet, most urbanized and semi-urbanized citizens are unaware of their own administrative mechanisms and consider it a nuisance to interact with the local governing bodies. This again highlights the centrality of cooperation in our everyday lives. It requires a crowd to influence our representatives into lending an ear to our problems, and again for them to pass regulations. The same stand true from the Parliament to the colony or society level managing committees.

While we make laws to enforce the norms of cooperation, these societal values have been a part of the rural and tribal lives across the globe since time immemorial. People in smaller communities involve all their members in decision-making, execution and implementation processes without the added need to codify participation.

Yet, we have examples of successful large-scale cooperation in modern times like that by the thousands of dairy farmers involved with the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union Limited to form Amul and acquire the global leadership in the dairy industry. 

Despite this, for the larger part reforms are required. Not just in the way we operate and govern, but also in how we learn and teach. While the government is working towards promoting sustainable business practices along with shared accountability, without concrete planning, actions and penalties the road to a sustainable society remains a distant dream.

The most effective way to tackle this problem is to impart meaningful education early to the upcoming generation. The NEP, 2020 prima facie looks promising  and can be leveraged for it. But it is not just limited to schools. It becomes equally important to educate the adults, both the public and the bureaucrats, as such transformation needs cooperation and contribution from every citizen. Similarly, our ESG policies need to be implemented sincerely to proliferate the SDGs, a global cooperative movement under the UNFCCC.

While personal liberty and individualism are byproducts of the post-modern thought, and a necessity for the personal philosophical development, it becomes equally important to calibrate ourselves to balance the inside with the outside. In Ms. Mead's spirit, let's have the patience to let the femur heal. In a culturally rich civilization like India, which is rooted in community and environment, we have a lot to learn from the past. Rather than chasing inventions and innovations, it may be wiser to pause and revisit what we are forgetting, the answers often lie in the notes and margins of history.

Captured on: Pixel 7a