Sustainable Development and World Peace: An Indian thought

OM – Purnamadah Purnamidam Purnat purnamudachyate.

Purnasya Purnamadaya Purnamevavashisyate.

I find this shloka so encompassing. Essentially it means that you are one with the every particle of the universe, ever transforming.

                                            Industrial revolution brought with it a rapid technological development with deep impacts on socio-political order of the world. Its devastating ecological impact is also alarming. This doesn't means that this development was uncalled for. but the motive is to understand that we are now moving to the next level of evolution where our biggest challenges are, Sustainable Development and World peace. 

This is the issue that has taken the attention of world, where every earth summits had a set of objectives, which seems to be failing.

Starting from "One earth" idea of stockholm to the Rio DE Janeiro Declaration consisting of 27 principles intended to guide future sustainable development around the world or the Johannesburg Declaration, which says,  "to focus on the worldwide conditions that pose severe threats to the sustainable development of our people, which include: chronic hunger; malnutrition; foreign occupation; armed conflict; illicit drug problems; organized crime; corruption; natural disasters; illicit arms trafficking; trafficking in persons; terrorism; intolerance and incitement to racial, ethnic, religious and other hatreds; xenophobia; and endemic, communicable and chronic diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis." Let it be Kyoto or Copenhagen, it has yielded little success.

Indian Thought

When we decided to establish peace, we got even more violence and terror strikes, we have been failing to attain the objectives of ecological balance and thus prevent global warming and climate change.

Actually whereas alternative technologies may provide part answers of climate change & global warming , certainly they have no answers for enduring peace. At best Technology can be a deterrence.

Model of System as developed by the west has been largely successful till now. Here system is developed by the intellegentsia fit for most of the people.

But the larger question is system so deveoped is sustaible or not?

System driven by desires and greeds of human beings . In a sense this is a level of egoism, that cosiders itself superior to all other beings and exploits indiscriminately.

Dire need of the hour is the paradigm shift of approach from System centric to the People centric model of the society. It is now, not the system that should build the people but people growing as a systemic success. 

Where the basic belief of people will be inclusive of the starting shloka of this article and we are just the form of panchmahabhootas.. "Ten Tyakten bhunjeetha" is the core of indian thought which means even the consumption should be just to satiate your hunger and not the greed, with a sense of sacrifice and dedication.

The Atharva Veda says, “We may believe in different religions … yet we share the same home - Our Earth … we must learn to happily progress together or miserably perish together. For man can live individually but can only survive collectively”