Rewind to the frontiers

The theory 'rewind to the frontiers' would be better understood by analyzing these three unconnected events/issues below

1. Organic Farming - If you are familiar with agricultural practices today you will see agriculture today is mainly dependent on irrigation, hybrid seeds, pesticides all of which make agriculture capital intensive. Let's go back in time and see how agriculture was being done in the olden days . There were no hybrid seeds ; there were no pesticides and there was no irrigation. The agriculture depended on rain water, natural manure and natural seeds. Now coming back to the present agriculture practices and the way they effect farmers . As agriculture has become capital intensive farmers have to take debts to do farming, and if the crop fails they end up in huge debts and finally may end up killing themselves . What has all these years of non organic farming resulted in :

The yield of crops has increased but with a higher initial investment. We end up digging deeper to get the same level of ground water . Pesticides end up (in micro levels) in the food we eat. So research is going on now on organic farming, the age old way of agriculture, to see if it gives the same yield as the present day farming and it has been found to be as good as the present way of agriculture.

2. Lan in IIT's - All IIT's have Lan(Internet) facility available to them in the hostels and in the departments .IIT Madras had it only in the departments until november 2004 . The facility was extended to the hostels after that. Most IIT's had this LAN facility in hostels long before. Now going back to 2004 when I was in the first year the number of people using internet in the departments was not many. If internet was so important then the department computers would be outnumbered by the students waiting to use them but it rarely happened because only a few were using the facility. Now comes our LAN facility extended to the hostels. Then the problem starts. The authorities feel the student interaction has come down ; they are not attending classes and not sleeping in the nights. The LAN is the culprit .. play games , watch movies and chat .. everything Now starts the reverse process. Use technology to block chatting, switch of the LAN during the nights and put a limit on the download. Now you are using more technology to fight the misuse of current technology or the ills caused by the current one. Like we have seen earlier .. use more pesticides to fight the pests and use more/better fertilizers to increase the fertility of the land which was reduced by the fertilizers used earlier.

I came across one blog which was written back in 2001 and it was about an inter IIT event where IIT Madras students excelled. The blogger discussed about the culture in IIT Madras. The usual evening chats in the hostels and enthusiastic participation in games and cultural activities. The reason the blogger attributed the excellent performance of IITM contingent and the bad performance of other teams was this LAN. And how .. the LAN ate into the active interaction which is very much needed for overall development of an individual. You can't do away with LAN as you can't do away with pesticides or may be you can.You had an alternative in the form of organic farming in the earlier case and here you have a similar alternative: take back LAN from the hostels.
Now you must have understood the theory of 'Rewind to the frontiers' to some extent - apply it to the next situation.

3. Virginia tech :You must be knowing about this incident of a student killing around 32 of his classmates and a professor at the university of virginia before killing himself.Though this is not for the first time that such an incident has happened in the US this one has acquired importance because of the number of people who got killed. Now some Joe who studies in the school thinks that he is insecure and he needs a gun to protect himself, so he approaches the local authority for a license to hold a gun and he is given one. Tom, Dick and Harry follow Joe and end up with licenses to hold guns. Now that everyone has guns,
looks as if everyone is secure , right. What has this granting of licenses resulted in ; more guns less security ; exactly the opposite effect of why licenses had been given. Now apply our theory of 'rewind to the frontiers' - What is our aim - To end the killings in the schools.

Reverse the process - take away all the licenses to hold guns, easier said than done, to put an end to the killings in schools and killings in general. What would the situation be in a school without guns .Some Joe is being teased daily by our very own Tom , Dick and Harry . So he decides to settle the scores with the three. He has no gun to kill them as it used to be earlier .So he learns some fighting skills and thrashes the three. Then the counseling unit of the school comes in and settles the issue. Like ' fight and make up ' rather than ' kill and then there would be nothing left to make up'

That was the 'rewind to the frontiers' ,hope you appreciated that one . Apply it before taking a step forward. That was open ended and I feel blogs should be open ended for the readers to fill in the gaps themselves. . That was my first blog.... thanks for reading it.