Rural life in the science-rich world

In the age of science and technology, people realise that they need to make their life compatible to their locality. It means people need to build a new big world which is the combination of a big number of small communities. Development of local area is not an easy task. It needs basic change at the initial stage and then a comprehensive change. The recent past decades were marked by industrial proliferation destroying villages and making people move to urban areas. This turned the rural areas undeveloped and poor. Rural people lost their production facilities and markets, and they could not maintain their human resources as the young generation has become urban bound.
People in villages need to explore new ways of creating wealth if they want to stop being poor. Wealth is based on two things: the ability of nature to reproduce itself and the infinite ingenuity of human knowledge. We do have nature, but technology knowledge is more important.
Widespread usage of modern technologies in rural communities is still looked at as impossible. Industrialisation has almost destroyed the traditional knowledge which allowed rural people to live up until the twentieth century. Peasants were part of nature and they knew how to handle nature. This tacit knowledge almost disappeared and no new knowledge system for rural localities has emerged. Village was excluded from the system of accumulating information and knowledge.
The world split into cities that were technocratic, industrial and adaptive. The city was the only environment where technologies could be leveraged and could thrive. Cities, like a vacuum cleaner swallowed and sucked human resources destroying villages. This continued for decades.
But things have started to change in some areas. Further technological development pulled apart the limits of reality, stepped outside the cities, and gave local places new possibilities. It started with the promotion of new agricultural technologies of mass production. But mass production is not possible everywhere; It can be brought to some places; for example the remote village of Ikrail in Faridpur district. With plenty of possibilities there, the young generation of Ikrail knows how to utilise them. Specially designed indigenous science and technology courses introduced just after the junior school certificate examination at Khairunnessa Technical School and College in the village have made things possible.   
Technology is now changing in breathing speed. The rapid growth of digital technologies, their application and combination with other techniques have caused a new situation. They are smaller in size, more productive and more accessible. They do not require huge factories. A single individual or a few people can produce them. The equipment can be moved and installed almost anywhere-- in a remote village or in the middle of a forest. This equipment allows one to build a new local economy.
In most cases, people have failed to avail these advantages-- not because of lack of finances, but because of lack of understanding, knowledge and information. Often people do not know about the opportunity. And even if somebody tells them about it, they do not know how to take a step forward. We need people who will initiate changes. One of the main features of any rural society is its lack of ability to change. They are not ready for change, nor do they know how to bring change. As distinct from cities, where people are used to life changing all the time; rural inhabitants are used to live the same way generation after generation.
Today the ability to change is absolutely crucial for survival. We need to think how to bring back the young generation of the villages who moved to the cities. It is possible. To make it happen one needs to bring brand new technologies and build a new economy. Big cities being problematic places to live in, many would like to move to any nice old village. Village Ikrail is a suitable area for rural development as it has real assets for developing new profession and bringing changes. Like this village, there are a large number of unique old villages in Bangladesh.
So, there are possibilities. They do exist; but will not take place by themselves. Special efforts by special people are needed to make it happen. Rural areas do not start to develop suddenly by themselves. We need people who should initiate changes.
Our main task is to help local inhabitants see new possibilities and make changes step by step. Keeping the ideas in mind, the skilled human resources are being produced by the Khairunnessa technical institute that was established in 2001 at Ikrail. The institute is a platform for transforming indigenous technologies to modern and effective technologies. The institute has proved it is possible to bring change even in the remote areas if proper attention is given in time.
Dr Lutfor Rahman is the founder and president of Khairunnessa Technical School and College, Village Ikrail, Alfadanga, Faridpur. [email protected]