Spread of Fashion

June 2, 1999

Word of mouth spreads fast. How? It is a great insight for you to see that if word of mouth spreads all over the society, its consciousness at that point must be one and united. My view of it is at that point the society is most alive. That way a society can be alive to many things. When it is alive to its own ideas, society stagnates or dies. Alive to the latest information of the social progress, society tends to grow. In Europe society is alive to its own cultural values and takes the rest as aberrations and ignores them. That is why their progress is slow. In USA, the society is anxious to know the latest in everything. Therefore, progress is greater and faster. In India society is alive at the level of knowing information that will help them gossip, run down others, or destroy the enterprising. Society here is alive, but negatively.

When we see that 50% of the research findings in agriculture do not reach the land in the US, or a Punjab farmer walks 7 or 10 miles to the government agriculture office for new information, or there are farmers who offer 500 rupees for a single hybrid seed, we see the different levels of social awareness.

In development economics, I often used to say that no one is aware of the basic questions which means there is no awareness that urges to progress. Gorbachev was the first person to destroy an establishment from inside. Revolutions rise from the side of the oppressed. Rising from the other side it is the world offering itself for transformation.