New people, smart cities

These days if you travel around India, you will find a lot of excitement among people who live in what were known as second-grade cities until now. Their excitement is justified — their cities have been upgraded to “Smart Cities”. Although nobody knows what it means, they feel proud of being in the illustrious list of a smart city.

When and how does a city become smart There are many definitions and all of them more or less amount to the same criteria. To present one description by the Bocconi University, Milan: “A city becomes smart when the human and social capital investments, the traditional (transport) and modern (information and communications technology) infrastructures, foster sustainable economic growth and a high-quality of life, through an efficient management of natural resources and a participatory governance.”

Every citizen feels the need to upgrade the quality of his/her outer life. It can be done if the government is determined to do it, and let us assume, it is going to be done very soon. But everybody is missing one point: what will be the quality of people living in these smart cities Unless the people upgrade their awareness, sensitivity, sense of responsibility, they will make a mess of the infrastructure and will soon reduce it to an unsmart state of ruin and filth. Now who can make the people smart This is not a legal or a political job, it needs a drastic change in people’s mindset. This change can only be brought about by meditation; not the traditional one but the dynamic, cathartic, transformatory methods of Osho.

Believe it or not, Osho had envisioned these smart people long ago. It will be educating to see who is this new man according to Osho.

“My vision of the new man is of a perfect man: perfect in the sense that all his three dimensions are functioning without contradicting each other, complementing each other. The perfect man will create a perfect world. The perfect man will create a world of scientists, a world of poets and a world of meditators. My approach is that all these three centres should be functioning in every person because even a single individual is a world unto himself. And these centres are in the individual, not in the society; hence, my focus is on the individual. If I can change the individual, sooner or later the world will follow. It will have to follow because it will see the beauty of the new man. The new man is not only clever in arithmetic, he can also enjoy and compose music. He can dance, he can play the guitar — which is a tremendous relaxation for his head. And the new man is not only of the heart; there are moments when he drops even deeper and simply ‘is’. That source of your is-ness is the very centre of your life. To touch it, to be there is to be rejuvenated. All the energies of your heart, of your head, will be tremendously multiplied because you will be getting newer energy every day, every moment.”

There is an additional premium too. The children born with the new mind and the new man will not be treated the way they have been treated down the centuries. They will be encouraged to be themselves, to be assertive and to be self-respectful. And that will change the whole quality of life. It will become more shiny, alive and more substantial.