Third Industrial Revolution (TIR)
In a book ‘Third Industrial Revolution (TIR)’ Mr.Jeremy
Riffkin analyzed the new world order that is taking place on the background of
present energy crises. Sources of energy were prime force behind all the
industrial development taken place so far. First industrial revolution was coal
based; second industrial revolution was based on oil as a source of energy. Oil
based industrialization also lead us to side effect such as pollution and
global warming. There is enough indication that with depleting oil reservoirs, second
Industrial revolution is nearing its end. According to him we are now moving
towards ‘Third Industrial Revolution’. TIR will be boon to tribal and farming communities due to their proximity to natural resources.
TIR will be based on the renewable energy
sources. Prof.Riffkin mention’s five pillars on which TIR will be based. They are:-
( 1) Use of renewable energy viz. solar, biomass,
wind, tide etc. (2) Each house &
every farm becoming power plant and producing energy. 3) Use of new environmental
friendly energy storage devices. (4) Generating, receiving and transmitting
energy just like the Internet. Millions
of buildings will generate a small amount of renewable energy locally, on-site
and they can sell surplus green electricity back to the grid (5) Plug in
Transportation using green electricity.
Present system of production, transport, education got
developed to meet the demand of the oil based industry. Reffkin called oil as an
‘Elite’ class of energy which needs huge capital and it is in the hand of few
countries and few industries. Therefore industries became centralized and
capital intensive. It also leads to development of cities where reliable supply
of electricity is available.
If renewal energy becomes the prime source of power, it will
create new models of developmental. Renewable energy is decentralized and
available throughout the globe in one form or other. This will make a
decentralized production a necessity. Sharing of energy and information become
necessity and therefore new society will form on the values of co-operation,
collaboration, sharing among the people. We can get a signal of emergence of
TIR from the Open source software movement, Wikipedia, rising oil prices and increasing
interest about the renewable energy products.
Tribal and Farming community and TIR
TIR will be boon to tribal and farming communities.
Following are the possibilities –
i)
Tribal areas are rich in biomass/natural
resources. They can become producers of biomass based power.
ii)
Non – irrigated farm land can become a power
plant and can generate solar/wind power.
iii)
Surplus
electricity generated in dry land, forest etc can be sold to the energy grid.
They will able to control energy.
iv)
Industry will get established near the source of
power and thereby starting other development activities in the region.
v)
New advancement in technologies like digital
fabrication, 3 D printers etc will make sharing of design over internet
possible and get the job made locally. Digital fabrication will reduce the
geographical advantages of cities in centralized production.
vi)
Rural and Tribal areas with less pollution,
abundant energy and internet, will become preferred place to live quality of
life.
This may sound to be too optimistic for few. But Europe is
already leading towards TIR. There is realization among that further
development is not possible without planning for next industrial revolution.
Technology has a potential to change the rules the society
gets govern, behavior of people etc. Tribal and rural areas were at
disadvantages in 2nd industrial revolution due to remoteness from
the cities. Transport cost of electricity and oil, capital intensive and
centralized production process located in cities etc. Now with the TIR,
disadvantages of tribal areas can turn into its advantages. We must now act
fast so that this time we will not miss the bus.
Education for TIR
Education is a tool for social transformation. Present
education system got developed to meet demand of the 2nd industrial
society. It wants its people to work in factory, remember and obey set of instructions.
Due to huge investment made in capital, they want to be control knowledge and
protect intellectual property.
Renewal sources of energy are democratic source of energy.
They are available everywhere! This will leads to different kind of industries.
Therefore TIR society will need different set of skills in our people. Information
and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are already becoming integral part of our
life. New society may not need to memorize the information. But one needs to
have skills of obtaining appropriate information and making use of them. Human
being will increasingly offload its laborious & monotonous tasks to
machines. But two skills cannot be off loaded to machine.
1) creativity 2)
Empathy
These two skills are most importantly required to be done in
the era of TIR. Now the question is how should, we inculcate these skills
through our education system? The present education system based on rote learning,
memorization and is getting out-dated. There is a consensus emerging among
educationalist on the ways to develop creativity and intelligence among the
child. Some of the important recommendation are : -
i)
To introduce research methodology from early
education.
ii)
To teach them through projects based methodologies
on the real life problems.
iii)
The project should be involving cross curricular
areas.
iv)
Students should work in a team to build values
like team work, dignity of labour etc.
To develop empathy for others among children, many innovative
schools are asking their students to do community work in hospitals and old age
homes. Schools are also engaged in providing community services in the area of
health, sanitation etc.
Action plan for 2020
Following is the action plan to prepare our students for
challenges and opportunities emerging from TIR.
i)
Gandhiji in his ‘Nai Talim’ suggested
‘Productive Work should be medium of education’. Productive work by its nature
is connected to real life needs. It is connected to community and it involves
education in cross curricular area. Therefore we must implement ‘Learning while
doing’ system of education.
ii)
To begin with we must ensure 20% of school
timing should be given for ‘Learning while doing’.
iii)
Various new technologies viz. solar, biogas,
water conservation etc to be taught in the schools and should be demonstrated
and practiced on the school premises. Schools should become center of
technology transfer to communities.
iv)
Our schools lack many things viz. toilets,
blackboards, benches, laboratories etc. But most neglected and most essential to
have ‘Work Places’ in our schools. We need to create place in the schools where
it become hard to tutor! We need work place, where children can ‘CREATE’ new
things. We need to develop ‘Enterprising-ness’ in our children. This is only
possible by giving tools in their hands. Let’s starts developing attitude of
‘tinkering’ ‘making’ ‘experimenting’ and finding solution among our students.
Vigyan Ashram (www.vigyanashram.com
) is working with secondary school children (VIII-Xth) std. It is implementing
‘Introduction to Basic Technology (IBT)’ program in over 122 schools. In the
program students are taught basic skills in the area of Engineering, Energy,
Agriculture, Animal husbandry, food processing for 20% of the school timing as
a part of regular curriculum. The program is also recognized as a vocational
program at SSC level. The program has shown its replicability in tribal and
forest region of Chattisgarh and Maharashtra. Vigyan Ashram is making efforts
to achieve the development through education system. This is in line with TIR
requirement. One page information of the program is attached.
Fortunately like
Vigyan Ashram, there are enough experiments done in our country in the last 60
years. There is no need to do any more pilots. We can learn from the
experiments and take our tribal population on the fast track to lead ahead in
TIR developments.
Yogesh,
04/02/2015
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