A society that remembers its past without being imprisoned by it, is best prepared for the future

A society that remembers its past without being imprisoned by it, is best prepared for the future. A village pond in the Kolar of Karnataka state was dried and silted up with sediments over many decades making it unsuitable for water storage and personal use. Village committee decided to look into the causes and solution for that. Local MLAs and politicians blamed 'fiscal grants', KVK scientists pointed out the climate change and gambling monsoon, soothsayers told it is because of previous curse from Varuna (God of water), some geologists complained about terrain and stratigraphy. But few womens picked shovels and pickaxe and started digging and desilting the pond.

Within 3 months pond get desilted. With the good rainfall on that year made pond to fill and provided water for household and scope for livelihood by fishing. The above story shows how remembering and recalling the past without proper action sustained the problem of water scarcity. It is only the hardwork and cognitive reframing of womens, which helped pond to rejuvenate and provided a sustainable, better future for villagers. It also highlights how remembering the past becomes necessary in order to achieve prosperous future. Then, what is remembering of past? Is it just recalling our age old practices or about individual's past or about taking reformative actions of the misbeliefs and unscientific practices? Does imprisoning means surrendering oneself to all kinds of past habits? Is imprisoning for good practices are valid? How will it prepares our future: by mending or by accepting? In this essay we will look into the above questions, one may usually think by looking at individual, societal, national, environmental and international level. For an individual remembering past is examining their past habits, incidents. But for a future individual must not hang back of their mistakes, delving for reforms creates a better future. Valmiki, the author of Ramayana was once a robber, but by looking back about his past without imprisoning he transformed himself. Now he became a revered personality of Tetrayuga. In addition to individual, societal beliefs and activities also took great transformation by looking and remembering their past and their causes. Practice of sati and purdah deprived womens from social mobilisation and even from the freedom. Great personalities like Raja Ram Mohan Roy struggled for providing justice without being imprisoned for the age old practices and succeeded in bringing Bengal regulation Act, abolishing the Sati. Along with the social practices, environment and ecology also deteriorated the past society. Growing shifting cultivation, rate of hunting and poaching caused deep wildlife threats and eroded human values like compassion, empathy. With the examination of past and for a preparation of sustainable environment for our future generation, enactment of ban on hunting, poaching and deforestation took place (environmental protection Act, Wildlife protection Act, 1972 etc) However, Nation is not free from this trend. Socialism and closed economy without liberalisation fetched BOP crisis in early 1990s. But the ability of India to move away from imprisoning to old practices made it to come up with LPG reforms for a better future through globalisation, privatisation and liberalisation. It shows the importance of remembering of the past even for nation's development. This development is inspired from the global reforms such as establishment of World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which allowed nations to rebuild their future after World War II without sticking to the tragedies happened and focused on future aspects.

The question still strikes one's mind that is imprisoning to past always results in underdevelopment or is imprisoning with one cannot achieve better future? The answer lies in practices and imprisoned values. India still celebrates the traditional festivals with majority new generations didn't even know the reasons for celebration. But imprisoning to the practices doesn't harm any one provided the practices are not troubling any living being. Instead it brings harmony in society, happiness and joy prevails which improves one's cognitive development and social network. Not only festivals, practices like 'sacred grooves' helped India to preserve vast amount of forests, wildlife and diversity, making it one of the global hotspots of biodiversity. Along with this principles of 'Gandhian philosophy' and 'sarvodaya' concepts still became a backbone of India's growth and cultural prosperity. Even though our society created better future with remembering past without being imprisoned, still lacks in some aspects. It is unsuccessful in changing social mindset like patriarchy, still womens freedom is restricted to the four walls of home. The aspects like animal sacrifice, growing black magics still became a serious threats for societal development and shattering the illusion of unscientific practices even by remembering past. Our society still needs to examine these practices in order to achieve better future by dismantling corrupt practices through legislation, evil social practices through mass education, empowering youth, womens.

In addition to society, there must be increasing focus on individuals, they in turn transforms society. Educating, making them intellectuals through inculcating ethical values like bravery, honesty, emotional intelligence can help them to look about their past without imprisoning to it. As Socrates said, "unexamined is not worth living". Examination of one's self should be foremost important goal. After all this discussions, one can conclude that remembering of past without imprisoning to it or imprisoning to it depends upon the societal practices and nature of past. Evil practices needs to be reformed with imprisoning to age old good practices. Just like the womens volunteered for pond rejuvenation work, by neglecting the causes of pond deterioration, uphelded the importance of reformation through society. Only examination doesn't solves the problems, but active participation and policy is. Thus one should always come out of his comfort zone and unscientific practices for making a good compatible future for himself / herself, and also for their future generation, just like pond becoming the lifeline of village after its rejuvenation.