2250 AD: A Nautical Odyssey

desoumal writes " In the blog 2250 AD: A Nautical Odyssey published in WorldChanging, which covers a recent challenge presented to the student teams from 80 Indian colleges that entered in NASA '04 (National Association of Students of Architecture's annual design event), held in Mumbai, India, by Hiray College Of Architecture, Rohit Gupta writes about the highlights of the event - a city based on a giant question mark, a city inside a giant genetically-modified tree trunk, cities that grow like viruses, cities that look and function like holes made by earthworms... my personal favorite amongst them being a city with a photovoltaic dome 'designed so that it literally followed the path of the sun round the year, to maximize the solar energy, down to individual housing units'. Damn cool. "

Comments

Biggest Problem: Westernizing India

[reporter]

We have yet another news article praising the technical accomplishments of the Indians. Yet, they have failed to solve the biggest problem: creating a Western (i.e. modern) society in India.

The Japanese built a Western society in Japan. The Thai are laboring to build a Western society i Thailand. So are most Eastern Europeans.

So far, the Indians have not accomplished what, even the Thai, have accomplished. If the Indians can solve this biggest problem, the Westernization (i.e. modernization) of India, then I will be impressed. Who cares whether some Indian techie can plan a city that looks like question mark? It might be worth some bonus points on the final exam at the Indian Institute of Technology but is worth nothing to the millions of underemployed Indians begging for the chance to flee to the USA.

By the way, to understand the serious and deep-rooted nature of the Indian problem, note that the ratio of male to female babies in Indian is about 1.20. It is just as high in mainland China. The ratio in Thailand is 1.05, which is normal for a human society without targetted abortions and without infanticide.