Towards the end of 2004, the editor of the IFP had done a series of three articles after a trip to Italy. One of them was about how wonder-struck he and his travel companion, Sanjoy Basu Mallik, were at their first encounter with wireless internet at the Vienna airport where they halted for a few hours to change planes. The technology appeared so amazing at the time that it merited a full-fledged article, and judging from the response from readers, the IFP`™s assessment of newsworthiness of the event was not too far off the mark. Barely two years after, the author of the article re-read what he wrote, incidentally webcast among others on the Eurac website, and to his amusement found it quite silly even then. Eurac officials laughed when this was communicated to them in a meeting in New Delhi not long after. The wireless-fidelity, or wi-fi, as the technology is known, is now practically everywhere, in offices, homes hotel rooms, airports, conference halls, homes and even public parks, often for free or else for a nominal charge. You even have very fast connections on them. The pace wireless telephony development has been breakneck to say the least. Today, it is not just wi-fi but also so many other wireless internet connection technology, not only through dedicated modems but on mobile handsets as well, therefore in practically everybody`™s pocket. Indeed, unlike in 2004, it is no longer a subject of science fiction imagination. Busy company executives and journalists travel with their offices in pocket wherever they go, even remote islands, deserts and mountains. This scenario is very much an everyday reality for even those of us in remote Manipur.
Consider the pace of changes. By the latter half of 2007, 3G internet arrived in India. Consumers upgraded their cell phones to be able to take advantage of the then new technology. Needless to say these paradigmatic shifts in everyday technology would have continually thrown up new challenges before companies making mobile handsets. Even before our very eyes, we have witnessed how those who kept pace survived and prospered, while those who were averse to changes ultimately were eliminated from the race. The paradigm is changing again with the arrival of 4G internet technology. A whole generation of mobile handsets, even very expensive ones, are set to become obsolete and therefore phased out. It is the same challenge all over again, and only those companies resilient and creative enough to take advantage of the new leap in technology would be the ones to ride the tide and rise. No room for complaints. This is the rule of the new technological age. Obviously, even away from the world of technology, there is plenty of lessons for all of us to take note and rethink our ways.
The IFP article on Vienna airport wi-fi internet capability was written a decade ago. If the same article were to be written now, rather than any appreciation from readers, it would only attract mocking laughters for in the years that have gone by, the contextual background against which the article was written has unrecognizably altered, and it is a truism that it is the context which gives meaning to any text. This is extremely important. Since the context is not a static phenomenon, there is a need for even script writers of ideologies of homeland, identity, ethnicity, nationalism, autonomy, sovereignty etc, to reassess their thoughts against the changed contexts continually. Inability to do this would, like the Vienna airport story experience of the IFP editor, make the ideas themselves redundant, obsolete, and even silly. Like everything else, ideas and ideologies can have a meaning only in the context they were born. The Communist ideology for instance have had to undergo several reforms and overhauling since Marx. Hence, Marxism produced progenies in Maoism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism etc and so also the contributions of later day great Marxist thinkers such as Antonio Gramsky. Arguably, it was when the pace of these ideological adjustments became too lethargic and out of sync with the dizzying changes in human outlooks and predicaments in the overall context in modern times that the world of Communism collapsed dramatically towards the end of the last century. The question that beggars an answer now is, are the retrospections of the commanders of Manipur`™s politics, both the elected representatives of the Assembly variety, and more importantly the challengers of this brand of political leadership, deep enough to consider the possibility that their own thought processes may have lagged behind and gone out of tune with the changed times?