The issue of distinguishing countries as developed and otherwise, being addressed based on economic parameters seems to have overlooked many time-honoured customs and beliefs with their roots in spirituality, thanks to the sway of science and technology over life of people and confrontation among the literati focused on the respective faiths followed by them. While the benefits and advantages that the countless products of science and technology bring, resulting in a sea-change of people’s lifestyle, cannot be over-exaggerated, the factor of over-exploitation of the same products, taking the automobile and plastics for example, has proved the undoing of people in present times. Despite the compulsions of meeting the current necessities of life, the pace of drawing upon the various life-supporting resources on earth has to be slowed down in the back of the vanishing line between necessities and luxuries. Taking recourse to spirituality offers a good option in the matter of shunning resource-guzzling luxuries.

Given the feature of yawning gap between the availability of resources, particularly food and their requirement to meet the necessities, toying with novel ideas for better marshalling the resources and their efficient consumption has its merits. A peek into how past generations have made their journey of trying ideas can be rewarding.

Mistakes in the process of inventing and use of the inventions loom large mostly by hindsight. The world has come to grief over the ubiquitous invention known to all as plastic. Similarly, overuse of pesticides and chemical fertilizers has come under the scanner, triggering frantic search for alternate means of reining in insects and microbes overwhelming human beings in the matter of assuaging hunger. The stock of knowledge accruing from the experience of past generations is getting a re-look leading to realisation of the superiority of natural means over synthetics. The area of biotechnology and merits of biochemicals in raising food resources have come to stay. Nearly 50 years ago, the legendary violin maestro T. Chowdiah had experimented on the influence of music over the maize plant, an example of trying out-of-the-box ideas.

In the backdrop of the urgency in augmenting food resources, the just reported Goa Government’s initiative on promoting the novel technique of chanting Vedic verses in the fields by farmers to improve crop yield illustrates the merit in science-spirituality synergy.