I do not really know whether this rant has any more than personal appeal or not, but still, it remains as a deep concern to me at least.
It is pretty tough to start this piece, as the starting point dates back to 21st November 1983, precisely when I was born. Let me save you from the ordeal of going back too much, and start from a recent incident. I went to my friend’s place in Thrissur, Kerala, where I was standing in the balcony of my friend’s house, watching a guy climbing the coconut tree. That guy was using some semi sophisticated climbing machine to climb the tree, and me and Alok were discussing that it looks so easy with that machine that it seems we might also be able to climb that tree with the help of that, when the fact is none of us have ever climbed a coconut tree, and I do not even have a basic idea of the skillset required for that. Ratnaji was standing beside us, mostly silent as he is always. Suddenly he said, “I can climb this without any help of such machines, we have coconut trees in our house and I climb them from childhood”. This came with a completely different meaning to me, as I suddenly started feeling ashamed about my lack of skills for such a job. You may say I am fabricating unnecessary threats to my conscious, but seriously, the fact is, I have no idea how to climb a coconut tree! It might not be very important, in fact, to me, my growing up, my learning, my knowledge construction, this was never important, and I didn’t bother to learn it, I didn’t get any chance either, simple. But when I started thinking about what next, it came as a big threat to me. How? Let me give you another example before moving on to the elaboration on the threat. Yesterday Anu was telling something about a reality show where people are asked to make a fishing rod and to fish from a pond. I was trying to think how will I fair in such a reality show, and I started telling aloud what all are required to make a fishing rod (from whatever I have seen in pictures, and sometimes in front of my eyes). Instantly Alok corrected me, telling that I have missed some very important parts of the rod, which seems to be the most important parts of it, which is nearly invisible, and the knowledge of which is available to those who had actually fished sometime in their life. I again realized, I don’t know how to make a fishing rod, and I do not have any idea about how to fish!
And it didn’t stop with climbing coconut tree, or fishing, it extended to anything and everything like cooking with wood or coal, coating the floor of a hut with mud for better maintenance, milk a cow, plough a field, and what not. I have no knowledge of any of such things. Leave these material knowledge, I realized that I have no idea of how a Scheduled Caste person feels in an upper caste group, I have no idea of how a girl feels in a crowded general train compartment, I have no idea about how a student who is throughout studied in some village school and college feels when (s)he enters the B.A (English) classroom of an elite college in a metropolitan city. I can try to comprehend every one of these, but I started realizing, that I can never really “understand” or “listen to” their narratives of such incidents, because simply I do not belong to them! I felt so helpless being accidentally born into a family which puts itself without its own conscious or consent in the position of the “powerful” or “ruler” in every binary relationship prevailing in Indian scenario. You name it, male-female, upper caste-lower caste, city-village, hindu-muslim, upper (middle) class – lower class, in every such binary, I have nothing else to place myself in the so called “powerful” or “superior” (socially) group. It suddenly struck me as a dangerous and scary truth, which I felt I can never alienate myself from!
You might say at this point, why to worry? They also do not understand your language! They also do not understand your narrative! They also have never gone through your experiences! But sadly enough, the truth is, they can understand if they wish to! The flow of the society is from the powerless to the powerful. Everyone wants to step up in their life, and that stepping up, in almost all the cases is in accordance with the existing societal norms, which is defined by the capital. SO my experiences become documented, my experiences become propaganda, they become ideal, they are jotted down as 1-2-3 instructions and are printed in leaflets and TV advertisements and are being planted in each and every dream of the citizens of my country. Eventually, if this flow continues, one day everyone will share my experiences, my knowledge construction, because that is being designated as the “norm” of the “developed society”, “developed country”, “better living standards”. To operate a microwave, or an iPad, one needs an instruction manual and nothing else, but sadly enough again, their exists no manual which is publicised which tells about how to make cowdung cakes for your cooking fuel. My knowledge is slowly being transformed into instruction based knowledge, which is being owned by increasing number of people everyday, and their knowledge, on one hand, is experience based which can never be represented, on the other hand, is made unavailable because to the society its something which the “powerless” people do. So if you want to grow in your life, shun your lower class, lower caste, lower “level” identities, and become like me, learn all which I learned, and be at par. Then only you will be noticed, then only you will be appreciated, be “promoted” in life, then only you will be called “developed”.
This, precisely is my point of worry. We have engaged ourselves in such a suicidal unilateral flow system, that the reverse flow seems to be impossible at this point of time. And right at this juncture, I feel handicapped when I realize that except this consciousness to realize the value of such works which I have mentioned, I will have nothing to pass on to the next genrations.
Me and Ratnaji were standing together today, one can climb the coconut tree, one cannot. Both are doing PhD in IIT. Probably just for the sake of being developed, Ratnaji’s son/daughter will not learn climbing coconut tree, and my son/daughter will not learn because I cannot impart them with the knowledge. So, in the posterity, who will climb the coconut tree?
Doubt Everything 
I agree with you completely, sir, when you say that reverse flow is impossible. It is like increasing disorder law is becoming the reality in our political, social and sociological structure.
Many Americans (though a small proportion) who have lived what may be called middle class lives from an American perspective, but which would be fabulously comfortable by the standards of most of the world outside the USA / Western Europe, are now doing just this — almost as a form of leisure, but sometimes also as market work — learning to farm especially, but also attempting to reject 20th century methods. I wonder what specifically makes this impossible for you, although I profess ignorance of Indian society, and trust that you are telling the truth. Are the constraints mostly social? I suspect that time and land are substantial constraints too.
Of course it is possible to do a poor job of all these things, to learn superficial details but not to learn how to do them well; the huge surplus which still exists in certain pockets of American society allows some people to half-learn how to do many things, without truly useful applications of this knowledge coming any time soon — it even allows a certain amount of teaching by teachers who themselves may not know what they’re teaching is wrong.
But then that assumes that there exists a pure method of field plowing, which doesn’t really satisfy me.
Lots of people throughout history have performed tasks suboptimally; some of them died for it, but some of their subpar work lives on.