The year 2022: Creating the creed of committed action

In 2022 India has turned 75. It is no coincidence that India's literacy rate has reached 75 Percent from 12 percent in 1947 when India got independence from British rule. Though the rise in literacy rate has been steep, India and so also many African countries have herculin task to continue that rise to keep with global trends. More than that what matter today is the digital literacy divide between developed countries and developing countries, male and female, urban and rural in India as well as the world over.

We start the year with hope and determination to continue to address the triple pandemic: COVID19, Climate Change and Inequity. Digital literacy may not solve this triple crisis but surely it is an essential tool to find a pathway to prevent, contain, and win over these challenges.

The planet is certainly ailing. The commitments on emission reduction in COP26 in Glasgow, barring a few exceptions, are not going to help humanity and life on the Earth to meet the targets that are essential to limit global warming by 1.5 deg C or even 2 deg C. The worst, young generation who will live with these predicted challenges longer than senior citizens of today would surely face the existential threat. Intra-generational injustice is the new term of 2022.

'This year is a crucial year for our planet' is now glossy terminology which we are used for the last decades. We need a disruptive technology that we still do not know for winning the war for the planet. Another option is evident: we continue the war against the ecosystem of our planet on which we depend and commit slow suicide.

Let's join hands, take collective actions in living 'with' nature and not 'on' nature. Let us live in harmony with nature and not harm nature.

Digital technologies are already helping humanity to come together, provided we use them appropriately. The global network of universities, Smart Campus Cloud Network (sccnhub.com), with its IoT to measure online and real-time basis Energy Consumption, Emission, Water Usage, Air Quality Index and Cloud Networking for open access data to share the experiences and stories, big data for processing information, AI for speeding up innovation, research and development.

That would bring back the balance for bettering the biosphere through collective commitments and actions. Let us make 2022 not only a crucial year but a year that would create a creed of society that is committed to sustainability.