DR.Manzoor Ahmad Yetoo
According to sociologist William Ogburn, technology has tremendous impact on society and in creating social change; according to him technology changes society by three processes: invention, discovery, and diffusion. The resulting changes of these processes, however, may “lag” behind social changes that result from any of the three processes. In other words, it takes time for us—in terms of the way we go about living—to ‘catch up’ with technology; Ogburn referred to this as cultural lag.We call it in our own terms as” PHATKHAYEE”
There are Several examples of technological innovations within all the fields. It can be medicine,industry,retail markets or other customer services sector, technology plays its part faster than culture of a society and for under developing communities and societies reverse phenomenon takes place.On one hand we have media and other influences which make us to compete with those societies who have better technologies and better purchasing power ,thus rendering us to play a counterfeit roles.we are not sincere officers, sincere leaders, sincere fathers and so on.Thus these counterfeit roles are only because of Cultural Lag and manifest many social evils like Corruption, nepotism, favoritism and ultimately a subculture formation. If we look at our state of Jammu and Kashmir, Cultural Lag has engulfed our cultural ethos and edios.We try to imitate and catch up with the super highway of Globalization where practically there are haves and havnots , but every body trying to adopt cultural traits which renders them to play counterfeit roles and show offs.
We believe in conglomerate culture and branded purchasing while indigenously goods may prove not only cheaper but also durable .We give Swadeshi concept and depend upon nonmaterial part of culture which leads us an automatic cultural invasion. So our younger generation gets influenced by media and advertisement management plays a major role in influencing the brains and automatic cultural invasion which at first instance seems to be acculturisation,but latter on leads to a lot of social evils and destabilizes, not only cultural traits but also brings negative social changes and turns into a big liability to closed communities like that of India and Jammu and Kashmir. These examples should remind us that technology (material culture) changes at a speedy pace; nonmaterial culture does not. Thus ultimate care should be taken by the Govt as well as Non Govt agencies to curb such unhealthy but easily ignorable activity which not only acts like a parasite for closed communities but also for closed economies and societies. The policy formulation and implementation authorities should take care of cultural Lag before setting organizational goals, planning and trying to catch up with the gap of technology, how ever evry culture should have flexibility and accommodating power to imbibe rich and health cultural traits for positive social change which can become a path towards progress with out eradication of social values of a particular society.
The author is an expert in occupational safety, environment and carbon trading climate change certified from USA and UK.You may reach him at manzooryetoo@yahoo.co.in