Sometime
in the late 1950s, the Sparrow Campaign took place in China. It was
part of a larger effort called The Four Pests Campaign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign)
to eliminate four pests: rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. Sparrows
were to be killed because they ate some of the grain from the fields,
reducing the overall throughput.
And
what happened?Locusts and other insects, whose population was kept in
control by the sparrows, suddenly had a boom in numbers. Down they went
with agriculture. Famine, starvation, and a complete mess followed.
Not understanding the
interrelationships between things is not a mistake of Mao Zedong alone;
all of us do it all the time. What prevents us from thinking a bit
deeper, from understanding things from different angles, and in detail? I
have no idea. IISc has taught me that no amount of education can instil
this quality in you(if we assume that what happens in these places is
indeed education; that in itself is debatable).
