Recently, we visited Jantar Mantar in Jaipur—a scientific marvel built centuries ago, with life-sized instruments designed to measure time, months, seasons, and other celestial phenomena. As I admired the ingenuity behind these creations, I couldn’t help but think that in those times, ordinary people didn’t have personal access to precise timekeeping devices and had to rely on centralised observatories or public sundials for accuracy. Now, we hold that same power in our pockets and wrists.
An average person today enjoys more material comforts than a monarch from the past. The king had no painkillers, vaccines, on-demand entertainment, or the simple luxury of calling someone instantly. Yet, despite all our modern conveniences, we often romanticise the past, recalling how good those old days were.
There is a name for this phenomenon— nostalgia bias. Nostalgia bias is our tendency to remember the past more fondly than it truly was, filtering out the hardships and preserving only the warmth and simplicity of earlier times.
I once read an explanation for this. As social beings, we rarely make absolute comparisons. Instead, we measure ourselves against others. So even though we live better than an ancient monarch, we don’t compare ourselves to him—we compare ourselves to Meena next door or that friend on social media whose life looks far more exciting than our daily grind.
Extending this reflection from the personal to the societal level, Europe has embraced the idea of de-growth—intentionally slowing down economic activity to protect the planet. Some Indians have also adopted this luxury belief. But for a developing nation like India, growth and infrastructure are essential to lift millions out of poverty. Also, wherever technology has reduced the need for human intervention, corruption has largely disappeared. For instance, getting a passport once meant chasing signatures and paying bribes at multiple desks. Today, the process is digital: you upload your documents, book an appointment, and receive the passport the very next day.
It might feel comforting to long for the past, but the future is where true comfort lies.