From Pracharak to Minister: My Memories of Dilipda

Long before he became a minister, Dilipda had already earned our respect through his simplicity, discipline, and warmth. In 2007, my job brought me to Kolkata. Once there, I began attending the local RSS shakha and gradually became involved in Sangh work. I first met Dilipda during a visit to a swayamsevak’s home. Coincidentally, that same year, he had been appointed to our division. As everyone introduced themselves, Dilipda casually asked me in Marathi, “How are you finding Bengal?” Hearing...

min read

From Pracharak to Minister: My Memories of Dilipda

Long before he became a minister, Dilipda had already earned our respect through his simplicity, discipline, and warmth. In 2007, my job brought me to Kolkata. Once there, I began attending the local RSS shakha and gradually became involved in Sangh work. I first met Dilipda during a visit to a swayamsevak’s home. Coincidentally, that same year, he had been appointed to our division. As everyone introduced themselves, Dilipda casually asked me in Marathi, “How are you finding Bengal?” Hearing a Bengali pracharak — a full-time RSS worker devoted to organisational work — speak fluent Marathi came as a pleasant surprise to me. From that moment onwards, my interactions with Dilipda increased, and I gradually began to understand the many dimensions of his seemingly simple personality. Coming from Maharashtra, where Sangh work generally faced non-violent opposition, adapting to Bengal — where the opposition was often violent — was not easy. In that atmosphere, I learnt from Dilipda how to remain enthusiastic while also keeping fellow workers motivated and active. I often accompanied Dilipda during his visits to our area. He had a remarkable ability to blend effortlessly into any household, warmly enquire about every family member, and make everyone feel as though he were one of their own. Before being appointed to Kolkata, Dilipda had served as an RSS pracharak in the remote Andaman Islands from around 1999–2000 until 2007. Based in Port Blair, he worked under difficult conditions despite limited travel and communication facilities, diverse tribes speaking different languages, and a local mindset that often kept outsiders at a distance. He would often share positive experiences from his years in the Andamans but never once spoke about the hardships he endured. Despite working in such difficult conditions, he never mentioned his personal discomforts. This ability to remain free of complaints despite adversity is a hallmark of a pracharak, and Dilipda embodied it completely. He possessed the rare gift of finding positivity even in challenging situations. Excellent Cook In Bengal during 2007, Sangh work had not yet expanded to the scale it has reached today. At times, pracharaks had to cook their own meals, and this had made Dilipda an excellent cook. Whenever he returned to the city from his travels, our group would eagerly gather to enjoy his khichdi. Our area, Bidhannagar, was located in Salt Lake, a relatively prosperous locality. Adjacent to it were a few underprivileged settlements, and we would occasionally visit the nearby market. To reach the market from Salt Lake, one had to cross a wooden bridge, where the toll was 25 paise for pedestrians and one rupee for bicycles. Observing the difficulties faced by people in those settlements, Dilipda once suggested starting some sewa (service) activity there. That eventually led to the establishment of a homoeopathic clinic in the locality. While setting up the clinic, Dilipda effortlessly guided us through every stage of planning — what arrangements were needed, how the process should be structured, and what challenges might arise. It felt as though the entire plan was already mapped out in his mind. As the clinic became operational, we began noticing the educational difficulties faced by the local children. English, science, and mathematics were particularly challenging subjects for them, which eventually led to the start of a study centre. The idea of involving engineers from Salt Lake’s IT companies also came from Dilipda. Later, by bringing together IT professionals, an “IT Milan” initiative was started, and many of them eventually became swayamsevaks actively involved in Sangh work. Remarkable Ability At the time, the CPM government was in power in Bengal, and there were many obstacles to conducting shakha activities. Dilipda constantly guided us on overcoming these challenges. He had a remarkable ability to identify work that could bring meaningful change, plan it carefully, and execute it with determination and effectiveness. Whether it was service activities, daily shakha work, or handling sensitive cases related to “Love Jihad", Dilipda consistently displayed dedication, clarity of thought, a fighting spirit, and an unwavering readiness to work tirelessly toward the objective. What amazes me even today is that a pracharak like Dilipda — someone far ahead of us in age, experience, and accomplishments — would interact so casually and warmly with ordinary swayamsevaks like us, placing a hand on our shoulders and speaking as though he were a close friend. In 2009, I was transferred back to Mumbai, bringing my Kolkata chapter to an end. Later, in 2014, I learned that Dilipda had been given responsibility in the BJP. And now, in 2026, the BJP forming a government on its own strength speaks volumes about its contribution and leadership. Today, Dilipda has become a minister, and many titles and honours will naturally be associated with him. But to us, he will always remain simply "Dilipda". (The writer is an entrepreneur based in Kalwa, Thane.)

Elon Musk and the Age of Abundance

Abhishek Jain
Feb 1
5 min read

Musk’s vision of a world run by AI and robots promises plenty, but revives unsettling questions about power, purpose and who controls the future.

At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Elon Musk laid out a vision for the future that sounded less like a business plan and more like a survival manual for the species. Sitting across from BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Musk spoke of “sustainable abundance,” a world where robots outnumber humans and AI provides for every need.

Humans, he suggested, would be freed from drudgery as machines would do the work. But embedded within this techno-optimism were warnings in Musk’s remarks that were sharper than usual.

Abundance and Its Discontents

Musk suggested that the AI and robotics revolution will disproportionately benefit a narrow set of people, namely those with deep capital, early access and control over technology. Despite the promise of abundance, ownership would remain concentrated.

History offers a cautionary parallel here. During Britain’s Industrial Revolution, productivity surged from the late 18th century as steam power, mechanised spinning and factory organisation transformed output. Yet for much of the period between roughly 1770 and 1830, real wages for large segments of the working class barely moved. This long disconnect between rising national income and stagnant living standards came to be known as the ‘Engels’ pause’ (after Friedrich Engels’ grim observations of industrial Manchester), where textile magnates amassed fortunes even as workers crowded into unsanitary slums, laboured for 14 hours a day and saw infant mortality soar.

The gains from mechanisation flowed first to factory owners and landholders, not labour. Markets alone did little to correct the imbalance. It was only after decades of social strain and political upheaval like the Luddite uprisings against machines in the 1810s, the Chartist movement’s mass agitation for political rights in the 1830s and 1840s - that bargaining power began to shift. It was only by the late 19th century that wages finally began to track productivity.

The lesson here is not that technology impoverishes, but that it rarely distributes its benefits without institutional change.

The second warning embedded in Musk’s remarks was that humanoid robots will increasingly replace human labour. And not partially, but at scale.

His own company, Tesla, is developing ‘Optimus’ - a general-purpose robot intended to perform tasks ranging from factory work to household chores while in China, firms such as Unitree are racing ahead.

Third, Musk explicitly warned of the need to avoid a “Terminator scenario” - a reference to the blockbuster ‘The Terminator’ (1984) directed by James Cameron where machines turn hostile or indifferent to human survival.

Hardware Proof

The reality of this shift is not decades away but is happening in real time. History suggests that technological revolutions announce themselves not through white papers but through spectacle: the first steam engines pumping water from Cornish mines, the Paris Exposition of 1889 lit by electricity, or IBM’s Deep Blue defeating Garry Kasparov in 1997. Just recently in Chengdu, China, six Unitree G1 humanoid robots took the stage at a pop concert. They danced in perfect synchrony with human performers and executed flawless front flips. The moment went viral because it was recognisable as a threshold event and a point at which the future stops being hypothetical.

Musk’s vision rests on three interlocking pillars: rockets to preserve human consciousness beyond Earth, robots to perform most physical labour, and artificial intelligence to coordinate it all. Together they form a worldview shaped as much by Cold War extinction anxiety as by Silicon Valley’s faith in engineering as a substitute for politics. But beneath this apparently benign scenario lies a transition likely to unfold over a century and comparable in scale to the shift from agrarian societies to industrial ones, which will reorder not merely economies, but the meaning of human usefulness itself.

Automation has always arrived first at the bottom of the labour hierarchy. The mechanisation of agriculture in the 19th century displaced farmhands long before it touched clerks; industrial robots entered car factories decades before they reached offices. The coming wave follows the same pattern, but at far greater speed and scope. As humanoid robots such as Tesla’s Optimus and China’s Unitree models move from controlled environments into farms, care homes and private households, manual labour will be the first to recede. Tasks once thought resistant to automation like tending crops and maintaining homes are becoming increasingly tractable.

What is different this time is that the white-collar world is not insulated. Artificial intelligence systems already outperform humans in graphic design, basic coding and routine legal work. The displacement resembles the quiet hollowing-out of clerical employment after the spread of computers in the 1980s, or the collapse of travel agencies after the internet.

Chinese Leverage

The implications of technological revolutions are never merely economic but geopolitical in scope. In the 19th century, Britain’s command of textile machinery underpinned its empire. In the 20th, America’s dominance of oil, automobiles and semiconductors shaped the post-war order. In the 21st, the strategic choke points are rarer and more obscure. Humanoid robots require rare-earth magnets, advanced batteries and high-precision manufacturing - areas in which China holds an overwhelming advantage. It controls nearly 90 percent of rare-earth processing and commands much of the global battery supply chain.

As robotic manufacturing scales, China is positioned to become not just the world’s factory, but the factory that produces the workforce itself. Mass production will drive costs down, placing robots within reach of middle-income households across Asia, Europe and beyond. Yet the social effects will echo earlier episodes of industrial dominance. Just as Britain’s cheap textiles devastated handloom weavers in India, or Japanese car exports reshaped American manufacturing towns, China’s robotic surplus may undercut labour markets elsewhere.

Existential Drift

Musk opined that by mid-century, the consequences will no longer be confined to employment statistics. Machines will not merely assist life but actively organise it. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will manage logistics, energy systems and increasingly complex decisions, much as electricity and the internet became invisible infrastructure in earlier eras. Humans will remain present, but less central.

History offers few reassuring precedents. Societies in which large groups lose their economic function rarely remain stable for long. The Roman Empire struggled to integrate a growing urban population detached from productive labour and industrial Europe required mass politics and welfare states to absorb the shocks of mechanisation. A future in which work is optional but meaning is scarce risks producing not leisure, but drift - a condition already visible in affluent societies grappling with loneliness, addiction and declining civic engagement.

Musk frames the future as one of abundance. But history insists on a harder question: abundance for whom? If machines own production, corporations own machines and capital owns corporations, the average human risks becoming economically incidental. Previous technological ages eventually resolved such tensions through new institutions – be it unions, welfare states, mass education and regulation. None of this emerged automatically.

Without new economic models, governance frameworks, ethical constraints and a redefinition of human purpose beyond labour, the future Musk describes may not be utopian but quietly catastrophic.

It is worth reflecting that civilisations rarely collapse from innovation itself. They falter when social meaning fails to keep pace with material change.

Musk is right about one thing. This is indeed the most interesting time in history. But, as the Chinese curse has it, “interesting times” are rarely comfortable. The challenge is not to halt progress, but to shape it by building institutions as ambitious as the technologies they seek to govern.

(The author is a strategy and transformation leader who writes extensively on technology and future of work. Views personal.)