Development...really...!

I was enjoying a stroll after lunch when I visited him in Shillong. I was enjoying the beauty of nature. I told him, appreciating in my heart, that the only here could I see real hill-type house...houses with sloping roofs. I missed them in Guwahati, which has become like any other metro, boasting of its glittering malls and other hallmarks of prosperity. He told me, smiling, that when these people would earn some money, they would go for the renovation of these houses and then you would not find your poetic kind of houses with sloping roof. He showed me some newly constructed houses for proof. They were exactly alike houses at normal towns. He quipped that these people would love to make houses of modern type as a symbol of their development. A sudden rush of gloom engulfed me far I was not sure that the transition of people from old-style houses to modern ones would be a development or not. It is prosperity accepted but losing ones identity does not appeal me. I don't believe that it is 'development'. I told my friend that I'm constantly in argument, since my College days, with people who see these changes as 'development'. Is it necessary that 'development' must entail losing ones identity, values...! The crisis of values which our society is facing is the outcome of the same 'development'-philosophy. But then I stopped as I realised who am I to decide what constitutes people's identity...!