<p>In most countries, holidays are built around people, gods, or battles. Nations honour their founding fathers, martyrs, or heroes. However, in India, one festival takes a different path: Vishwakarma Puja, celebrated usually in September. It is not about kings or soldiers. It is about machines.</p>.<p>On this day, workers across factories and workshops clean their tools, adorn engines with garlands, and offer prayers to Vishwakarma, the divine architect and cosmic engineer. The rituals may seem quaint, but the symbolism is profound. To celebrate Vishwakarma is to celebrate technology itself. It is to acknowledge that the engine of prosperity is human labour or natural bounty and the tools we build to amplify both.</p>.<p>Labour Day honours workers, Earth Day honours nature, and Vishwakarma Day, by contrast, honours the capital stock, the machines, robots, and software that make growth possible.</p>.<p>The economist Robert Solow demonstrated that much of modern growth comes from increasing labour and boosting productivity through capital and technology. A plough magnifies a farmer’s hands, just as a supercomputer magnifies a researcher’s mind. Today, our “capital” is no longer looms and tractors. Robots assemble cars, algorithms route deliveries, and artificial intelligence designs new drugs. Thus, Vishwakarma Day is a festival with an economic edge. It reminds us that tools are not secondary—they are central.</p>.<p>Traditionally, Vishwakarma Puja was about polishing lathes and decorating sewing machines. However, today, the question is obvious: what should we worship? The laptop on our desk? The smartphone in our pocket? The invisible AI models running in the cloud? If a hammer extends the fist, then AI extends the brain. Machines have moved from muscle to mind. Moreover, that shift is not incremental; it is civilisational. To honour Vishwakarma today is to honour the assembly line and the algorithm.</p>.<p>In public debate, technology is often treated with suspicion. We worry about robots stealing jobs or algorithms manipulating elections. Some see machines as threats; others as saviours. Vishwakarma Puja offers a third stance: gratitude. This is not naive techno-worship. It is a sober recognition that machines are what stand between scarcity and abundance. Every harvest brought in, every vaccine manufactured, and every flight landed safely depended on machines. To pause <br>and thank them is to recognise the hidden infrastructure <br>of prosperity.</p>.<p><strong>Why not make it national?</strong></p>.<p>India treats Vishwakarma Day as a cultural holiday. However, why not elevate it into something more? Why not make it a global celebration of abundance? A Vishwakarma Day writ large would be a reminder that prosperity does not come from wishful thinking or political rhetoric. It comes from engineering, from the deliberate act of building machines that allow humans to do more with less.</p>.<p>Instead of celebrating only human toil or natural bounty, this would be a holiday for tools, capital, and invention. Imagine schools teaching the story of the plough alongside the story of labour struggles. Imagine parades not just of soldiers and dancers but of tractors, 3D printers, and robots. Imagine a day when we collectively say, “Thank you, machines, for lifting the weight of civilisation.”</p>.<p>This is not to diminish labour or land. Without workers, machines are idle. Without resources, machines are useless. However, the truth is stark: capital turns effort into progress. A worker with no tools is a subsistence farmer. A worker with machines is a participant in modern abundance. If Earth Day is for the planet and Labour Day is for the worker, then Vishwakarma Day should be for capital, the third pillar of prosperity, too often ignored but impossible to live without.</p>.<p>So today, do not just thank Mother Earth. Do not just thank the labourer. Take a moment to thank the machines. The buses that carried us to work. The servers are delivering this article to our screen: the washing machines, the microchips, the MRI scanners, and the satellites.</p>.<p>Vishwakarma Day is not a relic of a mythic past. It is a holiday for the future. A celebration of abundance. A reminder that human progress is not only about who we are but also about what we build. If Labour Day belongs to workers and Earth Day belongs to nature, then Vishwakarma Day should be our holiday for machines, robots, and AI. It should be a festival for capital, a holiday <br>for progress, and a national day for abundance.</p>.<p><em>(The author writes on politics, material culture, and economic history)</em></p>
<p>In most countries, holidays are built around people, gods, or battles. Nations honour their founding fathers, martyrs, or heroes. However, in India, one festival takes a different path: Vishwakarma Puja, celebrated usually in September. It is not about kings or soldiers. It is about machines.</p>.<p>On this day, workers across factories and workshops clean their tools, adorn engines with garlands, and offer prayers to Vishwakarma, the divine architect and cosmic engineer. The rituals may seem quaint, but the symbolism is profound. To celebrate Vishwakarma is to celebrate technology itself. It is to acknowledge that the engine of prosperity is human labour or natural bounty and the tools we build to amplify both.</p>.<p>Labour Day honours workers, Earth Day honours nature, and Vishwakarma Day, by contrast, honours the capital stock, the machines, robots, and software that make growth possible.</p>.<p>The economist Robert Solow demonstrated that much of modern growth comes from increasing labour and boosting productivity through capital and technology. A plough magnifies a farmer’s hands, just as a supercomputer magnifies a researcher’s mind. Today, our “capital” is no longer looms and tractors. Robots assemble cars, algorithms route deliveries, and artificial intelligence designs new drugs. Thus, Vishwakarma Day is a festival with an economic edge. It reminds us that tools are not secondary—they are central.</p>.<p>Traditionally, Vishwakarma Puja was about polishing lathes and decorating sewing machines. However, today, the question is obvious: what should we worship? The laptop on our desk? The smartphone in our pocket? The invisible AI models running in the cloud? If a hammer extends the fist, then AI extends the brain. Machines have moved from muscle to mind. Moreover, that shift is not incremental; it is civilisational. To honour Vishwakarma today is to honour the assembly line and the algorithm.</p>.<p>In public debate, technology is often treated with suspicion. We worry about robots stealing jobs or algorithms manipulating elections. Some see machines as threats; others as saviours. Vishwakarma Puja offers a third stance: gratitude. This is not naive techno-worship. It is a sober recognition that machines are what stand between scarcity and abundance. Every harvest brought in, every vaccine manufactured, and every flight landed safely depended on machines. To pause <br>and thank them is to recognise the hidden infrastructure <br>of prosperity.</p>.<p><strong>Why not make it national?</strong></p>.<p>India treats Vishwakarma Day as a cultural holiday. However, why not elevate it into something more? Why not make it a global celebration of abundance? A Vishwakarma Day writ large would be a reminder that prosperity does not come from wishful thinking or political rhetoric. It comes from engineering, from the deliberate act of building machines that allow humans to do more with less.</p>.<p>Instead of celebrating only human toil or natural bounty, this would be a holiday for tools, capital, and invention. Imagine schools teaching the story of the plough alongside the story of labour struggles. Imagine parades not just of soldiers and dancers but of tractors, 3D printers, and robots. Imagine a day when we collectively say, “Thank you, machines, for lifting the weight of civilisation.”</p>.<p>This is not to diminish labour or land. Without workers, machines are idle. Without resources, machines are useless. However, the truth is stark: capital turns effort into progress. A worker with no tools is a subsistence farmer. A worker with machines is a participant in modern abundance. If Earth Day is for the planet and Labour Day is for the worker, then Vishwakarma Day should be for capital, the third pillar of prosperity, too often ignored but impossible to live without.</p>.<p>So today, do not just thank Mother Earth. Do not just thank the labourer. Take a moment to thank the machines. The buses that carried us to work. The servers are delivering this article to our screen: the washing machines, the microchips, the MRI scanners, and the satellites.</p>.<p>Vishwakarma Day is not a relic of a mythic past. It is a holiday for the future. A celebration of abundance. A reminder that human progress is not only about who we are but also about what we build. If Labour Day belongs to workers and Earth Day belongs to nature, then Vishwakarma Day should be our holiday for machines, robots, and AI. It should be a festival for capital, a holiday <br>for progress, and a national day for abundance.</p>.<p><em>(The author writes on politics, material culture, and economic history)</em></p>
