In a recent issue of Oxford Today, Oxford don in Engineering Science Department, Prof Malcolm McCulloch, makes a startling prediction. In two or three decades there will not be any private cars. In an interview to the magazine, he says: �€œThe problem at the moment is that most people want to own a vehicle to do everything �€� You won�€™t own a car at all (in future). There will be providers who will lease you the right vehicle for each task. You might cycle or walk to work, but when you want to shop you will hire a small car for a few hours. If you want to go camping, you will hire a vehicle geared towards that particular task.�€

The Dutch realised this several years ago. In large cities in the Netherlands, you can pick up a bicycle from a parking slot, use it free and leave it where it was. This has reduced the need to possess a car. With growing awareness of climate change, it won�€™t be surprising if many other European cities adopt this model.

In small towns in the Scandinavian countries, it is quite normal to borrow a bicycle of anyone in town, without permission, use it to move around and then return it in good condition. It is also common to have a picnic in the garden of any private house. It is not necessary to take permission of the landlord. Obviously the user is expected to observe certain discipline and decency. But using garden, compound or veranda of any house is not considered a violation of private property.

In recent years, when scientists were lenient about the issue of intellectual property rights, breakthroughs were made possible. Large Hadron Collider, which aims to replicate the big bang, is a collaborative effort between scientists from more than 50-60 countries. Much of the scientific output would be common property of mankind. CERN, which hosts the largest ever particle collider, is in the process of building a new information superhighway for scientists from around the world to create and share research with no private intellectual property rights.

The world has been able to combat two of the most deadly diseases, AIDS and SARS, because of international agreements to short-change intellectual property rights on vaccines and medicines.

Advancement of knowledge at the beginning of modern history was made possible because people didn�€™t think about property and intellectual property. If those who invented farming, domestication of plants and taming of animals had sought intellectual property rights or if they had made these experiments in secret confines of their compound, most of us would have been hunter-gatherers today.

In the early days of agricultural revolution, there was no private property. Until recently, many villages in Scandinavia and tribes in India�€™s north-eastern states did not own agricultural land. They distributed it by lots to those who wanted to cultivate it. Land was something to be used and not owned.

Rousseau once indicated that the concept of property is a big fraud on humanity. Someone simply drew a line on the ground and declared ownership of a piece of land. Others followed him. Locke even tried to make citizenship rights dependent on the basis of the possession of property. Eventually estates and states were built by acquiring and expanding land. Kings and priests fought wars. While doing so, they invented more and more deadly weapons. Now we are willing to blow up the world with thermonuclear, chemical and biological weapons so that we can protect our possessions and pride, in the name of patriotism. If we carry on in this fashion, we may not survive for too long.

This is not to suggest that property, and intellectual property rights, should be abolished. I am particularly opposed to the idea of the state or the society owning property instead of the individual. The communist experience has been disastrous, unhappy and impoverishing. We need property but we need to redefine its role in our life. Instead of measuring success or failure by how much we own, we need to measure the right and wrong way of life by how we acquire, own and share property and intellectual property rights. When we are able to redefine our approach to property in a way that provides incentive to the individual to create and to the society to collaborate, humanity will have done real progress. In such a world, village folks will be able to grow crops but not wish to own farmland and urban folks will use but not own vehicles. Prof Malcolm McCulloch predicts that such a world is inevitable. If we want humanity to survive for the next several centuries, we will have to make such a world possible.