Choosing the battle wisely

Our friend Ulhas has been complaining for few days of the rising euphoria that he is witnessing from the upcoming festivals starting from ShriKrishna Janmashtami through Diwali. (What a sentence having 5 present continuous verbs!) Unfortunately, he is not just left with witnessing, but suffering too. The so called religious fervor, effervescent youth, musical background, huge pandals, large processions with band and what not, but coupled with sound / air pollution, roadside digging, traffic hurdles and unavoidable crowd. Some sections of the society support the festive celebrations in grand scale in public with a point as this is Indian society way of living social life. Some other sections of the society oppose the public nuisance created by this kind of forceful celebrations with a view of sacrifice of individual life during this period. This debate has been going on and will continue forever. No debate, no law, nor any court order will end this social situation appearing every year.

So, we tried to go to the roots of these peculiar phenomena that are characteristic of Indian society only. Although there are some celebrations - cultural or religious - in other societies of the world, nowhere else it seems to have reached this peak contradiction. There are huge gatherings in Mecca every year, but no one in or around Saudi Arabia seems to have complained about that. In England, we could see a complete frenzy in the crowd on the streets and pubs on a Friday night when Man U has a playoff with Chelsea. But the family men and women were taking all that lightly without any brawl. In US, although we have not seen large crowds in the streets on any occasion, but we have witnessed laughter riots and softball throws in office pulling serious workers out of their cabins without any curse. Of course, these incidents are not comparable to Indian celebrations in number and intensity. But still there are no words of protest or agony. Then what is the case with Indian celebrations?

Our analysis indicates that basically the problem is due to selective affinity towards the society. Everyone in India wants to live in society - be it a social neighborhood of a slum or be it a well knit affinity group of kulsamiti (ancestral brotherhood). This is irrespective of the caste, creed, education, economic status or geography. There are hardly any persons who live with individualism - i.e. with a total freedom of their own. Most of us are always with the society and think as per prevalent theme in the society. For example, if the theme in the society is to buy a LCD/LED TV dumping old box TV, everyone goes with this theme. So much that the TV companies stop manufacture of box TVs. Someone refusing to go in this direction in spite of affordability, is considered as outlaw in the society. In fact, everyone fears of being outlaw if he or she does not follow the theme in the society. With this fear of being left out of the society, everyone finds a comfortable affinity group around them - a kind of cocoon. Sometimes, the boundary of such an affinity group expands so large that it encompasses the entire society. The religious festivities fall under such expanded boundary due to common ethos of a very large community.

But then why does the conflict happen? Because of selective affinity. In old era, say till 1980's, there were not many choices available for affinity - only choices were religious or political, that's it. So, the friction between the affinity was limited to religions or politics. During those days, we could see very large religious gatherings and political gatherings. As also very dangerous riots. But with the modern life style ushering in since 1980's, new choices of affinity are coming into existence. These are based on caste, economic status, geography but many are going across these parameters with new parameters like shopping, entertainment (movies, TV soap, sports), alumni (education, place of origin), profession, hobby. Now that there are so many choices available, one can be part of multiple affinity groups of his or her own choice, thus giving richer experience of living together with like-minded. But this experience also reduces the space in one's mind to accommodate other affinity groups, to endure the choices of others. Thus one can tolerate the frenzy crowd on the streets at midnight celebrating India's win of Cricket World Cup even though not being part of them, but the same person cannot tolerate a smaller crowd dancing in a corner of a street on the occasion of Ganeshotsav. This is selective affinity.

Afterall, Indian mindset is still in very primitive state of herd. Everyone is programmed to think and act in large group with the ancient fear of unknown. Or ancient wisdom of 'together we are unbeatable'. Many great thinkers in the freedom fight of India tried to ignite minds, but failed. Only Mahatma Gandhi knew this herd mindset of the people and he succeeded in getting masses coming out on streets together without any weapons to protest the British regime. The individual freedom is not respected - rather the social themes take precedence over the individual freedom. With explosion of choices for diverse lifestyles, the conflict in the affinity groups is going to rise.

So, we suggest Ulhas to drop this battle of opinion against public festive celebrations because there are going to be many such conflicts thrown upon him.

Wealth Is Wealth

We have been hearing “Health is Wealth” in length and breadth since childhood. But what people around us religiously follow is – Wealth is wealth!

Recently I read in a newspaper that despite economy slowdown, the number of ultra-high networth individuals (UHNI) in India has increased some 15% to 130,000 or so. A person is UHNI if he/she has accumulated wealth of over Rs. 25 Crores (USD 4.2 million). And the combined wealth of all these UHNI (in India only) amounts to some 50-60 trillion rupees. Ah, it looks like more and more people are getting wealthy despite so called economic doom or gloom. So, for a ‘Below UHNI’ person like me, question is what is this WEALTH? How is it obtained? And how is it disposed? Most importantly, what is the purpose of obtaining so much of wealth?

Here is the definition of wealth from Wikipedia: Wealth is the abundance of valuable resource or material possessions.

Here is an interesting anecdote from Encyclopaedia Britannica that quotes the famous American wealthy man Andrew Carnegie in his Gospel of Wealth: a man who accumulates great wealth has a duty to use his surplus wealth for the improvement of mankind in philanthropic causes. A man who dies rich dies disgraced.

Well, in my simplistic viewpoint, wealth is those excess possessions which are over and above what is needed for normal peaceful living. As I am not a great philosopher or UHNI for that matter, my viewpoint is only with me. But one thing is crystal clear – the concept of wealth is relative as also subjective. For someone, wealth might mean hectors of land owned, for some other land may mean only dirt, whereas precious metals and stones would mean wealth. This is ‘subjective’ characteristic of wealth. The ‘relative’ characteristic of wealth is quite interesting.

For one who has just come out of a drought village into a city slum, having a tin roof and walls is a dream of wealth because he strays on the roadside spending night on the sidewalk. But for one who is living in a congested dwelling made out of tin sheets, the wealth is a dream of getting into a concrete 2-room flat having proper door and window, even though toilet is public shared. He does not seem to consider himself wealthy from the perspective of the one who is out on the sidewalk. This relative quality of ‘having wealth’ keeps on going to the higher and higher layers of the people. We know that the richest person in India has recently developed a ’38-storey building’ house for himself to live! We also read in news that a IT tycoon in India owns more than 700 apartments in the US. My viewpoint about wealth is built based on these examples – anything more than one house is unnecessary surplus in those 38 storeys or 700 apartments. That’s why that is considered as their wealth.

If wealth means surplus unnecessary possessions, what’s the purpose of acquiring wealth? If it is a pure curiosity to collect fascinating things just like a child which collects marbles and shells, I admire that purpose. A child gets immense satisfaction by collecting his ‘wealth’. As a child, I was so victorious and joyful to collect wealth of marbles and empty cartons of cigarettes. But I doubt if such innocent is the purpose of gathering wealth of the grown up men and women. Who can believe that someone constructed 38-storey building as a house, just out of innocent curiosity? Who can believe that someone maintains 50 luxury cars in their stable just out of curiosity? And can it be considered a simple child’s play to treasure hundreds of precious ornaments in one’s custody? Even the owner of wealth would not take this. So, what’s the good purpose of acquiring so much of excess, surplus wealth? Why so many folks boil their blood and exploit others to earn this unnecessary, practically useless (not worthless) material?

I am at loss to answer this question, can you answer?