Where do the poor go from here?
There are poor and then there are poor. There are poor who are farmers, they have been lured into producing cash crops and getting hard currency which they never needed. They have been sold a dream, a life where cities shine in the
distance, where people live in luxury, eat chocolates and have shining expensive cars, where houses have air-conditioning and life is such a breeze. They aspire for such a life, if not for themselves at least for their kids.
They use the cash crops to put their children into expensive schools, forgetting that they themselves went to government schools. They forget that the education system is not designed to create thinkers but only mediocre clerks that will have a poor life in the cities.
For this they toil and the system conspires to keep them poor, debt laden all the time.
And then there are poor, who are not even farmers. They are laborers but none the less, they too have been sold the same dream and money has become central to their lives.
They too have been sold on the concept of having hard cash.
And the paradox is that this hard cash is created by the government in the first place. It is not something that occurs in nature but is a human construct designed to facilitate trade but over time
has become an instrument of control and suppression.
As I see it, the poor and the poor need to abandon this mad race towards hard cash. They have to go back to the village as a sustainable model of development and life. They have to understand why Gandhi lived in poverty.
He wanted to send across a message, he understood that ceding control to money will destroy the society. He wanted to demonstrate that a simple life without too many wants is possible and it could be productive for the society too.
He wanted people to realize that when every individual is satisfied with what he has and has limited wants, the nation too would be satisfied and not run after material wealth, which has brought nothing but grief for people.
We, each one of us, has to rediscover the Gandhi within.
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