Capitalism is making deep inroads into Indian society. Consequently, consumer culture is on the rise. This has capitalist greed as its basis on the one side and artificial desire-generation in the average person through advertising on the other. Material goods are also produced in abundance in its wake and that is a necessary evil, necessary because it fulfils the needs of survival of the ever-growing world population and evil because it creates artificial requirements in the mind of man which he then considers as imperative for his subsistence. This gross material culture in turn impoverishes the masses over a period of time even as it inflates the coffers of the few entrepreneurs who reap the ill-begotten benefits of this evil system. The tyranny of scientifically extorted profit gradually splits up the middle classes into two sharp divisions, the upper middle class that merges in due course with the rich class and the lower middle class that is forced down the economic ladder to be one with the poor class. And this is the classic capitalist scenario which eventually leads to class-conflict. Classically, this is the prelude to socialism.
India is going through this transition phase and life is increasingly becoming difficult for the common man even as industrialists go over the moon praising India's burgeoning economy. When the basic amenities of life are becoming hard to come by on account of ever-rising prices and not proportionate rise in income, the situation is doomed for the average consumer. This is leading to wide-spread unrest in different parts of the country, fissiparous tendencies threatening to disintegrate the nation and an overall decline in human values for humanity cannot subsist on air, however perfumed it may be. Mere propagation of holy talk or patriotic gibberish will not work with empty bellies but the bullied souls will quickly rise in arms against this brutal state of things. The system of capitalism as it persists today is rotten to the core for it is only a pro-rich philosophy and never a pro-people one. If to satiate the monetary craving of one man a million must suffer, then such a system should be thrown overboard and replaced by a more humane system. It is futile attempting to move the youth with pious platitudes when hunger, unemployment and illiteracy rule the roost in this most uneven of economic systems that our current free-market economy is which gives unbridled freedom only to the entrepreneur to charge whatever he feels like for his product irrespective of what its consequence will be for the consumer in the long run. How I wish that every rich man would by law find it mandatory to live a week every month in the city-slums or in ill-equipped villages with no proper sanitation or toilet facilities! Only then, dear brothers, would these mercenaries of men, these currency cannibals realize to what depths of depression they have reduced millions of their brethren without even turning a hair. And this is the situation we must redress if we are to pride ourselves as a civilized nation with a hoary spiritual heritage for, after all, who suffers in the gutters? Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna in a million garbs! Come brothers, let us devote ourselves heart and soul to bringing about a more equitable distribution of the world's resources by dint of our sterling selves, our supreme sacrifice, our universal love for this, the holiest of the holy, this veritable godhead on Earth, our brother man. In it we shall find our highest good, our eternal repose and our sublimest beatitude. May Thakur bless us in our endeavour and receive our service in his million guises! Jai Ramakrishna!
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