Economic and Inner Wellbeing

 

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Economic and Inner Wellbeing

After the covid era we are seeing how Bharat’s economy is growing dramatically and is well on the way to becoming the third largest economy in the world in just a few years from now.

With economic growth at the macro level, we see a phenomenal growth taking place at the micro level – individual financial security increases. As the financial situation changes, we must also be ready for very dramatic cultural changes in society. Along with financial freedom, the fundamentals of a particular culture always change. When every individual gets the choice to do whatever he wants to do, it is extremely important that we empower that individual with the necessary awareness to make the right choices. For most societies, a scourge of problems came along with economic affluence because the necessary awareness was missing in individual people to make the right choices.

Instead of economic progress bringing wellbeing to humanity, generally, one generation of that nation or society suffers from uncertainty, unable to make the right choices. The United States and some of the European countries for example are the most affluent country on the planet right now. During the 1930s, they went through a very bad depression where even food became a problem for the citizens. Then World War II came, and that was a great upheaval which took millions of people away. The generation after the war worked hard and got the country back on the rails. In the 1960s, economic upsurge was happening but that generation of people made all the wrong choices and for about 15-20 years, the volume of indulgence in drugs, alcohol and other things threw the society off track and almost derailed whole nations. Then again, from the 1970s to 1980s, they recovered.

The spiritual process is one way of ensuring that people have the necessary awareness to make the right choices. When affluence comes, they won’t lose their head. This is very important. Poverty is a horrible problem. But the moment they get out of it, a lot of people tend to lose their head and get into a different kind of problem. We would like to see that the economic upsurge that is happening in the nation is enjoyed by people because this is a starved population, starved for everything.

So, spreading this awareness and empowering people to be able to make the right kind of choices is extremely important. We need to really hasten this process as the economic upsurge is happening. We are talking about 9 to 10% growth in the coming years, which is phenomenal. Sustaining 9 to 10% growth continuously over a period of time is not a simple thing. But at the same time, we need to ask this fundamental question: 10% of how much? For 1.40 billion people, the volume of our economy is unfortunately very small. It is growing quickly today, but still in comparison with the top economies it is still very small.

Economic work is happening in a big way, it is moving in the right direction. But what has to happen in the country on the cultural, social and individual level, and consciousness-wise, has to happen at an equal pace, if not at a faster pace. If it doesn’t happen, good economics will bring more pain than wellbeing.