What if money is not the solution.
But the problem.
Sameer ShisodiaI amplifies the worst problems for sure, and gets in the way of the solutions.
Hariharan SukumarIt is ofcourse the problem!!! From the times of Parikshith, it has been the problem. Only thing is we don't see it that way.
Hariharan SukumarAparna Krishnan there is a nice story about the discussion between parikshith and kali purush..and entering Bharath!! Let me find that story and post it here
Hariharan SukumarThis is not a good description of the story, but chaltha hai..Replace gold with money!!
Subir ShuklaIt's what money stands for that is the problem, not money itself.
Venkatesh SrinivasanNothing moves without money! So not sure how you can consider it a problem?
Aparna KrishnanVenkatesh Srinivasan yes, we have made it so critical today.
With money, accumulation reached new levels. Earlier only granaries could be filled up, and before the next harvest the contents were distributed away.
With currency we can amass indefinitely, and the levels of disparity also reach new heights.
And then we pretend to address this crisis by more money ...
Vishal DharVenkatesh Srinivasan don't u see it, it's a control mechanism and nothing else
Venkatesh SrinivasanI don’t see it! If your money is where your mouth is please give up the use of money and then we can debate! It is easy to socialistic arguments against money but please suggest an alternative or better live it. Then the comments will be taken more seriously.
Aparna KrishnanVenkatesh Srinivasan it is a cash driven world. Forget me, even the people of my village cannot give it up. Unless there are systemic changes, collectively brought about. Or forced on us by some breakdown.
The point is that in such a cash driven world
1. Hoarding is far higher.
2. Disparity is correspondingly far higher
Do you disagree with these points ?
Venkatesh SrinivasanNo I don’t! But inequality is the nature of the world. Someone is rich, someone poor, someone intelligent, someone not so, someone good looking and some ugly. Some have all arms and a few unfortunately have none. This is how life is. Not much anyone can do about it.
Aparna KrishnanThats not my point. Is hoarding far more in a money based economy or not.
Whether one should hoard or not because one had a head start in life due to birth and other privileges is a different and a moral question.
Venkatesh SrinivasanI am not sure of the starting point. I can argue that some people have privileges depending on my view point. Poor as a class are less privileged but a number of poor do well in life and a lot don’t. It is also a function of desire and willingness to work. I don’t agree that all is attributed to an exploitative system. People can make their destinies if they want. It is upto them and their purusharth. I don’t espouse the nanny state.
Aparna KrishnanVenkatesh Srinivasan please come to my village. Go to any village. Malnourished children, parents dealing with debt and unaddressed illnesses, first generation learners, single teacher schools with one teacher from 1st to 5th.
You may then understand 'starting point', and also see their desire to move out of this and pull their osre ts out of this. And their immense ability and willingness to work till their bones wear out.
I cannot and will not defend them any more here to you. It is demeaning them. That they work against all hope, and then in addition have to have their reality defended.
Srikanth Ragothamanif people study how money is being created out of thin air by banks, then they will realise its not worth pursuing. Money is biggest scam ever.
Ram NamI kind of work for money, if not money, I won't be doing the work I do
Aparna KrishnanRam Nam we cannot stay away. But yet an awareness of its dangers will allow for a balance of sorts.
Srinivas SamudralaDhanam mulam edham jagath.
Money is invented by Us and we became slaves to it just like smartphones .
Uday DandavateAparna Krishnan I do appreciate you for writing this provocation. It finally boils down to- what do we need ? To survive we need food and to find meaning in life we need friends and family. Other than that everything else we spend money on is what we are made to believe we need. Yes humans have greed too. But how might we contain our greed, and consume what we create and find meaning in things that don’t cost money.
Aparna KrishnanUday Dandavate yes, all those essential questions need to be asked. What really counts.
The questions themselves have been buried in waves of mindless consumption.
Sanjaya GaneshOnly solution is Gita 9.4 with respect to money also
मया ततमिदं सर्वं जगदव्यक्तमूर्तिना |
मत्स्थानि सर्वभूतानि न चाहं तेष्ववस्थित: ||
All beings dwell in Me, but I do not dwell in them.
... The concept of amassing. How it all started with money. Before that excess could not be hoarded. Hoarding led to wastage.
... how some tribes count only to two. How wordviews change with that.
... how tribals, villagers pray. And believe. And the over educated call it blind faith.
how the same over educated have their own blind beliefs.
how they give away money to the bank. and think its there. that money which has been circulated away ...
Sridhar Lakshmanan but it had physical limits you can't accumulate above a certain level beyond a certain time
Aparna KrishnanAccumulation is a given. As we humans are fundamentally insecure creatures. What matters is moderation. Limits.
Sridhar LakshmananIt's a deadly combination with locomotion which changed and incentivised accumulation
Aparna KrishnanThere were granaries in our village. Before harvest the earlier stock had to be moved out. Distributed as this was not a market item hete.
Money took it to the virtual level. Where there are no limits.
Money often costs too much.
In a poor country, when we possess more than the average, somewhere someone has been rendered poor by that.
The poorest are the richest. I see this again and again.
Money impoverishes.
There is no answer for 'How much money will make me secure ?" Because the quesion is wrong.
The correct question is, "Will money make me secure ?".
Paalaguttaplle (Dalitwada)
When someone knocks at the hut door and asks for food in the village, they are always seated, and fed. They are asked their story, and listened to as they are fed.
This is civilisation
Shyamala Sanyal
yesterday we were working on the farm at the very entrance . a poor ragged man came and asked for food . while my reaction was oh no how do i manage ( i really had no food with me ) one of the farm workers , without hesitaion , took a chapati and veg from his tiffin box and gave it to him . i was really humbled . if i had read this post earlier i would have made him sit . i was truly wondering why he was wandering and hungry . just the fear of being burdened kept me aloof and insensitive to the poor man . inspite of all my intellectual understanding that i will not get a burden more than i can handle . and when i have seen practically in my life that generosity has also kept grace flowing upon me in abundance
Aparna Krishnan
i have seen this in me again and again and again. in the village everyone calls out to others, 'Ra, annam thinu' (Come and eat) when they are eating. In my initial years (and even now to an extent) I used to hesitate, because I would have cooked exactly for three people, and I used to calculate and tink that I would again have to light the fire and start cooking if I gave away some. I was the richest in the village, and yet the least hospitable.
Shyamala Sanyal
ditto , Aparna Krishnan , but i am learning
Aparna Krishnan
We are mean. Very mean
Money. Many times I wonder at how it conquers all sense. All conscience.
It is the very nature of money. That it deludes us who possess it. The more we possess the more the delusion.
Every work we don't want to go. From cleaning our clogged sewers, to carrying headloads of bricks to build our homes. We simply demand another human being do. Because we can hand over some notes to them.
And we have been stopped questioning ourselves over this perversity. So completely does the soul die.
Rajiv Lulla What's the alternative?
Isn't that how employment and livelihood is generated.?
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Rajiv Lulla Aparna Krishnan you have not answered my question of whats the alternative? and is'nt that how employement is generated?
to answer yours, if the sewer is blocked, then get the sewer cleaner to clean it and make sure he is adequately compensated for the same.
Now, you will say that that is delusion because we have money, why? because cleaning sewers is a dirty job?
yes it is, so we pay someone who does not have a problem in doing it for money. Maybe not his 1st choice to earn money, but he does it and we pay him for it.
going by the same logic of money being a delusion that makes us pay others to do things we dont want to do, cannot do, does that mean that soldiers, teachers, health care workers, dancers and entertainers, they all are "victims" of those who have money and they are being PAID to do something we wouldn't or couldn't?
and why the shaming attached to a sewer cleaner's job? and why the shaming attached to someone paying him to do something which he does out of his necessity?
Aparna Krishnan Rajiv Lulla that we can outsource cleaning our sewers and as per your logic feel clean about it is the very delusion I am speaking of. If you don't get it, don't worry. That is what delusion is.
Also, that you are able to juxtapose teachers, and those cleaning sewers are similar. Because they are 'paid for by money'.
Rajiv Lulla Aparna Krishnan my issue is with this homogenisation of thought and rejection of anyone else's logic as delusion.
and yeah, i juxtaposed both because while a sewer cleaner cleans our physical filth, a teacher cleans our moral and spiritual filth, both are serving us in a way that we can never repay them, except with money and our eternal gratitude.
i thought u wanted a discussion, but looks like an echo-chamber and collective guilt shaming is what you are interested in.
bowing out.
Aparna Krishnan Rajiv Lulla I need neither agreement nor disagreement. I have placed a thought, that our money power seems to justify to us our using another human to clean our sewers.
If to you outsourcing of cleaning sewers is similar to outsourcing teaching, yes that is the delusion I am speaking of. 🙏 I will differ and stop here. 🙏
Paranthaman Sriramulu Everything revolves around money. Lot of work done by indians is considered as waste and outsourced by west.
For money peope do murders. Even their own blood relatives.
More money less labour work. More maids or servants.
Mamatha Balasubramanian Is money the issue here? Or is it what I project on to money? Money is neutral. How we use it depends on us.
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Aparna Krishnan Mamatha Balasubramanian money confers infinite power. To exploit nature and fellow man. It is a rare being who has the vivekam to maintain deepest integrity and simplicity and hard work despite it. We need to work in the understanding that we are not saints.
There are many ways money corrupts. The very fact that I hold onto money and its buying power despite hunger all around, even if i give away a tiny fraction as charity, is a corrosive fact, and it deadens the soul.
Money, unless one has utter detachment to it in thought word and deed, can been a huge block in ones growth.
... wealth, richness disempowers in many many ways. It increases insecurity, and increases our dependence on our wealth as a pillar of strength, and a consequent irrational attachment to it.
It also decreases our ability to give. To give as the poor give. Give in a way that we give away our security, and not just from our excess. Give away our very tomorrows.
I have seen myself juxtaposed with the poorest for decades. And seen painful truths. About my inability, in the backdrop if their unthinking generosity. A giving which has no name except Dharmam, duty ...
What is it about money that makes us insecure. Grasping. And reduces so completely our ability to share and give thoughtlessly.
The so called poor give so easily. Even when their tomorrows are uncertain.
Amarendra Srivastava Illusion. Delusion. Mass Hypnosis. Collective brain seizure. Isn't it obvious? Tell me one sane voice you have heard....
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Amarendra Srivastava Aparna Krishnan Thanks for the blunt self honesty.
But let us slow down.
This is a very very critical conversation - I have attempted to work with various social causes - experienced more pain than satisfaction - and, ...this (lack or excess of money) is quite often the "TRIPPING" point (whereas it could easily become the "TIPPING" point).
Money or any resource cannot be evil in itself - you know it and the villagers are part of it. Denial never works. Being joyous at receiving an order and then denouncing money (as creating "dependency, fear, greed") in another sentence is such a big contradiction.
Even if almost everyone else is gripped and obsessed with money, even then it is more a case of MISSING INNER STRENGTH and CLARITY and not a case that money is the biggest trap.
If we keep focusing on the trap .... then ..we become subservient to it.. we make the demon large.....and, more importantly, we deviate from own clarity and strength to do anything worthwhile..
Why not challenge ourselves to NOT be trapped at all? Why allow even 1% deviation in our own beings? It is precisely because of that (we remaining weak) our voice will not be heard.
Let us say everyone else is "insecure" or "unable to give" - it can be devastating but it is not the real breakdown.
Spiritually or per Dharma, if you (or I or whosoever) claim to see the farthest then how can you first NOT destroy yourself before ripping apart anyone else? If you are not able to do that.... THEN THAT is the real breakdown - that you do NOT know to live your highest vision with 100% integrity....
What is missing in your (or mine) understanding? What are you standing under and refusing to see? When this is resolved only then you (I or whosoever) can attempt reach near ultimate "samaadhan".
Aparna Krishnan Have you heard the story of the man who chose the boon of eight pots of gold ? And spent the rest of his years trying to fill up the 1/2 of the incomplete eight pot. Losing health and peace and generosity ?
Aparna Krishnan And finally recovered well being only when he used his last wish to ask to be rid of all the gold ?
The issues of money are well recounted in both our folklore. And in the blble. "Its easier for a camel to pass thro the eys of a needle, than for a rich man to enter heaven."
I am speaking after long years of watching. A very very poor community, and its infinite richnesses. My statements are not airy theories.
Amarendra Srivastava Aparna Krishnan It seems you missed my point.
Ref your story, did I say people are not chasing the remaining 1/2 half pot of gold? I already above said it is collective illusion, delusion and brain seizure...
Ref your quote, did I say the "rich" are anyhow "better" people? Did I say the "rich" have any possibility to enter heaven?
Why are you going around in Circles? I said you are contradicting your own relationship with money.
You did not even attempt to comment on the questions I raised...But, it is OK....I understand you are not even attempting REAL CONVERSATION to arrive at answers...
Aparna Krishnan I have always stated clearly that I am part and parcel of the failings of my class.
My understanding nowadays is that it is structured into the very nature of our relationship with money.
Anyway I stop here. Namaskaram.
" One cannot be spiritual inside a monetary system; one might just believe that they are spiritual according to their understanding of spirituality but if we define the true values of spirituality then we fail..
If someone understands the inherent flaw of a monetary system one would understand how it contradicts our spiritual values of brotherhood, equality and sharing which should be an outcome of spiritual practices.
One cannot escape exploitation, inequality, crime etc under a monetary system; hence one directly or indirectly contributes to exploitation, inequality, crime and to the total diseased monetary system and remains part of it.
So in order to directly act on the spiritual goals a person has to renounce everything and come out of monetary system because even using a mobile would be non spiritual as it would have come via exploitation of people making them working for hours for few dimes is not spiritual.
I am not suggesting to anyone to renounce here anything but to understand the corrupt monetary system itself.
Many confuse practice of relaxation like meditation, self-hypnosis, reducing thoughts etc with spiritual goals and think that they are doing service to humanity as their behavior becomes more sane after doing it.
There is nothing pious, higher and spiritual about it. You are just trying to achieve your sanity back inside a corrupted and exploited culture of humans and are managing for yourself for a better mental health and state, and getting good sleep which you are deprived of due the stress around you and because you feel guilty of being greedy and grabbing more resources. Because you cannot practice goodness without treating your mental illness of being greedy consumeristic and heavily materialistic you are just treating yourself through you stress management ...
Annasamy Anna, that morning.
"People used to be one. And share all they had. Now times have changed ..."
" Because money came in. With money, those who have more, engage only with those who have more.
They can take money from each other when they need, and also give. So they become a closed group.
The walls grow with money always ..."
Today I got some very important answers. That I gave been searching for, for long.
Started when we started holding things for tomorrow.
And money helps us do that most effectively.
What if Covid is not the virus.. We are?
Money is like manure. Sitting in a godown it serves no purpose. ( I suppose it is the same with food in India -FCI)
Yes. But its more complex. The very nature of money.
Aparna Krishnan
Not really if it is not money as we know it, we would have thought of something similar. Money is not the problem. Water is not the problem...but floods are, typhoons are!
Money, Or shells, or leaves. Or anything that allows you to accumulate. Always at the cost of another in a finite earth.
Money is the solution for the problem it creates.
Money is a tool and therefore neutral. Whether it’s a problem or a solution depends on how it is used.
Those who think money is a problem, I am ready to accept all those problems
Money can be a useful tool. The problem is that we have made it our master.
There is a story of the eight pots of gold, the eigth pot that never fills. Folk tale. Money is designed to be the master.
Vigneshwaran RK"When money came in they were able to take money from each other when they need. So they become a closed group".
When there was not this intermediary money then what was happening?. People were not taking things from each other when they need?. Wish somebody could elaborate!.
Aparna KrishnanWhen there is no money (or gold as a token of currency) the class divisions are far less acute. We can hoard only as much rice as we have granaries, and so it is perishable.
With money comes class difference, and with more money, sharper differences. And then the world's become different.
When we are in one world, one community, there is much more sharing, understanding and mutualism.
The village 20 years ago was 'poorer' place, and yet people used to take curries from each others homes routinely, and eat in each others homes.
With drought, when things became scarce, and everything had to be purchased, this simple sharing became less. People hesitated to ask and take as there was so little in every home.
Here Annasamy Anna is giving another angle to how culture gets eroded. The culture of simple community bring.
... wealth, richness disempowers in many many ways. It increases insecurity, and increases our dependence on our wealth as a pillar of strength, and a consequent irrational attachment to it.
It also decreases our ability to give. To give as the poor give. Give in a way that we give away our security, and not just from our excess. Give away our very tomorrows.
I have seen myself juxtaposed with the poorest for decades. And seen painful truths. About my inability, in the backdrop if their unthinking generosity. A giving which has no name except Dharmam, duty ...
The more u r affluent d more u r greedy and dead from inside, I feel...
yes. unless we kill our conscience, we cannot hold onto our privilege.
so we all are a little dead.
Should our essential response be sharing our riches, or sharing the poverty of the poor ?
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We should return to the barter system. That way one has to produce in order to buy.
Sharing of poverty is critical more than sharing wealth, I think. Sharing poverty helps roping in the heart whereas sharing wealth at times can be just transactional and even establish hierarchy between the giver and the receiver.
Also we become stakeholders in the same system as the poor. And our fight against the inequities becomes more complete.
In my view the concept of money solving financial problems is an illusion. I lived most of my adult life in poverty, living at times in squats or slums like my parents and grandparents had done before me for at least some of their lives. I worked on farms or childminding, saving time for campaigning and protesting. Things became more secure in my late 40s but we still get by on well below the average income. My partner, whilst on a bicycle yatra in Rajasthan, heard many middle class Indians congratulating themselves on having done a little bit of manual labour in return for their meal and a bed and talking of the nobility of it. She pointed out that she had been doing manual work since before she was a teenager and that it was about survival not nobility. To me it is more important to live at a level of minimum exploitation rather than to become rich at the expense of others and then choosing who to help with our largesse. Poverty in Scotland is not, of course, to be equated to poverty in India.
Why is a simpler life seen as inferior to a more consumptive life ?
It should be appreciated more than excess consumption is.
Especially when everyone is passionately talking of climate change.
Why inferior ?? Whether by choice or necessity.
Yes to start with. Many don't know what numbers make them feel safe and secure. Consumerism is an addiction like smoking, liquor, drugs..
Many of those in the world who consume the most must presumably wish those who produce the food and raw materials that feed their luxury and excess to continue to live a simpler and more austere life. That is the only way that they can continue to get their goods as cheaply as possible. If everyone tried to eat as much meat and dairy, consume as much energy and deplete resources at the same rate as them their comfortable bubble would soon be burst. Somehow many can believe that their supposed sacrifice in paying a bit more to get a "greener" car, doing a bit of recycling or buying organic has an equivalence to the plight of impoverished farmers and miners (etc.) whose children are seriously malnourished. Not that many (or any) of us can truthfully claim that we have no part in sustaining this inequity. We all must make compromises but we, surely, also have to try to challenge our unconscious blindness to the impact of our choices.
Many, most, privileged beings actually seem to believe that to raise the poor to their level of privilege is a possible and desirable path.
Neither do they acknowledge that the earths resources, or many earths resources, cannot sustain that level for all.
Nor that their privilege itself exists only because if a concomitant poverty. That were all to have a well nourished existence, there would be less of privilege available. Far less.
A selective inability to appreciate facts seems to kick in.
To me it is more important to live at a level of minimum exploitation rather than to become rich at the expense of others and then choosing who to help with our largesse.
Caught between fear and greed, we store for future days, even as we see hunger before us today.
Only our own inner growth into fearlessness and contentment can redeem us from our sins.
In nature there is no artificial accumulation, and where it does, as in the case of fallen leaves, it becomes the common shared wealth again. Artificial accumulation started with the concept of money.
Physical storage has limitation but once you monetise you can hoard for generations. Even that would have some restrictions in terms of space and ability to carry and transact but once u digitise there is none.
The more money we have, the more insecure we are, and the more unable we are to part with it ...
Eashwaramma can give away one of her two sacks of rice, her entire earthly possessions, for the temple annadaanam, without a thought.
Yesterday as i was cycling down i saw a man walking down with bamboo baskets of big sizes piled on his head. I thought I ought to buy, but somehow cycled away given some 'practical' issues like how I would carry them, and where i would put them in our small home, apart from the fact that i had no use for them.
But the only practical issue was that this was a man in his fifties who has worked hard at his trade and needed to sell to support his family. That his and his family's food depended on that. The only practical issue.
The guilt I carried within me. Guilt is an emotion that always indicates a moral lapse, if we have the willingness to face it. Here the lapse was that the money in my purse was his by right, and not mine.
Money is something, resources are something, that belong to those in need. The earth creates enough for everyone's need for that day - and if one amasses, the other starves.
That we have a bank passbook does not make money ours, when there is someone malnourished for lack of it. That we fence up a peice of land does not make it ours, when there is someone who can plough it and grow the food he needs.
These are the essentials.
The poorest people I have known very closely, have the security to give generously, unthinkingly, from their very small possessions, to those in need.
The upper class, we, feel most insecure. Worrying about all the uncontollables. Trying to control that which cannot be controlled.
In the illusion that money can save us from all that fate deals, we stay insecure. As no amount of money can finally be 'enough'. To balance all possibilities.
Security lies elsewhere. In first understanding where all it does not lie ..
In the bus now, the poorer people are looking tired, but talking happily to one another. With a ready smile if eyes meet.
The richer folk look grim, vergeing on dourness. With their faces deterrminedly buried in a screen. Like yours truly.
There is a lesson here ,... many lessons ....
Just because we have 'more money', do we think we have a right to more of earths resources ?
I think it is a set of stories we tell ourselves about why we cannot abandon these lucky circumstances, that which subconsciously aggravates the ego and distorts one's perceptions, makes them believe they are actually wisely using those resources and that they will somehow solve the problems the world has not solved thus far using all that is available today. It is an elaborately programmed story. With this narrative active, one does rationalise things away. Ironically, irrational responses such as victim blaming or self blaming comes about to keep us in the same comfort zone. Such as "I am stuck with my home loan".
In Zen Buddhism they use a stick to beat and correct the human who has descended to the level of an animal. Maybe that beating is due.
After a long wait in the bus stop, realizing I was going to be late for the appointment, I considered taking an auto.
Then I realized that this was one of the essential strengths of a village. Whether you had money or not, you waited at village bustops for the far apart village buses. And then when it came, everyone got in and adjusted.
When money cannot buy privileges, it makes for a far saner and humane society.
Monika SethuramanLet me share here ma'am, university folks have simply no common sense to accommodate others or make space for other students when its packed. They stand like an immovable stone , untouched by some students hanging on foot board.
The one who urges others to move in to accommodate is looked as ' uncivilized '. Irony of our education .
It's same with IT corridor IT folks.
You can see the difference between unreserved train coaches and the reserved ones. The former are far more civilized and adjusting.
The poorest people I have known are the richest I have known ...
When money cant buy everything, then generosity, gratitude and such higher values come into play.
In the village if I have no firewood, the neighbour gives me from her small stock. Wood that she had painstakingly cut and carried home on her head. Debt is faced. Humility, gratitude are again realities. And some deeper lessons of unselfconcsious generosity relearnt.
Wealth (or money) is what enables people to amass. In a finite world, the other side of amassing is deprivation.
Were money to be rendered meaningless, real value of things and skills would surface. And then distribution would be fairer as it would not be so Also nature would be less exploited as one would not be able to draw excess unsustainably and stash that excess. Money or wealth allowed for far greater disparity. Industrilization played its part by allowing the capitalist to raid nature more throughly and also amass more, and also impoverish more.
Poverty, limited access to things, living on the edge.
All this is how nature is designed. And how all life survivs.
What takes it over the edge is when it is juxtaposed with excess, with indulgence.
The disparity, the riches next to poverty is the issue. More than even poverty.
A meme recommending walking says, " ... walking does not imply poverty."
Does that imply that poverty is something to be ashamed of, why ?
Poverty indicates that one has not exploited another and amassed. Not claimed more than ones share of the resources of the earth. Not denied another his share.
In this land, the rishis gave the model of voluntary poverty as the highest of standards.
Or the courage and faith to give, so much that it cuts into one's own survival ?
Years in a village, a landless and assetless community, has exposed to me my poverty. And their richness.
uettSpuonsSigetonriedee ·
The rich have sold their souls
See attendance in glass walled hotels, in expensive showrooms, in the costs of clothing purchased, fees of exclusive schools.
To walk past poverty into oases of expensiveness can happen only after one sells ones soul.
There is something about wealth that impoverishes.
The heart, and the conscience.
3 Comments
Rajeev R. SinghHeart and conscience impoverishes wealth. Its this way round. Thus value of money keeps falling ....
Aparna KrishnanMoney is worthless. It makes us worthless. Yes, it gives us the illusion of security, and in return demands our conscience.
Rajeev R. SinghMoney is worthless. True. Wealth is not worthless. Money is just one indicator of wealth ...
tnSpgoonfsdoareifccmdlri ·
We need a different kind of demonetization.
No more money - real or virtual.
And then the playing ground will start getting leveled.
Will look forward to see what the chartered accountant will offer the farmer in barter for a glass of milk ...
14 Comments
Arnab KarfaBut barter system has its problems.... Like divisibility, the coincidence of wants, measure of value etc
Aparna KrishnanThere is no black and white answer. Nor so we have a clean slate. We can only seek to understand the issues with an open mind, and work on change to our best understanding.
Siva ManupattyAlso they could not be compared. Barter system works on need and availability basis. Monetized system works on greed and disquiet basis.
Kriti BhardwajMoney is a hypothetical commodity. Those who own it, control it. It doesn't value a service or commodity by its importance, but by its availability. Rare is costly, less affordable is "class". The invisible hand of market in the Keynesian Economics makes a math out of demand and supply, and very logically, but like all other math what is retained in letter is lost in spirit.
Kriti BhardwajI understand that Adam Smith and J.M. Keyness were diametrically opposed, but the emphasis on keeping the "money circulating" is an insight they shared. And the liquidity crunch or inflation is all dervied from that basic tenet. We have a whole science based on something we cooked up, and the owners/controllers are running the entire world on that !
Aparna KrishnanYes, and caught that that trap, we try to teach village people make 'costlier' things that a fickle urban market can buy, rather than utilitarian products for the village daily needs.
Aparna Krishnan(That the village has been taught to seek plastic mass produced items is the other part of the story.)
Kriti BhardwajWhen a software engineer is asked to exchange a commodity or service with a farmer, he wouldnt be able to produce anything. Trades always develop when there is unequal distribution of wealth but capitalism makes a business out of trade which fosters on the agents of ownership or control. It ia mind boggling how normal it is.
Aparna KrishnanMany many insanities are normalized today. And the insane also preach.
Kriti BhardwajFalse sense of accomplishment. Specially the disillusioned youth. We opine on the Ozymandias without learning the alphabet ! In haughty dismissal, nonetheless.
tnSpgoonfsdoareifccmdlri ·
If there were no banks, and if I could not store for my infinite insecure futures maybe i would share more spontaneously, and maybe i would see less of the utter poverty around that causes a deep sickness of the soul.
6 Comments
Kriti BhardwajI have trouble understanding the banking system and the loans business. It's unnatural I feel. It makes over-consumption and mortgage a norm which is deeply troubling, if one really thinks about it.
Arnab KarfaIt feels unnatural because it is unnatural. Tell me who the he'll would loan currency to payback another loan?? As the first currency which came into existence from thin air because you loaned it.... Debt can never be settled.
Kriti BhardwajI know right ! Fractional reserve banking is crazy ! We loan out your deposits and run entirely on interest because essentially we arw a business. Wow.
Aparna KrishnanMoney currency allowed hoarding, and disparity, like nothing else before did. We need demonetization of a different kind !
ltSdpgoasnshhsormeefstdg ·
The poor dont steal.
We the privileged assume they will steal.
It took me a long time to figure out why.
It is because we steal.
We have stolen. Thats how we have excess, while others are malnourished. We intend holding on to our excess. We have made laws that have made our stealing legal.
And so we suspect everyone else as well.
Especially the poor. Who have never stolen.
Why we in our privilege, cannot share deeply and fully.
"The rich are very insecure you see. Holding on to their undeserved wealth in an ocean of poverty !!"
1 Comment
Anandha RajanCompassion is the key mam. Observing things around is more important. We just race with people around. Not realising finally we all reach silence and dust. Accumulating anything will only smell, will only be filthy, will only develop fear. Fear here is the only option nowadays to lead our life. And hence losing our compassion, slowly steadily..
The poor are not as poor as the rich are.
ftdtotSponsdSostredsaicd ·
The educated are so ungenerous compared to the poor.
The educated mind is godless, and thereby tries to secure its future all by itself. And hopes and beleives that a big bank balance will save it from all vagaries. It is also fearful as it has neither dharmam nor god to turn to, and so clings onto every asset it can lay its hands on, as a defence.
Also having no lifeskill - farming, hunting, climbing trees, cutting food for a fire - it feels very helpless at a deep inner level. And so becomes more grasping.
19Uma KS, Priya Ramanathan and 17 others
4 Comments
Jagannath ChatterjeeThis is practical. Education in the real sense is not happening anymore. Today's slugfest is about creating slaves for the industry. Everything has been reduced to the creation of money. In the process we are running out of wealth.
Aparna KrishnanI meant village people deeply beleive in a dharmam and are able to live by it - even at cost to physical security. And somehow their ability to do basic chores themselves unlike us who can only read and write gives a certian inner confidence.
Palanivelu RangasamyEducated group is the most insecured one. They always search for security somewhere else, whereas real security is hidden deep within them. What a paradox! The education that should have unveiled the hidden treasure has in fact alienated the educated ones from themselves.
Nit SriTrue. After a few years in the IT industry I used to wonder what other employable skills I had, if I came out of IT.
otSisapnessrimorntesoored ·
When you have no money, you understand the worth of relationships. The priority stays on relationships, not money. Money is secondary, and is shared far more readily. In every 'poor' community.
With money the faith slowly shifts there, to money. A sense of invincible power of money grows.
And then comes the attachment. To money. And then we the privileged find it so much harder to part with money. And along the way lose so much. Generosity, goodness, empathy, non attachment,
And then a day comes when we even forget. How much we lost. As we accumulated money, and got attached to it.
The basis of modern economics is monetisation.
Many things are priceless. Water, air. Sunshine.
Modern economics put a price tag on them. As it does on everything. When there was a crunch all it could do was put a high price tag. Hoping it would control excess use.
What is priceless cannot be made expensive. It has to stay priceless.
In traditional communities, to charge for water is unthinkable. It is paapam. A sin. It is given, shared. As is food to the hungry.
That is the only way to handle the gifts of God. Given to all. With the sense of sacredness. Anchored in religion and spirituality. To use with gratitude. And in limits. To share with all.
Money and pricing are no substitutes for sacredness.
Modern economics thereby fails at that first step.
enSttnSpgongmmSsoofriedfd ·
As years go by, living with a very 'poor' community.
Seeing their infinite generosity, courage in the face of odds, faith, positivity.
I wonder what I am intervening for. Why.
If the package we can offer has more money but if with that money comes erosion of all that really matters. The generosity. That courage. That faith. That power.
The doubt grows by the day ...
uiiotfnSspoianoosaordred ·
I usually park my cycle and leave it unlocked. It's a habit of years. Yes, it's an oldish kind of cycle.
When someone asked me what if someone on the street took it away I said without thinking, "The poor dont steal."
Then I realised how this was a lesson learnt over long years. Two decades. Living with the so called poor. Next door to them.
How when I moved in in to the village inbmy twenties, an urban, I used to keep everything in. Sandals also. Thinking that the utterly poor children who didn't have slippers even may be tempted to take them.
Today I squirm even as I say this ... at the arrogance and ignorence of those days.
Days after days unfolded to show me their far greater morality and ethic. A bar, which in their state of poverty, I would have failed to make.
It is our poverty that makes us misjudge the 'poor' ..
To monetize anything is to secure it for the rich, and deprive the poor of it.
Till then all have access to it.
In our village before the borewell era, all drew water by hand or bullocks. Water was available for all. The borewell technology came, and the rich sunk borewells, and the water table fell. From 60 feet, to 200 feet, to 1000 feet. Those who could afford this expense, drained out the water. Today we have no water at all in our essentially agricultural area.
It happens everywhere.
In cities water is monetized into cans. The privileged buy water and borewell water from.surrounding villages is bought away. The poor see their village wells go dry.
Next will be air.
Behind it all is the very concept of money.
Bharat Ramu
Behind the rat race that every human being is running to collect money, is the biggest myth that everyone can become money rich. It's a scam.
If everyone has a lot of money, money loses it's value due to increased supply resulting in inflation, nobody truly becomes rich. Money doesn't have any intrinsic value.
Along with money another scam is unlimited ownership of land.
uiiotfnSspoianoosaordred ·
I usually park my cycle and leave it unlocked. It's a habit of years. Yes, it's an oldish kind of cycle.
When someone asked me what if someone on the street took it away I said without thinking, "The poor dont steal."
Then I realised how this was a lesson learnt over long years. Two decades. Living with the so called poor. Next door to them.
How when I moved in in to the village inbmy twenties, an urban, I used to keep everything in. Sandals also. Thinking that the utterly poor children who didn't have slippers even may be tempted to take them.
Today I squirm even as I say this ... at the arrogance and ignorence of those days.
Days after days unfolded to show me their far greater morality and ethic. A bar, which in their state of poverty, I would have failed to make.
It is our poverty that makes us misjudge the 'poor' ..
Aarti MadhusudanSivapriya Krishnan you know I think that greed is universal . None of us says " enough". We all own more possessions than we need . We " manage " our taxes so we can have more, we go on holidays to " de stress", we create products to make money nothing else ...I think that the poor when they steal if they do , often do it to meet basic needs...and therefore I think our approach to the problem needs perspective of a different nature
Aparna KrishnanWe teach them also to crave. With our excesses. Their stealing cellphones or pizzas, I hope that paapam is placed squarely in our accounts.
The women were discussing. As they were cutting bags.
How when they go for agricultural work in the lands of rich farmers, the meal which is served is bare minimum. And how when they go for work on the lands of marginal small farmers, they always are fed with care.
Kumarapalle is a village of marginal farmers.
"When we go to Kumarapalle to deweed groundnut , if the work extends over 3 days, they make us bondas, payasam.",said Rani. "We also, we make sure we make something nice, two items, when people come to us to work." Rani has some land, as some others in this village do.
I agreed. I know well the poverty of the rich. Of my class. Of myself. Compared to those who are materially poor. But rich in ability to share.
Why is it that the more money we have, the more insecure we are ?
And that we find it so much harder to give away our assets, compared to the poor, whos next day meal is also uncertain. But who still give to the hungrier person with unconscious simplicity.
- PaalaGuttaPalle Dalitwada
21Venkat Krishnan N, Vigneshwaran RK and 19 others
3 Comments
Naveena CKAnd that is because most people can’t see a life outside of money. They feel very insecure. It’s a kind of ignorance. It’ll do them a great good even if they can get some idea that they can live without lot of money. Hence I feel they must acquaint themselves with the lives of people like Gandhiji or for that matter people of Dalitwada also. Living inside 4 walls and with few gadgets has destroyed our very conception of life.
Sameer ShisodiaThe poor often see money as a natural resource, and are still more integrated with nature where resources go through seasonal cycles and revive cyclically. The rich believe in interest, matching risks again money to mitigate them, and thus hoarding. I see this behaviour all around, and in me too.
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