Narada muni, the wily, peripatetic wayfarer of the fourteen lokas, once on a visit to Vaikuntha found the Lord in deep confabulations with Kuber, Daridranarayana and Swami Vivekananda.
The Lord asked pleasantly, “ nice to see you. But what brings you here ?’
‘Narayana, swayambhu, I only came to pay my respects to you’
‘Narada, you have an uncanny sense of being at the right place at the right time. I need your counsel to settle a claim on that hen there. It lays golden eggs. Kuber claims it as the custodian of treasure. Swami ji wants it to be given to Daridranarayana.’
Swami ji pleaded, ‘Daridranarayana needs it more for it assures him of a regular income. He has little to survive on’.
‘That is precisely why the hen can’t be entrusted to him. He will eat it up and all of us will eventually end up poorer’ ,Kuber countered.
‘There you have it, Narada . What should I do ?’
Narada thought for a while then said, ‘Narayana, the answer lies on the Prithvi loka, particularly, in Jambudvipa.’
‘ Then do go and find out’.
Narada transported himself to the historic triumphal arch-monument commemorating the landing of King George V and Queen Mary at Mumbai in 1911. As he stood before the central dome resting on four turrets, he noticed a freshly scrawled line above the original inscription- ‘Gateway to New India’.
Oomph…he intoned.
He toured the length and breadth of Jambudvipa and other Deshas. Enlightened, he thus reported to the Lord.
The Kubers of Jambudvipa are accumulating wealth at astronomical rates compared to the poor. For instance, 73% of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1%. The greatest irony is that Jambudvipa has the largest number of billionaires and largest number of Daridranarayanas on Prithvi loka. With 17.5 % of the prithvi’s population it has a disproportionately higher, 20.17% of its people, Daridras; that is, 139 million manavas not able to scrounge two meals a day.
Like in the case of wealth, the summit of the corporate hill is getting steeper and the base broader. Aggregate corporate profits for Q1FY22 of the 7500 listed companies shows the top 100 accounting for 90%, many of those owned by a few families. This trend has only accentuated over the years.
Further, every catastrophe only makes the rich richer and Daridras poorer. During the 2020 pandemic, billionaires increased their wealth by 35% while an estimated 122 million lost their jobs. On the entire Prithvi loka, of the number of people who slid into poverty due to the pandemic, 60%, that is 75million, were from Jambudvipa.
The king of Jambudvipa, along with many other kings on prithvi loka believe that enabling the rich will elevate productivity and investment and bloat the economic pie so that all get bigger slices of it. The operative mantra is- Rising tide lifts all boats. So handing over airlines, railways , banks , airports ,defence production etc, etc, etc to the rich is the most efficient economic management. The government, it is presumed, has no business to be in business.
While the economic pie has indeed become bigger, little has trickled down to the masses at bottom of the economic pool. Rather, pro rich policies have resulted in an upward, not downward, distribution of incomes. The living standards of the lower class, a strong, 90 crs, is stagnating.
This is evident if we juxtapose the two contrasting economic periods - the 9 years from 2005-06 to 2013-14, when welfarism was on the ascent with MGNREGA , Right to Education, Right to food, gas and oil subsidies, more rights and entitlements ,which many derisively dubbed as povertarian, with the seven years of push towards free market capitalism from 2014-15 to 2020-21. Per capita GDP, at constant 2011-12 prices, grew at an average 5.02 % p.a. in the former against 3.62% p.a. in the latter. Enriching the rich has enriched the Daridras less, rich more.
In the Nordic region, I found Swedish bus drivers are paid 50 times more than Jambudvipa drivers, whereas the latter are far more skilful, having to plough through a bewildering array of humans, animals, mechanical and manual contraptions of all varieties in various paces of motion. Yet the per capita income of Sweden is twenty times that of Jambudvipa. Obviously, the rich in Jambudvipa are far less productive than the rich in rich Sweden to account for this income disparity. Therefore, the rich are not the solution of Jambudvipa’s economic ills, the rich are the problem.
Narada concluded- Manavas on Jambudvipa have become a ‘coconut society’ ; an overwhelming mass of soft, fibrous, protective shield nurturing a pulpy, white core growing on the inside of a small round carapace, and fed and sweetened by a watery fluid within, like an embryo nourished in the womb. As the coconut ripens, its outer mass creases, shrivels, desiccates, sucked dry to fatten the white pulp. While the pulp thus accrues value in maturity, the outer mass is reduced to husk, good only for low value coco peat, twine or footmats. Likewise, all value in manava samaj is embedded in a little core from which little leaches out to benefit the soft husk.
That is why daridranarayanas need your benevolence !
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