How do we see the enormous expenditure on frivolous things that happens in today’s society?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Recent news report says how the court appointed, Supreme Court appointed administrators of cricket are paid about one lakh rupees per day, if not more. And for many, on some days, their working day, their work for the day was simply supervising a IPL cricket match. Now, what is there to supervise for the judge in the match when everything in the match is organized and orchestrated by the organizers and other professionals over there.
It is a sad state of affairs that in a country where millions of people struggle to get just a square meal per day, there are some who earn a lakh rupees a day just for watching a cricket match. One of the greatest causes of inequity, of inequality, disparity in wealth and the sense of unfairness is this blatant disparity in distribution of resources. We could see that there are almost two Indias, the India of the wealthy and the India of the poor.
And the India of the wealthy is becoming wealthier and wealthier and in the India of the poor, may not literally be becoming poorer, but with inflation making prices shoot up, the poverty is felt acutely. It’s sadly true that whatever we try to do, we end up with lots and lots of wealth not being available for people, lots and lots of wealth being not available for many people, while some lots of wealth is concentrated with a few. Ultimately, if we want a more equitable society with a more balanced distribution of wealth, it has to begin with a change in values.
We see the enormously distorted values here that even a hard day’s work doing grinding labor will not give half the money that might be got by working hard to watch a match. Of course, what is the hard work in watching a match is open to question. The Bhagavad Gita says that greed creates hellish conditions in life.
Not only does it take people to hell in a future life, being a door to hell, but also brings hell in this world. And the greedy often create hell for others in this world while creating hell for themselves in the next world. We didn’t call sports itself as a greedy affair.
It is just a matter of entertainment and it could be healthy entertainment. But when there is the kind of colossal mismanagement of resources coming from a distorted sense of values whereby people don’t understand what is truly important for them and what is not important. Then they end up pumping money into things which are frivolous and draining of the supply of money for things which are serious.
There are people with life-threatening diseases, people dying of hunger and starvation, hunger and thirst, people living in unhygienic conditions, all of them who could be helped with a small inflow of money continue to be neglected while some people end up getting phenomenal amounts of money for doing nothing more than watching a cricket match. The point here of course is not to criticize the Supreme Court or even to criticize the cricket administration or even to criticize the particular officials who are receiving this kind of money. The point is to draw attention to the imbalance of values in our society by which the frivolous is fabulously paid for and the serious is outrageously strapped of funds.
We need a greater orientation towards reality that will come from a broader understanding of what is truly valuable in life. It is to the extent that we practice spirituality and ground ourselves in reality that we will be able to get our values more balanced and thereby live more equitably. And as each of us as an individual starts doing this we will find that the society also will be able to do this better and better more and more.
Thank you.