QUESTION & ANSWER WITH GURUDEV
POSTED ON: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2022
Q: Why are the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer? How is God taking care of poor people when they are struggling to get a full square meal?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
My observation about poor people is that they are poor not because God has punished them to be poor; it is liquor that has kept people poor. A laborer earns almost the same as the average white collared job person in the city, but he spends two-thirds of his earnings on liquor, so he remains poor.
The second reason for poverty is laziness. Even today if you see a poor boy or girl, if they strive hard, they can really come up. There are many examples of people from the bottom of the pyramid really rising to the top. You need that zeal, will, and enthusiasm to do it; many times people lack this.
When we first came here to this place in Bangalore, the Ashram was just a barren land, nobody wanted this land. Nothing grew here; no grass, no trees. There was only one tree in 60 acres of land. Just imagine! There were no other trees! There was nothing here, it was rocky, uncultivated land, with no water.
In those days, Philip, Pramila, Kiran, Vinod Menon and many others who were here, planted all these trees. In the initial days, they would pour buckets of water to the trees.
All around the Ashram, people lived in thatched roof hutments. If I remember correctly, there was only one tiled roof home in the neighboring village, belonging to the Sarpanch (head of the village). Every other house was a thatched roof that would leak in the rain, and blow away if there was strong wind. This was the case, not only in this village, but all around here.
Moreover, on this Kanakpura road, there were only two buses - one in the morning, and another in the evening. And there would be trucks that would carry sand from the river below to the city. (You can hear the sound of trucks even in the Sudarshan Kriya tapes!)
At that time, to come from Jayanagar to the ashram, you had to catch two buses.
When we came to this place, it was a totally rural area. We got all the children together from the neighboring 20 villages and opened a school for them. The people around were very poor. We, at The Art of Living, also had limited resources. Often we would take a little overdraft from the bank for the Ashram, and after two-three months we would pay them back.
Sometime in the nineties, maybe, I called all the poor unemployed youth from around this area; they must have between in the age group of 20 to 35. I told them that I wanted them to have some employment. They were simply a burden on their families doing nothing, whole day sitting around, listening to the radio, playing cards or cricket. And in the evening, they would go and drink. We made schools for children, but the youth were unemployed. They had passed their tenth standard, and did not want to go to field and work, or do any agriculture. Their attitude was that agriculture is done by those who never went to school, or those who had studied only till primary school. Why would they do agriculture? They did not want to work in the fields.
I called the Director of Small Scale Industries from the Government of Karnataka and asked him to present all the projects that he could to these 200 unemployed boys. I wanted them to do something. (Even we had a thatched roof hall where we used to give Ashtavakra discourses; in the same place, I called these boys and this Director.)
The Director came very enthusiastically; with painstaking efforts he tried to explain nearly 225 hundred projects for three to four hours. And the boys had an excuse to say how this will not work, and that will not work! Every project that the director would explain, they would say, ‘Gurudev, it is not possible!’ Finally I asked them, 'What will work?'
They said, ‘Please get us a job in the Police department or make me a bus conductor.’
How many jobs you can get with the Police, or as Conductors in the government? No one wants to be an entrepreneur, no one wants to make any effort.
These people want to remain poor, what can you do?
This is when we started the Youth Leadership Training Program (YLTP). We put all of them through three months of vigorous training; made them exercise in the morning to get them out of their lethargy. When they started doing kriya and meditation, we gave them employment for three months. However, we told them that you have to do something. Today, many of them have become entrepreneurs.
Now, can you see any thatched roofs around the ashram? No! People have built homes; not only in this village, but all the villages around are now flourishing. The economy is booming; now you don’t get laborers from this area, they come from other areas.
Similarly, there was one boy who used to be our gatekeeper here. Today, he has 400 employees working under him. This boy’s story is very interesting. As a child, he was a trouble maker in school, he would fight with every other boy, and no school would accept him. His parents were sick and tired of him, so they came and left him here. They told us to do whatever we wanted with him, they did not want him in the house as he would beat everybody, break everything, and create so much trouble all around. So he would just sit outside Shakti Kutir, and stop people from coming to my room. Those days we never had any other security guard, he was the only person! He would stop everybody, even my mother! Many times, she had to fight with him to come with the food.
You see, just being here, there was such a big change in him. Then he went back, and got married. He started a big business; he has not studied much, yet he has around 300-400 employees.
This is the case with many other people; there are many other examples, not one; the lethargy has to go away.
One of the Ministerial candidates of this country used to be a tea vendor at one time. He came from a very poor background; today, he is a State Chief Minister.
Another example would be Ramnath Goenkaji, he started The Indian Express, a newspaper that even took (the late Prime Minister) Indira Gandhi head on! He had studied only up to the second standard. He used to sell fruits and vegetables in a trolley in the streets of Mumbai. Today he has built an empire, even though he came from a very poor background.
You need to bring that spiritual force, confidence, and willingness to come out of poverty; this is what we need to do. Just doling out food and things for the poor is not going to work.
Ethiopia is another example; there was a famine in Ethiopia for seven years. Since the country went through a famine for so long, people did not work. In the eighth year, even when there was rain, nobody wanted to work! This is because they got used to getting aid from other countries. They expected someone else to give them aid, food and material. Even today, Ethiopia has such huge masses of land but it is the Chinese and Indians that are buying and cultivating the land in Ethiopia, because that zeal in the people to do something is gone.
There is another very strange thing in Ethiopia. For six months in a year, people don’t use any dairy products due to some religious belief. So now, no one wants to set up a dairy products business because for six months the product will not be sold.
Perhaps in the ancient days, they might have said that one should not take cold milk in the cold season, or there may have been some other logical conclusion. However, people not drinking milk for six months or using any dairy products as a religious belief makes the whole industry suffer a lot.
One needs to have a proper mindset to come out of poverty. And I tell you, it is more self-inflicted, rather than someone getting into it with a victim conscious. People say, ‘I am a victim, somebody has money, I don’t have it!’
Why you don't have it? It is because you have not worked for it.
Of course, there are other sides to the picture where people are being exploited, and that is also not correct!
Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
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