When I was a child, my mother used to me read all type of religious texts. To be fair, I did believe that praying rigorously could solve many issues. The belief was so consuming that even before exams, I used to spend sometime praying ,especially, when I was less confident of my own preparation. As I grew and saw the world around me , my viewpoint started changing. When praying alone didn’t help clear the exams or help in avoiding general pain, I started getting more inclined towards rationality. Eventually, by the time I was in graduation, I was a highly rational person. By rationality, I am not saying that I became less religious but I started relying less on religion. Religion ,for me, became a mode of inspiration and not a source of demand. And most of the materialistic pursuits were driven by a sense of rationality. In fact, as I started working, I started giving ‘gyan’ to my mom that what religion actually is ,thinking that I know better than her the meaning of religion.

However, today, I feel I was wrong and my mother was right. The Indian middle class story is a story solely of God and India’s middle class. Today, when so much misery is all around ,Indian middle class has only one place to go i.e. God. Of course, who else do you blame for the current mess. Since I am born , I am listening the same rhetoric that system is bad. Now , seeing the system, I feel it ain’t about the system, it is about our priorities. India’s religious places are richer than its healthcare system. We have wealthiest lord sitting here and we have a healthcare system grasping for oxygen. The trick is simple, keep god happy and other things you won’t require. And India’s middle class which pays lot of taxes, donates liberally to charity calls from the government ultimately pays high amount of money to get admitted into hospitals and has to virtually manage the show on its own.

The migration of Indian middle class to abroad starts making lot of sense when one sees from financial view point. The tax rate is 30 percent, inflation is on higher side, healthcare facilities are exorbitant and inadequate and the threat of job insecurity is looming large. India as a society is yet to understand how much aspirations young India has. How much they feel for their country and how desperately they want to contribute to success of the nation but who will protect them? Today, India is going through classic phase of obfuscation, confusion and narrative building completely off the reality. Going by current narrative, pandemic is an act of god and no one is to be blamed or if one wants to blame then one can blame either God or oneself but apart from that everything is alright. The greatest danger lurking for India is not pandemic but its inability to think scientifically.

Dark ages are not dark because there is no light , they are dark because even when light is there , nobody is able to see clearly. Over the years, man has moved towards creating a more progressive society. By progressive society, it is generally meant that human’s emotional, physical and mental agony will decrease and his ability to fulfill his pursuits will increase. Thus, the reduction of human misery, especially one which is within the control of man, is important part of progressive society. The risk of not getting out of misery is when we start obfuscating it. Misery is for real. People die for real. And any society that let such time go with impunity will continue to suffer. Societies can ignore miseries at their own peril. The awakening of our society will require that certain heads are rolled for glaring incompetencies and blame to be squarely fixed. Corona is not an act of god and giving blame to God won’t serve the purpose, yet many of us will have to satisfy ourselves by cursing God because by law it is defined as ‘an act of god’ albeit it is another thing that laws are made by men.