Confucius said: "In a country well governed poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed wealth is something to be ashamed of."
Given the corruption in India and out-of-control food and commodity prices along with rewards for incompetence in current Indian government, I guess that India is a rather badly-governed country. In that vein, I would say that in a developing country (or even a developed one for that matter), a vulgar display of wealth shouldn't be swooned over, instead it should be guffawed at as millions others die of starvation. Of course, one should appreciate hardwork and resultant success (wealth and success without hardwork must not be encouraged - possibly the same holds true for dynasty politics as well?).
India, let's face it, is a developing and relatively poor country - and will stay so for some time, given its population problems and bad governance- despite its ever-increasing GDP (PPP) and high growth rate (countered quite significantly by the inflation rate). India's GNP and nominal GDP (especially per capita values), along with HDI (Human Develop Index) remain very low, putting us in the lower bracket of nations in the world. Add in the factors of crime-rate, especially crimes against women and children (as well caste-based violence), it becomes more important than ever before to find solutions at common-man level rather than expect much from the government, which is, let's admit it, a product of this very society that we live in.
These solutions primarily include better access to education for everyone, and not just education, better and more inclusive education that is not a left-over legacy of British rule. One that doesn't make kids memorize the capital of a non-existent country 6 years after its breaking up (Czechoslovakia is, or was, the country in question). One that teaches respect for women and weaker (physically, economically or socially) sections of society, one that doesn't refer to Native-americans by their derogatory name - "red-Indian," one that teaches Indians to be racially sensitive and not call blacks and east-Asians with derogatory names.
Perhaps an educated society would be able to overhaul its own mental mindset or maybe an effort on the part of involved individuals would help overhaul the education system to provide that stimulation for the change in mindset to a more inclusive one - that formed the foundations of Hinduism and India as a whole. This change is also meant to weed out the existence of fraudulent God-men (brought out by the recent focus on the death of the Sai Baba figure), although I am quite ambivalent about the man behind that character.
Fake he may have been (and there is sufficient evidence online to prove that), but the thing is if he used this for good of the society ( http://www.thehindu.com/op
6917.ece ), I still commend him. In a country like India, which is filled with idiots looking for miracles rather than solutions borne out of hard work and something called "thinking", if by being a fraud Godman, you can get people to donate to charities and support good causes, hell every good soul should try to pull such magic-tricks and do that! While I do/did not pray "to" him or think of him as a miracle-worker, I still appreciate his efforts for "manipulating" the naivete of uneducated (literate but still uneducated) Indians with resources for the greater good of the society in general.
But, what we need is an education system or a change in mindset, that brings some cynicism to the "taking-themselves-too-seriously" Indian public, where we don't need some fraud God-men to show us the path of "morality and meaning." We have to realize now that just being harmless is not enough, nothing less than being useful will do to avert the crisis that looms over India and world at large.
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