Speaking in Rio-de-Genero at an international conference on pollution, Indira Gandhi said the conference should recognise that the greatest pollution comes from poverty. It is neither wise, nor rational for us in India to feel poverty is a problem when half the world has become prosperous 100 years ago. How different is Malayasia from us? When did she become free? Her income today is 30 times greater than ours. Poverty is eradicable and it must be eradicated. Resources are not wanting. The govt can certainly do it. The population can achieve it. The individual is capable of it. Every individual who, on his own effort, emerges out of poverty, is doing a patriotic service.
It is in the eighties that Tamil population came to know of the Mother. Precisely it is from 1987. I have witnessed the Prosperity in the lives of those who have taken to Mother all these years. Anyone of them stands out from their relatives and friends who have not come to Mother. The Govt is more a hindrance in this than a help. In certain areas Govt openly blocks progress. Some years ago the Telephone department would not restore a repaired phone for weeks. And it has a hidden cost too. Even officers of the department were not spared from that "same'' procedure. A retired soldier in Maharashtra took initiative to build a check dam with the local help. Water table rose up. Pump sets appeared. The village prospered.
Lenin saw that the feudal Russia could be made prosperous by electricity in 1917. His slogan was Socialism = Electricity + Soviets. On this death bed while he was raving in delirium he was speaking of electricity. Every new innovation like electricity has banished poverty and ushered prosperity into life. Computer is 1000 times more powerful now than electricity in 1917. Any manual work that takes weeks will be done by the computer in as many minutes. Time saved is money saved. To try to argue in 2004 that poverty is eradicable is like trying to prove that a graduate can write a letter. If the govt is ineffective, if the society is indifferent, the individual can banish poverty from his own life. There are dozens of methods which we are witnessing. I wish to add a spiritual dimension to such an effort. That dimension quickens the process.