The Moral Limits of Markets

There were many discussions in recent times on how generation gap keeps growing and in the process how the children lose our ancient identity and roots.  But in most of such discussions, one always complains and doesn’t go beyond to find a solution. But, what is it to do with markets?

This is the effect of extension of markets and of market oriented thinking to spheres of life. There is a very thin line between market economy and market society. Without ever deciding to do so, we had drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Is it the Americanization of everything?

There is a very blurred and thin line between coercion and corruption, it is not black and white; it is greyer! We say to our kids, finish reading the book, I will get you a chocolate; be a topper in class, I will gift you an I-pad. Are we enabling our kids to generate a passion for reading books & to excel him or are we corrupting our future generations? One might argue, it is not a bribe; but inevitable it is a corruption. In a sense, we corrupt the moral values associated with it. What are we teaching to our kids?

The market has taken deep roots in our society in the last few decades so much so that we have a habit of tagging everything. One might pay few $ and get the right to pollute the world. Carbon trading today is a billion $ market. We pay few dollars to jump the queue - be it in temple or with doctors (the rise of concierge doctors in the US is a classic example). There is market reasoning for everything - demand & supply; but are we not diluting the whole essence of the medical/humanity service?

Christianity is only 2013 years old. But, celebrating Christmas is a big business today across the world. America succeeds in ingraining the concept of market into the society, costing almost everything in life that we Asians stood for. But, don’t blame Americans (or the west). They are just being passionate and a hard core (nationalist) patriot who wanted their culture, society and economy in the whole of this planet.

How many of us celebrate Pongal or Diwali with a same vigor? What's stopping us? The blame should be on us. When did we last unite as Indians? When did we last take pride in our ancient roots? Is there nothing in our culture that we can be proud of? Aachi Chetinad chicken is far better and superior than KFC's. Food was not only for taste in India, it is a part of our life, culture and medicine. We had a kingdoms and civilization many millenniums before the west (when they were nomads).  How many of us know the value of "Pi" was mentioned in Mahabharata? How many of us know what Aryabhata's contribution to the field of mathematics and astronomical science? Our history books only talks elaborately about Mughal invasion, but there is hardly a paragraph on Vijayanagari Kingdom who ruled for 350 years. I am very painful when I say; we read Ramayana in English and not in Sanskrit, Tamil or Hindi. Someone told me that a recent report from UK says Tamil might be the oldest language on this planet (dating back to some 10,000 years).

There are 100,000 things that we can be proud of.  All of us know about Gujarat & Guajarati’s invasion across the globe these years. What is special about them that we lack? They took pride of their Gujarati roots and culture. You can find a Dhandiya event every year in US, UK and HK. Today, Kakra, Dhokla, Pakorah, Poha are as popular in the west as they were here. ”Guju” mania is good!

We helped westernization of our society because we don't feel the value and take pride in our ancient roots and culture. There are IB schools mushrooming in India, but we Indians don’t care about "Nalanda University". Today, it is very difficult to find a school in India that imparts our ancient teaching and culture. There are hardly any! The blame is solely on us. We need to do our own introspection.

Put "India First" in everything we do. Take pride in our ancient roots and be as patriotic as the Americans. A market economy is good, but not a market society. The seeds of this should be sown today so that our children can reap the benefit. The market society is so deeply intervened in our culture today that leave little room for this introspection to happen and it will be very difficult for us to break and move away; but it isn't impossible. Just like the “Lakshman Rekha”, one need to know when and where to draw the line.