Time is on Our Side

Tuesday November 9 2004 09:08 IST

By Karmayogi

The youth in India are breathing the fresh air of Freedom. The contrast in attitudes towards life between the youth and the aged is marked.

The youth are optimistic, hopeful, forward-looking, and feel whatever they do will be successful. The senior citizens are unable to recall any optimism in their youth. Their youth was characterised by pessimism, diffidence, fear, shrinking and doomsday thinking. This is the greatest gift of Freedom to us.

Man feels free in every nation that is free. Europeans who were under the thraldom of class discrimination felt such a freedom on reaching the American soil. We in India knew life to be cruel, society to be oppressive, even law unhelpful because we were poor. In those days, the Indians felt that Time itself was an oppressor. This is no longer true.

Life is supportive, society always lends a helping hand and Time is on our side.

When Time changes into something positive, still the society, law, and family have to do their bit for us to avail of the boon. The untouchables to whom life was a tyrant witnessed such a change when law and constitution favoured them with reservation. No longer is untouchability a curse; perhaps it is felt to be an advantage.

Since 1900, the world is coming together in varying measures. That was why when the wave of the American Stock Market crash began, it spilled over to Europe and ruined millions of families in Asia.

Now is the time for such a wave of Prosperity to start and gradually spread over all countries, because Time is on our side, Life is benevolent, and Society is compassionate. As we passed an act abolishing untouchability and offering concessions to those who were oppressed, to avail of this great BOON of God present in the atmosphere of the earth, laws have to be passed and attitudes of various societies should change.

The Government of India deserves warm appreciation and rich congratulation in contemplating one such act - an act to guarantee employment in some measure. This is an act proper to the developed countries, but India, precariously perched in various ways, has initiated it. Sure, She is trying to be an evolutionary leader in the sphere of SOCIAL EVOLUTION.

I see spiritual benevolence and wisdom behind this move. No country except the USSR offered full employment. She did for 70 years. The guarantee of work is the basis of economic security. I hope this is a beginning and the government will pursue the Act with the public, the State governments, the judiciary, and their own administration for the right social attitude that will infuse life into the SPIRIT of this Act.

The National Farmers' Commission and the other commission recently set up to promote employment in the informal sector are great, positive steps. The government is evincing an unprecedented dynamism of conception. GOI is knocking on the wide doors of prosperity.