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Poverty in India—human causes, inspired solutions
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
India is a land of many cultures, great diversity, and great opportunity. Yet many of my fellow citizens still struggle to find a way out of poverty. As I’ve prayed about this subject, I’ve focused on three specific conditions that I believe need to be addressed in order to heal this situation: fatalism, lack of purpose, and ignorance.
Although people in India do believe in God, their belief in fatalism is often much stronger. This makes many of them accept poverty as unavoidable—as God’s judgment on sins they may have committed in a previous life. When they accept this mistaken belief as their fate, they lose their motivation to change.
Such a view of life assumes that evil is a power and that we are helpless before it. But views of life can change for the better, as my own life did when I began to study Christian Science. I began to see I didn’t need to accept things as they were—that it was possible to have a better life by thinking of God as infinite Mind, intelligent and good.
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About the author
Subhash Malhotra is an industrial engineer who has traveled extensively throughout the world. He lives in Mumbai, India.
