Greed has no Vaccine

While we battled the Corona pandemic, an ugly truth came to the fore as people’s greed. They even risked the lives of other people in the pursuit of greed for material gain. Greed is the root of our moral downfall, and men and women from all stations of lives-even kings, corporates and nations-have fallen prey to this disease. Our indiscriminate use of natural resources too is a form of greed that we have begun to pay for, through climate change and natural disasters. Only we can control it, there is no vaccine to combat it

During this Corona pandemic, we lost about four lakh valuable lives. A lot of discussions have taken place over it. But now, it is time to plan and protect ourselves from a probable third wave. But Corona has witnessed a lot of contradictory happenings. On the one hand, we have seen our corona warriors such as doctors, nurses and hospital staff working round the clock to save patients while on the other, we have also seen black marketers of life-saving drugs and oxygen cylinders, playing with the lives of patients. We have seen our scientists working hard to create our own home-produced vaccines, while on the contrary, we have also seen fake vaccines being injected into the bodies of innocent vaccine seekers. Empty vials of life-saving drugs and vaccines have been used by the racketeers to fool people. The reason behind these sordid acts is the greed to make fast money by unscrupulous means while putting the lives of others at risk. In the process, the greed of some has overpowered the safety of others.

MORALLY HOLLOW

Greed is one of the evils, which, when nurtured, becomes the cause of our moral downfall. “As long as greed is stronger than compassion, there will always be suffering”, said Rusty Eric. Greed is also a recipe for self-destruction as it leads to a bottomless pit which exhausts a person without ever reaching to satisfaction. Greed is mainly equated with money but it can also be for other things such as power and position. Greed can be defined as a selfish and excessive desire for more of something, such as money or any other thing. Greed is a negative concept and trying to get something by hard work, merit and skill is not greed. A person dominated by greed will often ignore the harm his/her action can cause to others. Greed is to try for something more than what is needed or what one deserves. This may end up in snatching what belongs to others. Efforts to achieve something is to be encouraged if that is done by rightful means but selfish and greedy action to get things by unethical means ought to be discouraged. Getting a thing rightfully is an achievement while getting a thing wrongfully is a greedy acquisition.

RICH AND GREEDY

To understand ‘greed’ and ‘greedy people’, I rely upon my experience with the income tax department, which I served for thirty-five years. The tax department mainly deals with the rich and middle-class salaried people. Tax officers are required to detect tax evasion. While doing my job, I experienced that almost all of the significant tax evaders were rich or super-rich people. They had enough wealth for their succeeding generations but still, they were seen indulging in illegal practices of not paying the rightful tax. This conduct was simply governed by their greed. One can also infer that greed is a psychological aberration that compels a greedy person to accumulate beyond his needs. In the course of some income tax raids against such people, I found that they had buried a huge amount of money and valuables in cavities dug up under the floor of their palatial houses. This hidden wealth was not used by them and they earned it out of greed and also did not pay tax on such earnings. In modern times, such tax evaded wealth is hidden in shell companies and many times kept outside the country.

The initial motivation for greed and actions associated with it may be the promotion of personal or family survival. It may, at the same time, be an intent to deny or obstruct competitors from potential means or future opportunities. This aspect gives greed a negative connotation. Alternatively, the purpose could be a defensive response to such obstructions being threatened by others. But regardless of purpose, greed intends to create inequity of access or distribution to community wealth. Economists over time have explained greed differently. Modern economists have tried to distinguish greed from self-interest. Earlier, economists influenced by social thinkers like Hagel said that greed is inherent to the structure of society. Forget the intellectual discussion for the time being, but the fact remains that greed is a sin, like other sins.

LEADS TO DESTRUCTION

What are the consequences of greed? First, it is destructive for the owner of the greed, that is, the greedy person himself. Greed makes the person do unethical, and even illegal things. This destroys the mental peace of that person. Greed makes a person blind and he even goes to violate laws and the result may be that he has to go to jail. For example, the persons dealing with fake vaccines were blind to human lives in their bid to make quick money, and the end result will be spoiling their own life, landing them in prison. Even if they are not caught, they are still the losers, as they lose their peace of mind. There is a saying that you can cheat thousands of people, but you cannot cheat yourself. You fall in your own eyes when your greed compels you to do something wrong.

Secondly, the greed of a few may be devastating for the peace and harmony of the society. The devastating Mahabharata war happened due to the greed of the Kauravas. They had refused to give even five villages to the Pandav brothers as proposed by Lord Krishna. History says that big battles were fought because of the greed of some kings. Wealth in India attracted greedy invaders and as a result, we lost our independence for almost a thousand years.

"Greed is also a recipe for self-destruction as it leads to a bottomless pit that exhausts a person without his ever reaching satisfaction. Greed is mainly equated with money but it can also be for other things such as power and position"

GREED OF A NATION

Even today, the greed of expansionist China has created problems for its neighbours and thus, the peace in Asia is at stake. China has occupied islands in the South China Sea for its economic greed. It is fighting with us to usurp our land. The inference is that greed is not only related to individuals but there may be greedy companies, greedy organisations or even greedy countries.

Thirdly, greed may become the cause of natural imbalance. Mahatma Gandhi had said, “The world has enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed”. We see today that out of greed many of us are robbing the earth of its natural assets and thus in the process creating imbalances in nature. By taking water for our supposed needs, we play havoc with the water tables below the earth’s surface. We occupy forest land for supposed development but it is mainly a greedy invasion to possess more land. Factories do not care to control pollution, as the same will amount to more expenditure and as a result, we play with the environment and bring global warming. It has a cascading effect as we see floods, droughts and climate change.

STRAIN ON RESOURCES

Fourthly, like natural resources, even material resources get stretched due to the cornering by a few. The factual observation is that the world’s 2153 billionaires have more wealth than of 4.6 billion people who make up 60% of the planet’s population. This is as per the Oxfam report of 2020. There is no doubt that billionaires must have worked hard to become billionaires but there is no doubt that their greed fuelled their efforts. While cornering material resources, they put blinkers on their eyes and caused serious inequality in the world. Creating wealth is good but still better is equitable distribution of wealth. Wealth getting accumulated by only a few will mean snatching the shares of others. All human beings on the planet have shares in the global wealth as some directly and some indirectly contribute to its creation. The richest man is so rich, only because his poor employees have worked hard along with him.

Fifth, greed is the cause of corruption. Public servants get attracted to bribes when they become greedy. This has a serious effect on development and welfare activities. As one late Prime Minister had said that out of one rupee released by the government for these works, only 15 paise reached where it should have. Much of the government money is lost in bogus commissions and bribes.

GREED FOR POWER

Greed for power is also very common. We have seen that greed for power sometimes leads to violence. In olden and medieval times, we have seen brothers killing brothers and even imprisoning the father to get the crown. The story of Asoka killing his ninety-nine brothers to become the king of Magadha is well-known, though in the later stage, he became a non-violent Buddhist. Aurangzeb became the king of India after killing his brothers and imprisoning his father. Even today in our democratic setup, we see that to gain power violence is indulged during elections.

Summarising, greed is a deadly virus grown by our nature and demonstrated by our conduct. We ourselves have to kill it and no vaccine can kill this virus.