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Monday, January 21, 2008

Religion Inc.

I am getting into the habit of being very critical of the seers and religious heads off late. Please do not catch me wrong that I am trying to analyse the confluence of different religions that exists around me. I think I would leave this to the socio-religious thinkers of our barren and fractured society.
I have got a very different angle to the way the some seers and the religious heads lead their lives, their ambitions and goals they set for themselves. With exception to some of the gurus that live in this age and era most of them in my opinion do not lead the stringent and pious lives that they are expected to do so.
Very recently I have started reading and trying to learn the nuances of how businesses are set up and run. I do have some clues about what a start up company is and how the green bills flow into a company. Although I am taking toddler steps towards getting the big picture, I can at least recite the alphabets correctly now.
I saw a picture of a great personality of our country inaugurate a humongous medical college set up by a well known religious institution a few days back. The cost of building one must have been equal to half yearly revenue of an established information technology company I guess! But the irony lies in how a non profit organisations which is supposed to have dedicated its life to the amelioration of society raise this kind of money? It has come to such a state where in the majority of the educational institutions in our country excluding the ones that are setup by the government seem to be solely owned by the seers. Try getting yourself a chance to study there and you will see the brutal side of the otherwise pious and peaceful mask the seers adorn themselves with.
Coming up with such colleges and schools and also running them successfully and profitably require a deep sense of entrepreneurship. Seers and religious heads have a huge pool of unquestioning and unconcerning potential venture capitalists in its followers and devotees. That’s a businessman dream investor of sorts. They usually head the management in these institutions and dictate its affairs. The seers employ advertising agencies and public relations personnel to popularise their institutes. They are looking for paying customers who can increase the bottom line in their organisations. The only prerequisite that one has to posses to study here is a fat bank balance. Meritorious and deserving students form a minority here. The profits are also exempt from most taxes by the virtue of being a religious organisation. No wonder you see seers having the latest Mercedes or helicopters as their prized possessions! I think they do more harm to the society by churning out doctors and engineers below the average competence standards. What hurts me most is that innocent people are victims of these qualified quacks that live amongst us today.
Its is very disheartening to see that organisations which have the elevation of moral and spiritual values of the common man as their main mission, in all reality do more harm than good. This is like skipping the main course to eat dessert in a buffet! The short sightedness of the people with apparent high intellect and positions of high social responsibility is starkly lacking and I think it should be exposed like a raw wound. Hope to see that day soon…..or will I ever?
“Captain Sharma, you will be required to fly our customer today barefoot”
Why? This is obnoxious!
We have a seer chartering our jet today captain…….you know the customer is always right eh!”