RELIGIOUS VALUES AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Vikramendra Kumar

Abstract


We live in a world where economics dictates our present reality and future aspirations and ethics as a functional value system is often problematic, inconvenient and contradictory to prudence and pragmatism that are essential to our daily survival. In short, ethics and economics are as divorced as they could be. Most of us take economics to be a science of production, distribution and consumption of wealth. Though the pursuit of wealth is useful and even necessary, it is not an end in itself; it is only a means to something else.

 

Straddling four giant disciplines is no mean task, but sometimes such extraordinary journeys are necessary to even attempt to answer the age-old question posed by Socrates, ‘How should one live?’ The profound questions that triggered elegant and eloquent thoughts in economists and religious philosophers are the same. Splendid wealth co-existed with sorrow and suffering that was caused by material deprivation. This was even more poignant in India, a land of huge contradictions which unsurprisingly birthed and nurtured four major religions- Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism besides being a home to Judaeo-Christianity, Islam and several agnostic and atheistic philosophical sects. This shows the vibrancy of thoughts in all directions to understand, explain and solve human misery which was at the heart of all great intellectual quests.

Keywords


Beliefs, Religious values, Socio-economic development, Tolerance, Legitimacy, Spirituality.

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