There are social rifts, ethnic bickerings and economic divide in society, says Rajyogi Brahmakumar Nikunj ji
We are living in a sick society filled with people who would not directly steal from their neighbor but who are willing to demand that the government do it for them”: William l Comer. There is no doubt about it that the present-day society we live in, faces many serious problems which go on multiplying day by day. There are deep inter-party dissensions, social rifts, ethnic bickerings and economic divides. These are, in fact, un-resolvable because these are in-built and hence social scientists call them structural defects in the society which cannot be corrected unless the structure of the society is changed.
The kind of democratic system many countries have today that is based on elections where every state or city is divided into various constituencies and every candidate is supposed to contest from and represent that constituency. In various countries, certain constituencies are reserved for certain castes, tribes, et al. as a result of which people from that caste or tribe have the legal right to enter into the election fray in that constituency. Then, every candidate is supposed to fight the election with all the might against other candidates and to defeat them and, if possible, to humiliate them so that they lose their deposits. During the election campaign, every candidate cries hoarse admiring his or her own qualities and tries his best to down-grade other candidates which are called the opponents or electoral enemies. It’s natural that all the candidates try their best to win the battle of ballot box by appealing to the voters on the basis of political differences and caste, creed, religion or economic divides in a subtle way so as to escape the grip of law and thus they deepen the dissensions and, unwittingly, promote group- consciousness, sectional interests and social and economic differences, all leading to disharmony.
This kind of divide and nomenclature creates the spirit of opposition and confrontation and, it gives the air of pride and aplomb to the one who indulges into it . It creates, in others, the negative tendency to oppose, to criticise, to disapprove, to find faults, to make a search for scandals and to try to unsaddle the government. Naturally, these structural defects give further rise to many problems which the society fails to eradicate by any means. We must not feel that these defects are there only in the political structure, No! they are infact very much present in the social and economic structure as well. Hence, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole economic system is today based on hard or cut-throat competition and the social set-up is deeply and badly divided due to differences, based on gender, status, et al.
At the end of the day, all these leads to selfishness, lack of cooperation and tension with the attendant evils of drug-addiction, crime, psychosomatic diseases, et al. The question, therefore, is: Can’t we make the system change or bring a structural changeIJ let us remember that every system is based on certain values which distinguishes itself from other systems and, so, we will have to first decide our preference for those values that promote harmony and then have a structure that is built on those values. There is a need to have a system in which every individual has inviolable individual dignity and also the feeling that the state and the society are for good of all and not of only a few. For this, there is the need for social, political and economic theory that can be implemented into structuring a new society, free from the present defects.