Imagine a huge plate of sumptuous delicious nutrient rich food kept at the top of a tall tower. The topmost rooms of the tower hold the upper class citizens of the country while the lower class citizens of the country occupy the lowermost rooms of the tower. Of course, the middle rooms of the tower hold the middle class citizens of the country. The plate of food is brought down gradually from the top to the bottom of the tower to feed everyone in equal amounts. However, owing to the greedy nature of the upper class citizens, most of the food is taken in by them. Little is left for the middle class citizens and almost none for the lower class citizens. A similar imagery of our inhumane society was depicted in the 2019 film ‘The Platform’.
These three broad classes of people form the crux of our society. The upper elite class live a very comfortable life, eating at top notch five star restaurants of the country with their families, going on holidays in other countries, relaxing at the most exquisite and expensive spas of the costly resorts, obtaining education from the world class institutes in the country, spending tonnes of money on celebrations, festivals while living in the most luxurious houses and cars. The crores of money in their bank accounts help them to get an extra leverage over other classes by buying everything that they can – including people! Such is the power of money! The only concern of this particular class of people is to be able to maintain their ‘rich and sophisticated’ status among their fellow colleagues.
On the other hand, we have the conventional middle class people, the dreamers, who struggle financially to fulfill their aspirations of leading a decent life with good education and good salary. The citizens belonging to this class exhibit utmost perseverance, dedication, sincerity towards bettering their craft. They work hard to achieve their dreams. Being a middle class citizen myself, I work hard on a regular basis to keep on moving ahead every day in the hope of eventually fulfilling my goals in life. However, not every hard worker gets rewarded due to lack of finance or lack of Godfathers or Godmothers to help them establish themselves in their careers. Such sheer bad luck can keep them away from touching ‘the golden trophy’. Therefore, you will rarely see citizens from this class studying at the elite ivy league colleges or the other world class institutes of the country. One thing that you would find in abundance in this section of people is ‘hope’.
Here comes the most poverty stricken class of people – the lower class citizens. They have very less money and therefore, they can’t afford a good education (forget about higher education!). Few luckily after quite a lot of hard work, get educated through the government scholarships. The uncertainty of tomorrow is dreaded by them. To be able to survive today or not is their only concern. Getting a decent meal today makes them happy as that itself means a lot to them! To make ends meet, to achieve their dreams of leading a decent life with basic needs fulfilled, they have to struggle very hard. Whoever said, ‘Money can’t buy you happiness’ seems to have forgotten about this section of our society!
Possession of different quantities of money has divided the society into these classes, to the point of no-return. Thus, to ensure an equal ground with equal opportunities for every individual - whatever class they may belong to, a change is required in a top to bottom approach. If the government starts directing their crores, millions of money towards the provision of basic facilities and higher education of the lower and middle class citizens, to enable them to make their own living, then the class divide will gradually become blurred over time. This is the only way to relieve the class divisions in our society. However, humans love power. The ability to show dominance over others is to a huge extent ingrained in the minds of human beings, as depicted by our history as well. Therefore, class divisions once seeped into the system, are tedious to eliminate from society.
Definitely virtues like modesty, honesty, integrity, loyalty, righteousness, generosity, self-control and empathy, matter way more than possessing money. A person, rich or poor, who is respectful to all, will be remembered always. But, can the person’s good virtue buy him/her rice or dal? No, right! Money can buy you the food which shall provide you with energy to do work to achieve your life goals that will eventually bring you happiness. Money can get you a laptop and good internet connection to help land you with jobs that you want to do. Money can get you your comfort food when you are stressed during work. Money can pay for your travels at various beautiful places across the world. There are several people who first earn a lot of money through decent conventional jobs and then follow their specific passion utilizing the money saved over the years. Thus, the power of money should not be undermined. In reality, money can indeed buy you happiness as long as you know where and how to invest it!
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