Concept of Money

The population of High Net worth Individual (HNI) in India has increased from 84,000 to 1.26 lakh. An individual is considered to be HNI if his total investible wealth is $ 1million. If we take an estimate of Indian population to be 1.25 billion it comes to 0.01008%. Good isn’t it showing the enormous amount of progress that we have made?

I have not written this piece to praise or condemn India’s growth. The thing that worries me is that if this is how we measure growth and development we are on a road to perdition. We need to look towards growth in measures more than monetary. We need to look beyond the tradition ways of wealth. I will here try to analyze the concept of money.

The question is that how we measure wealth? The sum total of money, money equivalents and investments that we hold is what we called wealth. If yes then we are in deep trouble. The society that we are then striving to build is then built on the pillars of greed. Such a society can never strive or sustain for long it is going to collapse on day or the other. This basis of measuring progress is the cause of many of India’s problems.

The biggest impediment of India’s growth stems from such bias of the society towards money and its power. Henry Ford has famously remarked “I am not interested in money but in the things of which it is symbol”. This symbolism is what creates problem for the society and the definition of growth.

Man made money as a medium of exchange, store of value and mode of payment. If this was all to it why not distribute all the profits of the corporate and individual equally and everyone be given his share of work. We will thus be able to create an equitable world. We will also solve the problems like poverty. For the purpose of distribution of work one can use the individuals will and a lottery system. But then how many of us will agree to it?

But this is not where it ends. Money in India from centuries has acted as a symbol of prosperity. Money is also for our society a symbol of power, the little favors that it helps us in achieving, respect, the way people treat you and all the social frontiers that money can open for you is really amazing, self-respect, well this one’s a little debatable, comforts, money is associated with giving one the access to all the modes of comfort but again richest people are the ones who work the most first in creating and then spending and protecting this money, security, money is also a symbol of security against crisis, last but not the least happiness, money is also seen as a source of happiness although researches have proved it wrong.

I am also here not condemning the rich. I sincerely appreciate the effort and time that they put in. Many of the richest peoples have contributed in creating variety of social infrastructure. The issue that concerns me is that when the amount of money one makes becomes the sole criteria for the decision making.

Money is also important to a certain extent that it helps in buying the basic necessities of life. The way in which it helps in preserving wealth is also honorable. Research has shown that as wealth of an individual increases its correlation with happiness decreases. The issue of concern is the amount of reverence it accolades from the people. The evils that it breeds in the society are the area of concern. The way in which it impacts the everyday life of an average Individual in its relationship with others is troublesome. The loss of faith in each other that the money has resulted into is the greatest loss that the money has caused to the human beings. Money should not define one’s life and living.

Money has impacted in the way we live our life. The work we choose for the life is also dependent on the same criteria and scarcely on one’s desire. This pursuit of money has created a greater emphasis on the end result and has diluted the importance of the means to these ends. This has created a vicious cycle in the society. This evil of money that I am talking about is not new. It has been with us from a long time, since the inception of the concept of money. Monetization of products has gone to the extent of monetization of one’s life. We have become like money earning machines.

Apart from monetary wealth the money equivalents the investments and the markets that we have created is a greater area of concern. The way in which these markets operate and the risks they carry is a mystery even for the ones who have created them. The history has shown that we are not learning from our mistakes. The regulators of these markets have failed in understanding the beasts they have created. The way these markets value instruments, commodities and money itself is a mystery. The way in which we value our natural resources is also an area of concern. The way in which we value thirst, hunger and life needs to be relooked at.

The financial systems that we have created have many anomalies. The people who need the money the most will never be given because they don’t have any and the richest can have even more of it because they have more to pay from.

We need to look at more number of things then money to measure development and growth at all the levels of economy, society and individual.

We need to start reverse in this area from micro to macro. Individuals need to look at success and failures at a new way. We need to learn that certain things are done because they are to be done and they cannot be justified. Will we be able to justify the cost of preserving the nature the day we run out of its resources? This monetization has added various redundant commodities to our life.

The problem is that the demand of each commodity is limited so the amount of employment that an individual commodity will create is limited. Then the problem of unemployment can simply be solved by creating more and more commodities that we want. Simple na? No. We don’t have the resources to produce all that kind of stuff.

Inflation is built into our systems as the amount of natural resources that we consume and want to consume go on increasing and their stock depletes so the prices are bound to rise. The things that have protected us since long is the increasing productivity but then it is also reaching its peak levels.

We do things produce things for profits. So it is important to have poverty. If there is enough amount of wheat that can satisfy everyone in the world the prices will fall and then it will not be profitable to produce wheat. Scarcity of things is necessary to make profits. It is important to produce only that quantity of wheat which will keep its price above the cost of production and profit levels. Many of the things are made for limited life because the more number of times you buy the more the companies earn. Such is true for money. It is important to have more money as the more you have the more it differentiates you, if everyone has equal amount of money it is just paper.

There are various boons and curses of money. It is the solution and cause of the many of our problems. The origin of the word money also lies in Moneta and monere which means “admonishing goddess” and I think it has lived up to its name. Whatever I say I don’t have the solution to money do you?

-Aakash Agarwal, Member FORE Economy Forum