According to Osho, India failed to produce wealth because its collective psyche sanctified poverty and disparaged wealth. For centuries, we deified the poor, glorified simplicity and renunciation, and measured greatness by how much one gave up, not created. This ego-flattering ideal killed aspiration and enterprise; we produced poverty because we accepted it. The cure: stop venerating poverty, respect wealth, and desire creation.
We stayed poor because we praised being poor and looked down on being rich, so people stopped trying to create wealth; we should stop glorifying poverty and respect making wealth.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
How is it that india could not produce wealth?
We create what we desire, intensely desire to create. We created poverty because we accepted it. If somebody asked Gandhi why he traveled in a third-class compartment, he used to say, "Because there is no fourth class on the railway trains." If there had been a fourth class Gandhi would have traveled in that class saying, "I travel in the fourth because there is no fifth class on the train." Now Gandhi would not he contented until he traveled in the train of hell itself. We say that Gandhi was a mahatma, a great soul, a saint, because he accepted the third class. Because we all, being poor, travel in the third, we think of Gandhi as the real mahatma. Really, we are sick of traveling third class; we would travel by first class if w e could afford it . But that is not possible, so we have to…
Osho, India has been a prosperous country!
No. Only a certain class in India was prosperous. India as a whole was never prosperous; only some strata were. From that affluent class came the religious people. From that affluent class the talk of religion also spread. India was never prosperous. As a society it was never prosperous. But yes, India was contented in its poverty. Therefore, rebellion against poverty never arose. Do not take this to mean that India was prosperous. India would still have been content in its poverty if the contact with the West had not come. The poor in India had no anxiety about it. But contact with the West created restlessness, and it planted in the poor the idea that being poor is the result of the social order. Poverty is not a necessity. But the affluent in India had convinced the poor that poverty is the fruit of your own sins, that being…
Why is india so poor?
The so-called saints are responsible. Down the ages, India has lived with a wrong philosophy -- a philosophy that teaches other-worldliness, a philosophy that teaches that the world is illusion and only the other world is true. You have not seen the other world, the true world; you have to believe. And the world that you have seen, and see every day and experience every day, is illusory, is maya. This foolish philosophy is the root cause of India's poverty. If the world is illusory then why care about science, why care about technology? What is the point? If the world is illusory, poverty is also an illusion, the beggar on the street is also an illusion, the starving person is also an illusion. The West has lived with the idea that only this world is real. Hence it has become rich, at least outwardly rich. The West has denied…
Beloved Osho, what are the causes of poverty in india, and the downfall of the economic condition? How can india come out of this mess and create richness?
Don't harm anybody, but don't let anybody harm you. Then only can a nonviolent person survive in the world, and not become a coward. Jesus says, "If somebody hits one of your cheeks, give him the other cheek too." Christians are hypocrites, they have never followed it. They have been killing, they have been murdering, they have been burning living people. They have been doing everything which goes against Jesus -- and still they go on preaching Jesus in the churches. And no Christian raises the question: "Our lifestyle for two thousand years is absolutely against the teachings of Jesus." The West has made an arrangement: a teaching is a teaching; it is good, pay respect to it. The Bible is holy -- but your religion is Sunday religion, only on a holiday. You go to the church and that's all. Six days do everything wrong that you can do;…
What I want to tell you is this: only the rich can enjoy being poor. The overfed can enjoy fasting and hunger-strikes. Those with many clothes can savor standing naked. But those who have nothing—this is beyond their imagination, beyond their dreams. Yet the renunciation of India’s rich sons gave the poor a sweet comfort: “We are good; we are blessed.” And poverty in India became honorable. From the day poverty was honored, we abandoned the effort to become prosperous. The soul-energy that creates wealth shrank. The soul-energy that delights in expansion and growth, that too withered. We settled for what is. And we developed a philosophy of contentment. As long as India clings to the philosophy of contentment, there can be no change in its misfortune. Do contented people make revolutions? How can contentment create revolution? There is no idea more anti-revolutionary than contentment.