According to Osho, India is not prosperous because of outdated mindsets: glorifying poverty, unchecked population, sectarian conflicts, and Gandhian, pre-industrial ideals upheld by freedom fighters turned rulers. Prosperity is achievable within a decade through a new life‑vision: reject holy poverty, stabilize population, reorient education to science balanced with meditation, end religious quarrels in one spirituality, and empower creative nation‑builders.
India stayed poor by worshipping poverty and old ideas; it can become rich fast by choosing fewer births, more science with inner peace, less religious fighting, and leaders who build.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, despite forty years of independence, why is this country not prosperous, when in the same period Russia, China, Japan, and others have become world powers? Can your vision of life make India prosperous? Can you bring a paradise like Rajneeshpuram to the whole of India?
Now we must give power to those who have the capacity for creation, who can open a new life-vision and new dimensions. And there is no shortage of such people. When a scientist is born in India he has to work in the West, because in India, first, there are no means for experimentation, no laboratories. At most he can become a professor; nothing truly creative will be possible for him. If India is to be built, we must emphasize creativity. In a commune of five thousand there were scientists, surgeons, doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, nuclear physicists. And I can bring them all to India. Among my sannyasins there are no tribals. This is not a Christian missionary affair of orphans and tribals. Among my sannyasins are the most outstandingly gifted people in the world. I can bring them all to India—a full one million sannyasins—and put them to work in…
Osho, in one discourse you said that India is declining in its spiritual values. Please tell us whether any ray of hope is visible ahead?
Love! Do not be in opposition to the naturalness of life; do not deny life. Embrace life, with a great yes. For through that embrace one day you will be able to embrace God too. God is hidden here—in these trees, in these people, in these hills, in these mountains. Learn to love this existence. Your so-called religion teaches you to hate existence—teaches you to hate the nature outside and the nature within you. Love nature, for nature is God’s veil. Love nature, and you will be able to lift the veil. There is certainly a ray of hope. The ray of hope is never destroyed. However dark the new-moon night becomes, the morning will come. Morning is bound to come. However long the night of new moon, and however deeply this country has sunk into wrong notions, still there are some who are thinking, reflecting, meditating. It is precisely…
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…
Osho, on seeing your ashram I had the sense of another world. How meaningful is this in our country, India?
Poverty, wretchedness, India’s problems—all can disappear; only give India a right perspective to resolve them. Our problems are of our own making; therefore removing them is easy. Today there is such technological progress in the world that India has no need to remain poor. If we are poor, perhaps it is because we want to remain so; we are poor because our ways of thinking are foolish. We have the most beautiful land, the most beautiful sky. We are not short of talent either. But we have forgotten to honor talent. So whenever a talented person is born here, he too has to leave India. We have become adept at honoring the dull-witted. We have invented such criteria that only the dull-witted can qualify. Someone gets up at five in the morning—our respect! Someone does not smoke—our respect! Someone eats only greens—our respect! Someone wears khadi—our respect! Someone performs daily…
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…