Culture and God

Long before, India accepted that growth and economic upliftment means westernization. Westernization of our thoughts, westernization of language, westernization of lifestyle.
China and Japan, sort of proved that growth and economic prosperity can be achieved without following the western culture.

Every single human obsession to spend, creates jobs for other people. If you have too many gods, and different ways to worship them, too many festivals, too many rituals, too many customs, all these create jobs. A festival increases the velocity with which money changes hands. A marriage season increases economic activities across all sectors.

If you think about it, Diwali became a big festivals, why not Janmastmi. It was not because Ram was more important than Krishna. The primary reason was because it was coupled with the Kharif crop harvest, at that time of Diwali our ancient agrarian economy had more to earn and more to spend. The velocity of money ( the rate at which money changes hands) increased during those times. That lead to people spending more for Diwali and lesser for Janmasthmi, and Diwali became a bigger festival. Same is the reason for Holi becoming a big festival because of the Rabi crop harvest.

The outsourcing boom and investment inflows, together increased economic activities independent of our festivals. Money was coming not just through our economy, but from outside. So, the importance of these festivals and the monsoon on economic activity was diminished. Now, in this economic downturn the importance is back. If you run a factory in India, you could see a clear change in orders, even from a small festival like Sankranti on your sales.

For Christmas, Santa Claus was created because Jesus was not able to increase much economic activities. People needed a red-dressed gift-delivering symbol of god, for Christmas shopping.

World will learn some day, that it is not possible to run economy with just one god, you need a whole family of gods. Also, you need to celebrate all your Gods birthdays, marriage anniversaries and other godly achievements. All this is nicely binded into our culture, we have 1066 festivals, 330 million gods. We celebrate, Mahashivratri, Ganesh Chaturthi, Janmashtmi, Ram Navmi, Diwali, Tulsi Vivah, Holi, Gurunanak Jayanti, Id, Christmas, Raksha Bandhan, Onam, Pongal, Lohri, Navratri, Mahavir Jayanti, Bhuddha Purnima, and a hell lot many more.
Just think about these festivals, and imagine the economic activity each one of them create.
These festivals are very important to run our economy. So, next time you get stuck in traffic because of Ganesh Chaturthi, don't get pissed off on those people, look at the economic activity which is being created. This economic activity is helping you to earn money, in some or the other way.

Westernization is killing some of our culture, but we must preserve it. Culture preservation is not just some bullshit, which governments try to do. It makes deep economic sense to preserve it.