Poor wealthy Jharkhand

Wealth doesn’t make one happy, say seers. The wealthy would nod their heads in agreement, giving out philosophical sighs.

- R. PRASANNAN

Ask them to give away their wealth and be happy, and they would give out misanthropic groans.

The problem is not with the wealthy; it’s with the seers—they mouth these sort of inanities as quotable quotes to dissuade us from coveting the wealth of the wealthy. That way, they get feasted by the wealthy and feted by us.

Does wealth make you rich? Most people would say yes, saying ‘wealthy’ and ‘rich’ are synonymous. I doubt. What if one possesses wealth but can’t use it to live well? Being wealthy is to possess wealth; being rich is to have enough dough to spend on the good things of life. Both aren’t the same.

Economic geographers point to many lands like that—wealthy but not rich. The Spectator wrote in 1711, that “it is generally observed, that in countries of the greatest plenty there is the poorest living”. That was six decades before Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, marking the birth of economics as a science—dismal as Thomas Carlyle called it, or otherwise.