YOUR STORY

Let me tell you a short story with YOU as the protagonist:

You live a society with some people rich and others poor. Your family has inherited not only wealth but also rich culture since your great ancestors preserved the family culture. But since your family is a big one – per person earnings, net wealth etc becomes very low. 

The head of your family today is someone who lives beyond the means. He is prodigal and spends extravagantly to keep his image high in the society. He has not been able to create a culture of work amidst his family members by denying them quality education and adequate food. There is no unity among family members and the head takes advantage of this situation to steal the family inheritance for his selfish ends.

Unlike most families whose head is a patriarch, your family has an elected head. While every family member individually feels that this set up gives them the power to change the head, anytime they want – it virtually never works out that way. This is simply because the other family members do not trust each other to be the future head and the present head uses the stolen wealth to buy gifts for uneducated family members, who again nominate him to power. This has been going on for ages.

The head has taken on debt from neighbors, whose liability falls on all the members of your family. When the interest of debt falls due, the head goes and arranges for new debt to pay for interest because the family earns just enough to take care of the large family. The society runs a chit fund, to help families in need. Of course this is not free and requires stringent conditions to get the fund – once due to strained resources your family had to borrow from his chit fund – compromising with the family traditions. Now a similar situation seems lurking.

Religion plays a big role in your family and most members offer their reverence to God in the form of time and wealth. The head is secular and he allows all members of the family to practice any religion of their choice. Most family members have chosen to retain their ancestral religion – a lot of the newer members of the family are trying out other religions as practiced by the other families in society. The head of the family is secular but he has been partial to the neo-religion family members. Wealth is spared by all the working members of your family but the head manages only the donations given by the followers of ancestral religion. As expected those charitable donations have not been used as intended. Recently it is heard that your family might have to sell family’s inherited gold and silver utensils to repay the loans and stop the family reputation from coming down.

The home is well fortified from all directions by large walls on one side and water bodies on the other. Though the family should feel secure with such a set up – it is very common to find that things get stolen and locks are broken. It is suspected that neighbors are behind these thefts because neighbors hear of the thefts within your family by the head himself.

Question 1: What should you do to help your family? Please answer this question before you go to the next question.

Question 2: Who are you, in the story? Can you identify others? (Answer Hint given below)

Now combine your answer 1 and 2

HINT FOR ANSWER 2: You are Bharat; Society is World; Head of your family is Congress; Chit Fund is WTO