From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 29. POSITIVE THINKING: PHILOSOPHY FOR PHONIES
The contractor should be punished when a bridge kills thousands of people and destroys the labor
of thousands of people and makes the country borrow more and more – which India will never be
able to repay. That is absolutely clear, because how are you going to pay it back? Slowly slowly, you
are becoming slaves again – economic slaves.
Political slavery is gone; now economic slavery is coming from the back door. If you cannot pay
money, then you will have to substitute it by something. If you owe to America, or if you owe to the
Soviet Union, then you will have to give them bases for their military forces. You have to, because
there is no other way to pay them back. And why do these countries go on giving to these poor
countries, knowing perfectly well that they cannot get it back? In fact they don’t want to get it back!
This is a new form of slavery.
People don’t understand that forms go on changing but things remain the same. Political slavery
became costly, very costly. To those who were the masters, it became more costly to have a slave
country than not to be bothered with slave countries. That was more economically profitable. Leave
these poor countries politically free – but what are they going to do with their economy? They will
beg from you, and then you can exploit them economically. And in fact that is the real exploitation.
Political slavery was useful because you were powerful enough to exploit them economically.
All such exploitation is economic – if you were politically powerful then of course you could exploit
them economically. By the end of the second world war it became clear that it was no longer feasible,
no longer economically useful to have political slavery in the world. But the real thing was economic
exploitation. Drop the political slavery, influence people, make friends – and go on exploiting them
economically the way you were doing before. Now you will do even better because you are friends,
you are helping in every possible way... but for what reason are you helping?
Russia goes on pouring money into India. In Russia itself there is poverty; they are not too worried
about that poverty, they are more concerned to create factories in India, steel plants in India. Go on
giving as much money and expertise as India asks, because soon they will be so much in debt that
while politically they can remain free, it will make no difference – your armies, your military bases
will be inside their country; they will have to give in to you. Their political freedom will be just paper
freedom: underneath they will be slaves again.
In India nobody is punished for all these things which go on happening. In India there are really
miracles that happen. They have five-year plans just like Russia used to have five-year plans. In
those five-year plans so many dams have to be made, so many roads, so many bridges, and the
country is given a great hope that within five years everything will be changed: poverty will be gone,
every village will have a school, a hospital, and everything.
And on paper these things do happen. You can see the road has been made, on the map. The
contract has been signed, the contractor has taken the money, the engineers have been working,
the laborers have been paid, the machines have been purchased. Five years of work and the road
is ready. The road is even inaugurated by a great leader – and there is no road!
You see the picture of the leader in the newspaper, inaugurating the road. They have made just a
small piece for the inauguration, so that a small piece of road is shown in the picture. And the leader
From Ignorance to Innocence 432 Osho