RBI Overheating India’s Economy: On Materialist Greed Fueling Ceaseless Consumerism

A phenomenon as massive as the global coronavirus pandemic, which ran from 2020 to 2022, is bound to have major economic ripple, or wave, effects in its wake. India’s record high 9.2% growth of GNP in the 2023-2024 fiscal year illustrates the robust thrust of pent-up demand met with increased supply. To the extent that consumption over savings is the norm in any economy, a couple years off can subtly recalibrate economic mentalities to a more prudent economic mindset wherein saving money is not so dwarfed by spending it. Moreover, putting the brakes on a consumerist routine and societal norm can theoretically lead to putting the underlying materialism in a relative rather than an absolute position and thus in perspective. Yet such a “resetting” must overcome the knee-jerk instinct of any habit to restart as if there had been no change. Coming back to college, for example, after a summer away, students tend to pick up their respective routines right away as if the recent summer were a distant memory. India’s astonishing rate of economic growth just after the pandemic demonstrates that the penchant for consumerism and economic growth as a maximizing rather than satisficing variable returned as if the steeds in Socrates’ Symposium—only those horses represent garden-variety eros sublimated to love of eternal moral verities, to which Augustine substituted “God.”

India’s central bank sought to spur economic growth in early June, 2025, by again lowering interest rates so as to increase the supply of money in the economy amid lower economic growth and inflation than anticipated. “The repo rate—the level at which the central bank lends money to commercial banks, influencing borrowing costs for home and car loans—[stood] at 5.5%, the lowest in three years.”[1] Even though India’s economy had grown by only 6.5% in the fiscal year ending in March—enough for India to still have “the world’s fastest expanding major economy”—RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra said the central bankers believes it was “imperative to stimulate domestic consumption and investment.”[2] Imperative? Such urgency and intensity point to a consumption-led approach to economics on steroids.

Although 6.5% is less than 9.2%, the economy was obviously larger in 2025 than it had been in 2022 and 2023 so the comparison is misleading in regard whether the incremental amount of GNP is sufficient cause for worry and a legitimate reason to stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates yet again. I submit that both 9.2% and 6.5% are artificially high as economic growth figures in that both occurred in reaction to the slowdown of the economy during the pandemic. It was unrealistic in 2025 to expect such growth rates to continue through the remainder of the 2020s. Furthermore, stimulating from the 6.5% growth-rate risked overheating the economy, which could easily spark inflation above the central bank’s threshold, especially as inflation was so close to RBI’s 4% target—retail inflation having been 3.16% in April, 2025. The prudence of Titanic’s captain in resisting pressure from the White Star company to light the fourth boiler in order to speed up even at night with iceberg warnings having already been received seems to have eluded the bankers in India in 2025, more than a century after the floundering of the ship that could not sink.

The lack of prudence stemmed in part from a maximizing rather than a homeostatic paradigm regarding an economy. Maximizing consumption rather than holding it steady, such that surplus earnings could go into savings for a rainy day, is bound to run out of steam at some point. Lighting the fourth boiler because economic growth has dropped to a mere 6.5% is ultimately fueled by greed, which, as the desire for more, is inherently maximizing. Government in general, and a central bank in particular, functions in the public interest by channeling or resisting the excesses of greed, rather than by incessantly facilitating it. Managing a soft landing from the effects of pent-up demand from a global pandemic rather than pretending that annual growth rates of 9% are and should be sustainable reveals the great difference that exists between maturity and being oriented to instant gratification. The latter, after all, is responsible for climate change in the age of Man, and overheating an already-growing economy adds appreciably to pollution.

In short, the habit of maximizing consumption established even as a paradigm is in need of transparency and modification, lest our species go extinct from its own socio-economic mentality. Economizing need not pierce the semi-permeable, over-arching net of ecologizing forces that can protect us from ourselves if we will to exercise control over our economizing instinct. Besides doing so ourselves, governmental institutions can do so if they are not populated by the hyperextended mentality that treats increasing consumption as a perpetual end in itself.

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1, Nikhil Inamdar, “India Central Bank Delivers Sharp Rate Cut as Growth and Inflation Fall,” BBC.com, June 6, 2025.
2. Ibid.

Spirituality in the Workplace: Dealing with a Dysfunctional Culture

Mohan Vilas, a Hindu monk at Govardha Ecovillage, spoke at Harvard’s Bhakti Yoga Conference in 2025. He had gone from the world of financial derivatives to worshipping Krishna. Once he had fulfilled his “lower needs,” he looked for more. After obtaining a M.B.A. and while working in finance, he was hungry for knowledge beyond the world of business. So he studied ancient Vedic culture. His talk at the conference was on being an idealist surrounded by strategists. He addressed the question of whether the world allows individuals to practice virtue. Even when a person is not in a dysfunctional workplace or in a hostile society, the human mind struggles, Vilas said, to apply ethical virtues. Plato’s dictum that to know the good is enough do the good, and thus to be good, may be wildly optimistic, considering the instinctual force of urges in our nature to act immorally, even though other people are harmed as a result. It is even more difficult to get into a habit of doing good while “swimming upstream” in an ethically compromised workplace or an aggressive societal culture. An ethical Russian or Israeli soldier in the mid-2020s, for example, would have a lot of trouble refusing to bomb hospitals in Ukraine and Gaza, respectively, and, moreover, invading another country and withholding food so to starve an occupied group. Such a soldier would be intolerable to both Putin and Netanyahu, respectively. Vilas’s question is the following: What happens when a person who is good is put into a selfish society? Must an ethical person finally inevitably exit a culture that rewards narrow selfishness, passive-aggression and deception?

The full essay is at "Spirituality in the Workplace."

Political religion: Hitler Youth

In 2025 at Harvard, Madeline Levy presented her dissertation in progress in a graduate-student research workshop, which I was privileged to attend in my capacity as a research scholar at Harvard. She was presenting how the Hitler Youth program in Nazi Germany appropriated from religion politically, thus in a secular context yet with the aura of a religious cult. Interestingly, most of the kids in the program had been in church groups. Almost two decades earlier, I had audited a course on Nazi Cinema at another university; the course was taught by an 81-year-old German man who had been forced into Hitler Youth. Unlike Stalin’s cinema, which was blatant Soviet propaganda, Nazi cinema was escapist (not counting the anti-Jew propaganda “documentaries”). In contrast, Hitler Youth was hardly escapist, as the program was steeped in Nazi ideology. Although that ideology was secular, casting even Catholic Europe as an enemy, Levy was making the case that religious paraphernalia was incorporated in the program nonetheless. She brought up the element on ontology, or being, which in turn led me to draw on philosophy to explain the kids as becoming moral agents in a Kantian sense. Although philosophy and theology are distinct, both can be applied to political theory in a historical context.

In using the term, political religion, Levy related another expression, that of the “sacralization of politics,” which can include the appropriation of religious language, rituals, and symbols to the exclusion of traditional religions, and tying of these artifacts to secularization narratives.  That affect and motive are salient, according to Levy, is interesting because belief (a type of cognition) has been so salient in the Abrahamic religions. Even in Hitler Youth, there was a creed, and perhaps a “confirmation” event at which the kids, assuming agency, formally assented to the set of beliefs.

In thinking more generally of religious appropriation by the Nazi Party, I raised the question of whether Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will evinces religious-like ritual, as, for example, in showing the torch march, in which neo-pagan/druidic elements may be present. In showing an event—the annual Nazi party meeting—the film can be said to have a narrative structure, as does myth. Furthermore, regarding the Nazi flag with blood stains from the brief Nazi uprising in Munich in 1923, Hitler touching other flags with that flag in order to “sacralize” them treats that flag as a sacred object having a distinct, set-apart, ontological status powerful enough to “turn on” those other battle-flags. Images of Jews in a synagogue touching a wrapped Torah as it is led down an aisle may come to mind, to which Levy brought up the sacral object consecrated in the Christian Eucharistic liturgy and even processed.

Levy also claimed that Hitler was held up as a prophet in the sense of being an intermediary, and even as truth to power before 1933. In the Old Testament, the prophets tended to be thorns in the side of rulers, such as Nathan is to King David, whereas even before assuming power in Germany, Hitler’s role within the party, and later, Deutschland, was that of power. Therefore, it seems to be that Hitler’s intermediary role can be better labeled in terms of the divine right of kings, by which God sanctions absolute political (not divine!) power to human kings, who in turn can be thought of as partaking in a finite means of the divine attribute of omnipotence, without being divinized.

Unlike the practice of the ancient Romans, Hitler did not claim to be, and was not, divinized. Instead, after the failed assassination attempt in 1944, Hitler claimed on the radio that he had been narrowly spared by divine providence to complete his mission; President Trump would make the same claim in after having narrowly missed a bullet at a campaign event in 2024. In the case of Hitler, the irony in implicitly invoking the Abrahamic deity as sparing Hitler so he could finish the Final Solution reflects Hitler’s distinction of the Jews from Judaism, which in turn made it possible for him to appropriate from religion, including in the Hitler Youth program.

Levy’s thought on appropriation of religious symbol, myth, and ritual in the Hitler Youth program centered on ontology (i.e., reality) as the nature of being, as in holy blood being related as Germanic spirit to the human soul. Here, the sacred is a marking out of being, whereas the profane is non-being. In this sense, Leibniz’s notion of God as perfect being is relevant. In setting apart a special race, which itself may remind us of God having a “chosen people” in Judaism, the “setting apart” feature of the process of sacralization is evinced even in terms of sacred objects, such as a flag, that are ritually and mythically set apart ontologically in going beyond mere symbol. Even though the Aryan race is “set apart” in Nazi ideology, individual Germans, even the young people in Hitler Youth, knew that the individual can and even should be expendable for the collective. That is to say, a young person in Hitler Youth reached the point of being a moral agent in being able to realize the moral duty of sacrifice as binding even as the agent thereby knows oneself to have freedom (of choice). This is basic Kantianism applied here not to critique the Nazi ideology, but to understand moral agency within it.

Kant argues that the moral law applies to finite rational beings (i.e. us), and that the recognition of being a moral agent (i.e., in realizing that I ought to have a certain motive or do something) must be premised on being free to do otherwise. I ought to do X means that I have the freedom not to do X. Kant’s theory maintains that such freedom is ontological, or noumenal, rather than being merely in the realm of appearance. Paradoxically, the necessitation of the moral law is conditioned on the reality of freedom of moral agents.

Whether Hitler Youth had a “confirmation” ceremony or not, at some point, a participant would have realized that the freedom of the individual includes the moral law’s necessity as the duty to sacrifice oneself for the collective. Because reason has absolute value as the means by which value is assigned to things (and other rational beings), and individuals are finite rational beings, however, the duty of an individual rational being to be sacrificed for a collective, which is not a rational being, is ethically problematic. Even Hobbes insists that individuals have the right to act to extend their self-preservation even when the political sovereign is trying to kill them. Even so, that Kant’s moral theory can be used to critique the deontological or deontic, duty-based, moral dimension of Hitler Youth is not to say that the participants were not intended to become moral, duty-based (rather than utilitarian) agents. Perhaps this gets at Levy’s interest in the role of agency in Hitler Youth.

In short, the secularization of religious symbol, myth, and ritual played a political role in Nazi Germany, including in Hitler Youth. This is not to say that Hitler was divinized or that any religion was adopted as the state religion, as in a theocracy. In terms of the duty-based ethics that ironically discounted to ontology of the individual in favor of that of the collective, the Germanic people, the political “religion” could only play a supporting, or background, role because theology and philosophical ethics are distinct domains even though they intersect. Levy’s notion of ontology as existentialist (i.e., of being) can be bifurcated between that of a distinctly religious transcendent ontology and an ethical ontology, such as Kant’s claim that the freedom of the will is “a fact of reason” that has a noumenal rather than merely phenomenological basis. The difference is that a distinctly religious transcendent referent is inherently beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (Pseudo-Dionysius), whereas Kant’s fact of reason is, well, of reason, and is thus not transcendent in the sense that a religious object is. Therefore, although capable of being related, theology, philosophy (i.e., ontology and ethics) and political theory should not be conflated. Perhaps this too is a fact of reason.

A Hindu Business Ethic

Applying a religion such as Hinduism to business is laudatory. Undercutting any benefits of doing so, however, is the advocation of religious principles that are so unrealistic in the business world that they undercut the credibility of the project itself. John D. Rockefeller was a Baptist who taught Sunday school at his church even as he pushed competitors out of business who refused to be bought out by Rockefeller’s refining monopoly, Standard Oil Company. To be sure, after retiring, he gave away about half of his $800 million (1913 dollars), but he did not claim that his personal generosity justified his earlier restraint of trade as a monopolist. Rather, he claimed to be more of a “Christ figure” as a monopolist than he was next as a philanthropist. In my study on Rockefeller, I concluded that he was delusional, yet to some extent well-intended, given the destructive competition that was ravaging small businesses in the refining industry during the 1860s. Rockefeller thought of his giant as saving the otherwise presumably drowning competitors, but Jesus in the Gospels does not drown people who are unwilling to be converted. Clearly, the application of religion to business can be abused, including in being much too idealistic, even utopian, and in being used to justify egregious economic tactics and even greed itself.

The full essay is at "Hinduism Applied to Business."

Deflating Bloated Self-Entitlement in Retail: Barnes and Noble at Yale

Atrocious human-resources management, even regarding in-store employees of a sub-contractor, can easily be understood to detract from repeat customers; a refusal to hold such employees accountable can be a reflection of a sordid managerial attitude towards customers, especially in relation to employees. In cases in which the refusal is explicitly stated to an already-offended customer, the slogan, “adds insult to injury” is applicable, with disastrous effects in terms of repeat business, and thus revenue. That management is in some cases so bad reflects on the primitive condition of the “science” of management in business schools. That a case in point occurred in Yale’s (Barnes and Noble) bookstore, not far from Yale’s School of Management, suggests the sheer distance between the “science” and practice of management.

The full essay is at "Bloated Self-Entitlement in Retail."

Enjoy Your Holiday: On the Weaponization of Kindness

 In Europe, the word holiday can refer to what in America is called a vacation, which of course can occur whether or not the vacation falls on a national holiday. Regarding the latter, the official designation of a holiday by a government renders the holiday valid anywhere in the country’s territory. This does not mean that very resident or even citizen is duty-bound to pay any attention to a given national holiday, but deciding not to celebrating a holiday does not thereby mean that it is not legitimate and thus valid. Deliberately acting out from the instinctual urge of passive aggression by refusing even to say the name of a national holiday in public discourse, as if a personal decision not to celebrate a national holiday eviscerates it on the national calendar can be viewed as a case of hyperextended projection from a personal dislike to the personal desire to cancel the national holiday, as if a personal dislike could nullify a national law or proclamation. Behind the passive aggression is none other than selfishness, which implies loving oneself over loving God. Theological (rather than psychological) self-love renders the world as a projection of the self, including its narrowly circumscribed (to private benefits only) interests. Hence, the unrestrained ego leaps from its own dislike to being entitled to unilaterally, as a private actor, nullify an officially designated national holiday as null and void. I contend that Nietzsche’s philosophy can shed some light on this modern phenomenon concerning Christmas, an official U.S. holiday. Kindness as actually passive aggression is tailor-made for Nietzsche’s eviscerating scalpel, which he wielded to expose the power-aggrandizement being exercised under the disguise of the moral injunction of Thou Shalt Not! 

The full essay is at "Enjoy Your Holiday."