I was watching documentary on subprime crises “The Inside Job” yesterday. The kind of high level collaborated corruption that explains subprime crises is enough to shake one’s belief in democracy itself. A communist regime probably would have at least contained the excessive salaries of the high level employees. All ideologies have their negatives and positives. Even monarchy would be better, in context of a noble king.

Ideologies are cultivated by social needs and are very successful in one set of conditions. Democracy is successful when people are well-informed and powerful, media is not corrupt. Even communism is successful when public distribution of wealth is highly unequal in society, like it is today in many democracies.

Context is the key, everything is wrong or right according to its context. Heavy rains are great for area under drought, but might bring floods in low lying lands. Probably we should change ideology also once in 20 years’ time, to balance the society in changing phases of development.

But ideologies have their own inertia. Once started, they generate social momentum, a force difficult to stop. They have their patrons, people who believe that there can be nothing better than one particular ideology. But the conditions keep changing, social requirements keep changing. With changing situations, such ideology is met with a crash; it fails because the condition in which it was useful no longer exists and people refuse to change it. Finally, there is a painful transition or improvement in the ideology to form something different and more appropriate for the present context.

Ideologies are inherently misbalancing factors. They are like the steering wheel, which has to be turned manually according to the direction of the road. You cannot follow a steering wheel, you have to direct it. A guided change in ideology led by capable and wise social leaders might prevent the injustice and unrest in society.

Dosha are like ideologies. Dosha is a system which runs the body, just like ideologies run societies. There are 3 different types of Dosha according to Ayurveda – Vata, Pitta and Kapha. They have their distinctive properties and functions, different and contradictory of each other.

Body needs cooling in summer, protection from infection in rains and heating in winters. As the season changes, body requirements also change. The existing dosha system becomes ineffective because it was tuned according to previous season.

Dosha need to adjust their functions according to different seasons.They are fit for a specific function in a given set of conditions. However, they are called Dosha (meaning – Fault) because they have a tendency to create imbalance. They too have their inertia of momentum. Once a dosha starts operating it generates momentum which cannot be brought to a standstill suddenly without consequences. The body receives a physiological jolt when the dosha come to a halt, just like the way it receives a physical jolt when a bus comes to a sudden halt. Physical jerk may cause injuries, physiological jolt causes seasonal diseases. Aging process is initiated as the sum total effects of constant seasonal shocks.

Few people saw the subprime crises coming. They warned about the impending danger. The subprime crisis was like the last stage of the disease, in which the system completely collapsed. It could have been avoided if the reckless firms and markets were regulated.

Ritucharya has a similar concept. If the body is prepared for the changing season by changing food lifestyle etc., lots of pathological crises can be avoided in every season.

Let’s live a hundred autumns invincible!