During the last 100 years, there has been spectacular growth in Science and Technology, bringing affluence to upper one-third of population and reasonable standard of living for the middle one-third, leaving the lower one-third in poverty and privation. But concurrently, planet earth has been plundered and pillaged. Forests are disappearing. Soil is becoming infertile. Global warming may bring disaster to many parts of the world. Pollution has gone beyond tolerable levels. Billons of animals are subjected to unimaginable suffering, while being used for food, work, experimentation and entertainment. Man himself has become sick. New diseases have emerged, such as HIV. Man has become lonely and alienated. Families have been fragmented. All the three categories mentioned above are suffering due to tension, anxiety, fear and a sense of purposelessness. More money is being spent on armaments to destroy mankind than to elevate him to a higher state of being.
To add to these dangerous trends, the recent financial and economic crisis, recession, frauds and scams in the Corporate world, rising violence and crime, reckless sensuality and sexuality, perversion and vulgarity have increased in public life. The extraordinary developments in transportation, communication, television, internet, mobile phones, computers, etc are wonderful to educate mankind for leading a noble life and bringing forth harmony and peace. Unfortunately, the opposite is taking place. These equipments and gadgets are being used for distorting and perverting man’s mind.

Spiritual leadership and ethical management can arrest these deteriorating trends, and even reverse them. For this purpose, spiritual and ethical leadership and management should permeate and pervade every human activity, attitude, behaviour, transactions, relationships, organizations and administration.

This is India’s Century, as predicted by Swami Vivekananda, when the whole world would come to India to seek solutions to the problems afflicting mankind. India ought to become a spiritual leader and teacher for the whole world, for which all segments of society in all sectors of our life – political, economic, social, educational, scientific, cultural, corporate and public administration – ought to imbibe the secular concepts of India’s ancient thought and wisdom.