One young farmer into organic farming and go-seva told the practical struggles of earning money to maintain family. He said that the farmer does the real ground-level hard-work. But the middle-men who buy the produce from the farmers and re-sell earn much more money than the hard-working farmers.

This phenomenon is prevalent in many fields.

The person who makes the travel booking app or hotel booking app, taxi booking app earn more money than the actual owners of vehicles, hotels etc without doing much hard-work and without owning a single vehicle, hotel.

Similarly in the educational field, the people who went through the actual tapasya of learning are hardly recognized as compared to the influencers who have cracked the world of social media and learnt the art of packaging but not gone through life of tapasya, sadhana, shastra adhyayana and service to guru.

Bhartra Hari’s wisdom from neethi shataka is worth contemplating upon in this regard.

śāstropaskṛta-śabda-sundara-giraḥ śiṣya-pradeyāgamā
vikhyātāḥ kavayo vasanti viṣaye yasya prabhor nirdhanāḥ |
taj-jāḍyaṁ vasudhādipasya kavayas tv arthaṁ vināpīśvarāḥ
kutsyāḥ syuḥ kuparīkṣakā hi maṇayo yair arghataḥ pātitāḥ ||15||

When learned men of celebrity, whose speech adorned with words polished by the Shástrás ( samskrta grammar etc), and whose learning is fit to be imparted to pupils, have to live in poverty in the kingdom of a prince, then that betrays the folly of the ruler, for the learned are respected even without wealth. If jewels are priced lower than their due worth the blame attaches to the incompetent examiners and not to the jewels. ( Bhartr Hari’s neeti shataka, sloka 15)

 – Radhika Vallabha Das (ISKCON Member)