Despite all the money poured into the poverty and environmental movements, little seems to be changing for the better. These sectors have lost their way. Now more than ever the world needs more Gandhi. We need to start asking ourselves what would Gandhi do?

Would Gandhi be driving a nice car, living in a nice house, wearing a business suit on his way to his poverty sector job? It is like we are trying to look like and act like the Man rather than sticking it to Him. Would Gandhi identify more with rich people than the poor, those whom he is supposedly trying to lift out of poverty? Would he begin to despise those he is trying to help? Would he be despised by the people he is trying to help? Would he be grovelling to funders at fundraising galas in his tux? Would he spend his days going to endless meetings where no one in the room lives in poverty?

If Gandhi were an environmentalist would he be flying everywhere to promote that people shouldn’t pollute? Would he own a car and drive more than he would ride his bike or take public transit? Would he shop at Safeway and at Wal-Mart to save a little money? Would he have a big screen plasma TV? Would he preach about the environment and not expect to be held on a pedestal? Would he convince himself and his flock by doing what he says and not what he does? Would Gandhi believe so strongly to break the law even if it meant jail time?

The poverty and environmental industries often look like they just co-opt people by paying them just enough to ensure complacency. Idealists seem to easily become ‘comfortably numb’. Therefore all according to plan, nothing much changes.

We have to seriously ask ourselves how strongly we believe? What sacrifices are we willing to make to create change? Otherwise we are just going through the motions collecting a paycheque.

We need leaders like Gandhi to help ‘be the change we wish to see in the world’. Not when it is convenient, but all the time. If we can’t be the change, then why would we expect non-believers to follow suit?

Gandhi did not wear a business suit like the colonizers of India. In 1931 at the Round Table conference in Britain he wore the clothes of a villager while being surrounded by those wearing the world’s finest clothes. This clearly sent a statement. Gandhi said that, “The truest test of civilization, culture and dignity is character and not clothing”. Wearing a homespun khadi, Gandhi became accepted by India’s poor. The suit was out and the loincloth was in.

Gandhi advocated for a simple living lifestyle. He lived it. To Gandhi it was obvious that we need to “live simply, so that others can simply live”. Despite being a lawyer, he lived in poverty, poverty of possessions that is. For he said, “I own no property and am perhaps the richest man in the world”.

Gandhi didn’t back down or let others do the dirty work for him. He was jailed four times for non violent civil disobedience. Gandhi said, “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become corrupt enough” and “Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is sacred duty at times”.

O Gandhi, where art though?