How are religion and socialism similar ?

Answer : Both are blind, rigid beliefs. They might have been comprehensively disproved, but their followers stick to their beliefs tenaciously, conveniently ignoring the fact that the world has now changed; socialists ignore the fact that socialism has been tried for decades in N number of countries , stretching from Vietnam in one corner of the world to East Germany in the other. The supporters of socialism fail to realise why did these N number of countries eventually abandoned socialism. The supporters of socialism keep citing the promises of socialism , forgetting that socialism might have had made wonderful promises, but has consistently delivered poor performance, whether in Moscow or in Mumbai. They keep citing the statements of Karl Marx ,especially " from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs ". This habit of theirs ( focussing on the promises , not the performance of socialism ) reminds one of religious people, who have a rigid belief that there religion would bring a wonderful era, forgetting completely that in practice, religion has only brought about hatred, communal riots and social evils like misogyny, dowry practice etc. The supporters of socialism have difficulty accepting the fact that things in the real world differ substantially from what is predicted by a theory. They forget the fact that the socialist system, which promised its citizens free education, free healthcare, and guaranteed employment was brought down not by American warplanes or tanks, but by the strong protests of the people themselves . They fail to understand how such a benevolent system could have been outrightly rejected by the overwhelming majority of people. For understanding the reasons why, one need not book a flight to Moscow or Budapest, our own Great Indian Socialist Republic is a typical example of a socialist mess.

Today, because of the fact that India is still a semi-socialist country, Power and Railways are still in the hands of government monopolies. Because sarkari socialist enterprises have no incentive for satisfying the customer, no incentive either for profit or for efficiency, and have no competition to worry about, they can happily afford to provide inferior, inefficient and obsolete services to the customer. Nothing exemplifies this fact better than the grim power situation in India's cities. The posh locality where i live, continues to suffer from long power cuts, frequent low voltage and voltage fluctuations ; all because Power continues to be supplied by a monopoly.
These problems render the products of capitalism ( the electrical appliances people buy ) useless . And effectively, they serve as a potentially strong disincentive for people to work hard. ( " Why work hard to earn more money if all you can buy with that money are appliances which are rendered useless by india's socialist power enterprises " ?) Have you ever wondered why is there is always a shortage of electric power and train seats, but never a shortage of consumer goods like detergents or shampoos ? Answer : both power as well as railways are run by benevolent golden-hearted socialist enterprises, not by the hungry and greedy capitalist conspirators, who work for profit , not for social service.

But no facts , whether of the poor performance of state-run power corporations , or the impunctuality of Indian Railways, would deter the supporters of socialism from their cause. Their beliefs and commitment to socialism would remain as strong as ever ( one wonders what the supporters of socialism would say if the train they had to board was 6 hours late ). For the supporters of socialism , the words of socialist leaders like Karl Marx are good enough, and they can conveniently forget that the world has changed a lot since the early 19th century. They consider the teachings of Karl Marx and other socialist leaders as beyond questioning or criticism. Not very different from the attitude of religious people , who continue to stick to their delusions , simply because they were revealed the Great Creator in Quran/Bible/Geeta. The fact that almost all of religion's claims, including that of the existence of god, have been comprehensively disproved by science, need not matter to them. For them , the holy words of the Allah/God/Bhagwan are unquestionably true, and any questioning or criticism of them constitutes sacrilege or blasphemy.

Some supporters of socialism , who partially concede the fact that socialism has failed to live up to its promises, say that the poor performance of socialism till now is because of the fact that " Nobody has ever tried pure socialism till now " . May I ask them , what has been preventing the N number of countries, from India to Romania, to implement " pure socialism " ? . Whats more, this stance of theirs seems to be similar to the stance adopted by some Islamic apologists , who say Islam is not being followed in its true spirit , and under " true Islam ", there would be no terrorism or misogyny.

I strongly recommend that the Indian Railways and UP Power Corporation should install a statue of Lenin in its office. Lenin's ideas might have been rejected in his homeland, but they continue to be followed faithfully in this far-off land. I am sure the Russian Government can send some old discarded Lenin statues to the Sarkari Socialist Republic of India.