From a Western perspective, what seems to be happening in India is that the
hedonistic desire to consume is in dialectic opposition to the puritanical desire to
economize. ``The Hindu desires of contentment, absence of desire and stability
oppose the dynamic striving for success and unlimited consumption, which
capitalist systems emphasize'' (Sahay and Walsham, 1997, p. 67). However, from
an Indian perspective, the two are not necessarily opposed. ``In Hinduism and in
Indian culture . . . spiritualism and materialism are not considered opposites. In
fact, Indians believe that the material world and the spiritual world belong to the
same realm of experience'' (Venkatesh, 1995, p. 54).