Text 39]
What Prahlāda Learned in the Womb
95
sarve —all;  artha —economic development;  kāmāḥ —and sense gratification;  kṣaṇa-bhaṅgura —perishable in a moment;  āyuṣaḥ —of one whose duration of life;  kurvanti —effect or bring;  martyasya —of one who is destined to die;  kiyat —how much;  priyam —pleasure;  calāḥ —flickering and temporary.
TRANSLATION
One's riches, beautiful wife and female friends, one's sons and daughters, one's residence, one's domestic animals like cows, elephants and horses, one's treasury, economic development and sense gratification—indeed, even the lifetime in which one can enjoy all these material opulences—are certainly temporary and flickering. Since the opportunity of human life is temporary, what benefit can these material opulences give to a sensible man who has understood himself to be eternal?
PURPORT
This verse describes how the advocates of economic development are frustrated by the laws of nature. As the previous verse asks,  kiṁ viṣayopapādanaiḥ : what is the actual benefit of so-called economic development? The history of the world has factually proved that attempts to increase economic development for bodily comfort through the advancement of material civilization have done nothing to remedy the inevitability of birth, death, old age and disease. Everyone has knowledge of huge empires throughout the history of the world—the Roman Empire, the Moghul Empire, the British Empire and so on—but all the societies engaged in such economic development ( sarve 'rtha-kāmāḥ ) have been frustrated by the laws of nature through periodic wars, pestilence, famine and so on. Thus all their attempts have been flickering and temporary. In this verse, therefore, it is said,  kurvanti martyasya kiyat priyam calāḥ : one may be very proud of possessing a vast empire, but such empires are impermanent; after one hundred or two hundred years, everything is finished. All such positions of economic development, although created with great endeavor and hardship, are vanquished very soon. Therefore they have been described as  calāḥ . An intelligent man should conclude that material economic development is not at all pleasing. The entire world is described in  Bhagavad-gītā  as