A friend of mine teaches computer science at a small Jesuit college.
He was wanting to put together a program where students would go volunteer to help NGOs do software projects in India.
Something he was surprised by was that NGOs in India are almost all oriented around lobbying the government to do things (particularly that they'd already promised to do) and not around provisioning social services themselves.
My understanding is that in some religions, we are living today in the "afterlife" of a previous life, and subject to karma based on what we've done.
If one has bad karma that has put one in an undesirable social position, it's not a stretch that Earth is a hell for those people, and we're supposed to be the demons that make life miserable for them.