Charkha stood for self-help

An economist’s take on Gandhi’s vision: I.G. Patel’s posthumous lecture prescribes Gandhian touch for economy. Express News Service: Saturday , November 19, 2005

New Delhi, November 18: Giving the economy a Gandhian touch to ensure overall well-being. This is what the late Dr I.G. Patel, renowned economist and former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) prescribes for an ideal India. Dr Patel was to deliver this year’s Lakdawala Memorial Lecture organised by the Institute of Social Sciences and the Planning Commission on September 1. The lecture, which was postponed after Patel died on July 17, was read out today at a gathering of academicians at the Indian Institute of Social Sciences. Former RBI Governor Bimal Jalan chaired the meeting.

According to Dr Patel, ‘‘Gandhiji did not perhaps outline his economic vision in the language of economics. But he had a clear vision of an economic system which encompassed every aspect of Indian society. We can ignore his vision only at our peril.’’ On charkha, Dr Patel says,‘‘It would be a travesty to reduce it to wearing khadi. The charkha stood for self-help, dignity of labour, decentralisation of economic activity, narrowing of the gap between cities and villages, and above all, for ending enslavement of ordinary people without property or skills, who had only their hand physical labour to sell as a means of meagre livelihood.’’

He says Gandhiji was against capitalism if the means of production was concentrated in a few hands. ‘‘He wanted everyone to own his means of production — a concept much wider than the current notion of empowerment through education and the like. He was against socialism as it concentrated all means of production in the hands of the state, which led to the enslavement of everyone. If everyone could have access to machinery, he was for it. Where large-scale production was inescapable as in the case of steel, he was for public ownership,’’ he says.

‘‘Decentralisation of production may not be easy. But something needs to be done to prevent the relentless march to urban slums. With today’s technology and with rural electrification and technical training, it should be possible to carry jobs where people live and not vice versa,’’ says Patel.

Spirituality and Sustainability

Anil K Rajvanshi

All the development models will become untenable if we do not put a cap on our greed for materials, resources and energy. Present economic models are based on increased consumption and encourage greed. Ever increasing choices available to an average person fuel the greed impulse since the fear of missing out is very high. Spirituality can help in keeping our greed for materials and resources in check and sustainable development can only take place when we use the resources for our needs and not for our greed as Mahatma Gandhi once said. Spirituality is the state of mind that makes it understand that the Truth is beyond the barriers of worldliness, caste, creed, race or geographical boundaries.

It is universal in nature and a great spiritual thought is a cause of celebration for the whole mankind. It connects us to Universal Consciousness and gives a certain perspective in life. As a person progresses on the path of spirituality his or her priorities in life change. The focus of life shifts more towards getting personal happiness through mental peace and is less on material needs and desires and more towards sustainability. Recent examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Einstein have shown that with very few needs and living very simple lives they were able to produce the highest quality of thought.

Spirituality also helps us have a compassionate view of nature and as we evolve spiritually we become more tuned to it which helps us in preserving it. Besides it helps us live in harmony with each other and enables everybody to work together for the common good. Also in all religions the respect for nature is preached and the maxim of simple living and high thinking is ingrained. Nevertheless the clock on technology cannot be turned back. It is an evolutionary process and as we advance technologically we also become more spiritual, since technology helps us in doing things more efficiently and thus our needs are satisfied with less quantity of materials and energy. This allows us to think and reflect on higher things in life.

Eventually we will follow nature where all the processes are carried out extremely efficiently with few materials, in minimum number of steps and at room temperatures. Thus a combination of high technology together with spiritual growth will be a new paradigm of sustainable development. Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) 2004

Happiness doesn’t equal a Mercedes Benz

MURLI MANOHAR JOSHI
The Indian Express Sunday, July 28, 2002

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Resource Development indices have been designed on the basis of suggestions and modules provided by the international financial institutions. These mostly relate to and reflect the material development of a society. My basic point is that development of the human personality does not entirely depend on material values. Going by any definition, there are four components in a human personality—body, mind, intellect and soul. Any development parameter should reflect the influences of all these four parameters. For instance, if a society is affluent but fails to impart human values to its individual, then its development indices should not be counted as high.

In an affluent society, the crime graph could very high, whereas in a less materially endowed society the same incidents of crime could be low. Which then is the developed or the under-developed society? Similarly, a social set up may have a well evolved aesthetic-cultural value system in place, but can be less affluent with less economic mobility. It is time that we look at the world through a different looking glass—new parameters—in order to understand how peace, democracy and development is inter-connected and inter-dependent. How by encouraging and sustaining the human values of even an under-developed society, the conditions of strife can be reduced. On the question of human value, the conditions that need to be looked into are compassion, the instinct to share with others, tolerance, respect for diversity.

A society should also be judged against these inherent human, civilisational values. All these aspects needs to be factored in the indices along with the educational attainment, life expectancy and income levels. There should a redefining of the parameters. Only then can the human development index reflect the true ground reality. There is a need to re-evaluate and re-define what is ‘a developed society’ and what is an ‘under-developed society’. In fact, the UNDP agreed that there is substance in the view that I am taking on the developing of new parameters to evaluate human development index. They agreed that factors like the human values, happiness index of a society, spiritual level of a society should find a place in the parameters.

Individuals of a society can attain fulfillment, happiness and sense of achievement without owning a Mercedes car. Whereas, an upwardly mobile society which enables it individuals to achieve a high level of material comfort may not provide mental and spiritual succour.

Robert B. Reich: The liberal ideal

• First, the separation of church and state. We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.
• Secondly, liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.

The current degree of concentrated wealth in America is a direct threat to our well-functioning democracy. We can see it in the symptoms every day, in terms of campaign financial contributions streaming in to mostly the Bush campaign from corporations. We also see the enormous effect that large corporations have, and the enormous power they wield in Washington simply by virtue of their size and economic power.

• Liberals, thirdly, have always represented opportunity and equality of opportunity, whether it be access to affordable health care, or good education, or a fair chance to get a good job.

The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It’s equality of opportunity. There’s a fundamental difference. So condemning the working class and the poor to lousy schools and to a health care system that is increasingly skewed toward the privileged violates these basic tenets of liberalism, as does a tax break that is overwhelmingly benefiting those who are already very rich at a time in our nation’s history when the gap between the rich and everyone else is wider than it’s been in over a hundred years.

• And finally, liberals believe in a foreign policy that is multi-national and collaborative, working through the United Nations, NATO and our major allies, seeking to prevent violence and war through spreading middle-class prosperity rather than through the simple assertion of our military might. Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.

The silent majority really is a liberal majority, even though the word liberal has taken a real beating over the last 20 years by radical conservatives. The fact is that most Americans support these basic values. They represent mainstream America. The problem is that the radical conservatives are better organized, have more money, and have monopolized more of the airwaves and broadcast media than liberals. Also, the Democrats have been so weak-kneed and have lacked the courage of their convictions.

I’ve spent half of my adult life in public office. I have run for elective office. I’ve spent the other half of my adult life as a student and scholar of the American political and economic system. So I don’t use those words carelessly. I use that example to illustrate the difference between public and private morality. Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms. It’s not government’s business what people do in their private bedrooms. But public morality is quite distinct. And liberals ought to be sounding the alarm about a breakdown of public morality at the highest reaches of corporate America in terms of the looting of corporations, executive salaries that are preposterously out of proportion to what they ought to be, and also corporate contributions and lobbying, and pollution of American politics. These are the real moral failings today, and they need to be understood as such. There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.

This is a time when progressives, liberals, people who share these values, need to become more involved than they have at any time since the Vietnam War. The populism that Republicans use is an artificial, superficial populism. It’s a populism that doesn’t really respond to the deep needs of working Americans. In fact, the median wage for workers without college degrees continues to drop, adjusted for inflation, particularly when you consider the erosion -- the steady erosion -- of health benefits. Republicans want to blame affirmative action. They want to blame women and feminists. They blame immigrants, just like they want to blame the French and Germans and anyone else who was not with us in our war in Iraq.

The blame game is a cheap and dangerous form of populism. It doesn’t respond to the underlying issues, the underlying problems. It simply channels people’s anger toward others. It’s divisive. It separates Americans from one another and it separates us from the rest of the world. The kind of populism that Democrats used to espouse was a populism that focused on the genuine needs of working people for better jobs, for health care, for better education, for better opportunities, and the needs of people around the world for expanded opportunities as well. And that’s the kind of populism we need. A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW: June 14, 2004

Veblen vs. Marx

Thorstein Veblen was odd man out in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century American economics. Veblen is best known for his book The Theory of the Leisure Class. In it he introduced the term "conspicuous consumption." Conspicuous consumption was consumption undertaken to make a statement to others about one's class or accomplishments. This term, more than any other, is what Veblen is known for. Veblen wanted economists to try to understand the social and cultural causes and effects of economic changes. What social and cultural causes were responsible for the shift from hunting and fishing to farming, for example, and what were the social and cultural effects of this shift? Veblen's skepticism about religion and his rough manners and unkempt appearance made him unattractive to universities. Home Books Encyclopedia

Thorstein Veblen(1857-1929): Veblen's theory of the leisure class is to be compared to that of Marx's theory. Marx was of the view that the upper class were at "swords points" with one another and the inevitable historical outcome would be the violent overthrow of the upper classes. Veblen, however, was of the view that the lower classes were not out to overthrow the upper class; but, rather, strived to climb up to it. Its presence, indeed, served the larger community by setting the example and giving the working class purpose. Peter Landry www.blupete.com

A commodity is a Veblen good if people's preference for buying it increases as a direct function of its price. The definition does not require that any Veblen goods actually exist. However, it is claimed that some types of high-status goods, such as expensive wines or perfumes are Veblen goods, in that decreasing their prices decreases people's preference for buying them because they are no longer perceived as exclusive or high status products. The Veblen effect is named after the economist Thorstein Veblen, who invented the concepts of conspicuous consumption and status-seeking. Wikipedia

Marshall McLuhan, Peter Drucker, Alvin Tofler and Robert Reich

Marshall McLuhan was born in 1911 and died in 1980. By the time of his death, he had been dismissed by respectable academicians, and he was known in the popular press as an eccentric intellectual whose day in the media spotlight had come and gone. By 1980, the transformation of human life catalyzed by television was taken for granted, and it no longer seemed interesting to ask where the electronic media were taking us. But in recent years, the explosion of new media - particularly the Web - has caused new anxieties. Or to put a more McLuhanesque spin on it, the advent of new digital media has brought the conditions of the old technologies into sharper relief, and made us suddenly conscious of our media environment. In the confusion of the digital revolution, McLuhan is relevant again. McLuhan's slogans "The medium is the message" and "The global village" are recited like mantras in every digital atelier in the world. By Gary Wolf Wired magazine, Jan 1996

For twenty-five years, Alvin Toffler has been shocking us with his descriptions of the future. From Future Shock to The Third Wave, Toffler has argued that we are involved in nothing less than a change of civilization - as profound as that from hunter-gatherer to agricultural, from agricultural to industrial. Now back with a new book, War and Anti-War, Toffler is as provocative as ever, as he examines the increasingly bloody consequences of cultures in collision as the Digital Revolution gathers force. The most successful futurists don't predict the future. They make their fortune by interpreting the present in a new way - a way that makes more sense and seems more conventional the farther into the future one goes. Alvin Toffler made his fortune by explaining the strange dread people were beginning to feel about rapid technological change in the late 1960s. By Peter Schwartz Wired magazine, May 1993

"Knowledge exchange" is an intrinsic and critical aspect of business as we have come to understand it in the late 20th century. After all, we speak easily of "knowledge workers," "knowledge resources" and the "knowledge economy." Analysts such as Peter Drucker, Alvin Tofler and Robert Reich have been telling us for years about the central role of human understanding in the global economy which is now fully upon us. Companies need the knowledge of all their workers, not just the privileged insight of top management. They need to establish bi-directional paths to the knowledge of suppliers and strategic allies. Most of all, companies need first-hand knowledge about what customers and prospects want, and be able to turn these perceived needs into successful products and services. By Christopher Locke May 1994 issue of Internet World

Gandhi's India

Gandhi wanted an India where terrorism and violence weren't an option to resolve conflicts. Violence created more violence and was a downward spiral into doom, death, and destruction of the social fabric. Gandhi pleaded life-long for

• non-violence; dialogue; consensus-building;
• love and understanding of the opponent;
• religious tolerance;
• massive employment schemes to give productive employment for India's millions, especially its youth;
• rebuilding India's villages and creating ecumenical communities of care and concern;
• promotion of local handicrafts and skills;
• self-reliance in agriculture and industry;
• production of need-based basic goods and services;
• empowering communities to participate and create their own political structures from bottom-up;
• encouraging self-help projects for human development of all so that swaraj would not result in dependency;
• making basic education a priority;
• ensuring that all Indians irrespective of their religion, caste, class, colour, or education were equal and had equality of opportunity in every sphere of life;
• and that one's moral values would underpin every activity.

VIVEK PINTO The Hindu Magazine Sunday, Oct 02, 2005

The relevance of Hind Swaraj

The fulcrum of his moral and political thought. VIVEK PINTO

The enduring significance of Gandhi, in no small part, lies in Hind Swaraj, a clearly written and easy to read book which Raghavan Iyer calls "the point d'appui [the fulcrum] of Gandhi's moral and political thought." Iyer says, "the essential relevance of Hind Swaraj is perhaps even more poignant today owing to the deepening and spreading sense of alienation, especially among the young, from the beliefs and values of an acquisitive, if affluent, society."

A question rarely asked is: why did Gandhi write Hind Swaraj? Was there one important reason that spurred Gandhi to write this seminal and polemical work, as it is a dialogue between the "Reader" and "Editor"? The latter was Gandhi and the former were Indian extremists who, in 1905, came to prominence in London. By 1907, India House was the hub for "youth sent on a scholarship scheme" to terrorise the Raj by murdering, important British officials and exporting arms to India. Thus, they expected the British to grant India independence.

James Hunt, an American scholar, in Gandhi in London (1978) answers the question. Hunt writes, Gandhi "had his most public encounter with ideology of terrorism," during a dinner to celebrate the Dussehra festival on October 24, 1909, at Nazimuddin's restaurant in Bayswater, London, and that "as a consequence of this encounter Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj." (p.236) The existence of an "ideology of terrorism" is evidenced by the murder of Sir William Curzon-Wylie, an aide to the secretary of state for India, Lord John Morley, in July 1909, by Madanlal Dhingra, a student and member of this group.

Gandhi and V.D. Savarkar (1883-1966), a fanatical anarchist and spokesperson for Indian terrorists — extradited in 1910 and transported for life in the conspiracy to murder the British Collector of Nasik, A.M.T. Jackson — spoke at this dinner. Gandhi in "A Word of Explanation," Young India, January 1921, writes, "It [Hind Swaraj] was written ... in answer to the Indian school of violence ... I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that their zeal was misguided."

Gandhi's moral and principled argument with Savarkar and "the Indian school of violence" was that violence was intrinsically evil and opposed to human values. Hence, its ends of purportedly gaining swaraj for India were immoral and abhorrent. Further, he argued: what did the terrorists envisage for free India after British departure? In other words, was terrorism and turmoil going to be used against free Indians? Gandhi using polemics as a literary device in Hind Swaraj dialogued with the anarchists, who posed as nationalists, on various critical issues pertaining to India and unambiguously concluded that, "violence was no remedy for India's ills". Instead, Gandhi called for "a gospel of love in place of hate ... replace violence with self-sacrifice ... pit soul force [satyagraha] against brute force."

Gandhi said, "I must confess that I do not draw a sharp line or any distinction between economics and ethics. Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and therefore [we] ... insult the naked by giving them clothes they do not need, instead of giving them work they sorely need." Is this the India that you want? The writer is a Gandhi scholar who teaches at the University of Tokyo. The Hindu Magazine Sunday, Oct 02, 2005

Drucker can’t die

IN REMEMBRANCE; PETER DRUCKER: 1909-2005 GAUTAM CHIKERMANE

Drucker was so young, so vibrant, so full of new ideas. How could he age, leave alone die? But on November 11, eight days before he turned 96, he passed away, leaving behind a work that will live on till civilisations do. It will influence more thinkers and leaders than any other single individual’s work. Best known as the ‘father of management’, he had become a subject, a course, if not a field, in himself. Something like Plato, Keynes or Ved Vyasa. His work sweeps from history to art, finance to technology, organisations to people. All of which will continue to breath life into ideas.

As someone who has been following management and organisational behaviour in particular and seeking the unseen in general, I can say without batting an eyelid that even at 95, Drucker was the youngest business, management, societal and economic thinker alive. And the youngest futurist, even though he claimed not to be one. But what he wrote, the ideas he nourished were pretty much like looking into a reverse rear view mirror that showed a crystal-clear future. How else could he have written books like The Post-Capitalist Society (1993) and articles like ‘The future that has already happened’?

The one hallmark of the man has been his being way ahead in observing, capturing, analysing new trends and fresh ideas and translating them into insights that are digestible, touchable by the rest of us. I feel a dull aching in my heart, an uneasy vacuum when I realise that this consultant’s consultant, this guru’s guru, this man who has directly influenced the likes of Churchill and Welch, the 20th century’s most influential philosopher has gone without leaving an intellectual heir. He will rest in peace, but his ideas will continue to drive the rest of us. The Indian Express Monday, November 14, 2005

Politics is a drag on Progress

We need to recognise the failure of the socialist model

Aditya Puri

India's political and economic fabric is in the throes of change. Despite a political consensus on key reforms, the government has been finding it difficult to act on them. With the emergence of religion, regional power centres and old secular centrists as power blocs, politics is gaining the upper hand over economics and long-term interests.

To dispel the confusion over reforms, we need to recognise the failure of the socialist model. A socialist society aims to create an environment in which everyone has equal rights and opportu-nities, the underprivileged are helped and protected to a better life, economic activities are tampered with to meet the needs of the nation and abusive, selfish interests are subjugated. A goal and a society we should all aspire for. But is it possible to achieve this utopian society? If we carry this thought further, we must believe that desire for individual reward for individual effort is anti-social. Practically, however, it is only a minute percentage of people who are able to rise above their personal interest and needs.

The majority responds to the removal of material rewards by either losing their desire for hard work or their moral fibre, thereby stri-ving for illegal rewards. This results in low GDP growth, inefficient production, corruption, illegal wealth, wide disparities and the nation having no money for social causes. In today's globalised world, countries cannot survive in isolation, impose unnatural barriers, subsidise inefficiency, and not have appropriate infrastructure, edu-cation, health and employment generation capabilities. Capitalism has not been a roaring success either. But what is clear is that you cannot mix politics, economics, social benefit and strategic needs. Each must be tackled separately. We must have the most efficient economy possible and ensure that its fruits help the underprivileged.

We must have under government control items of strategic importance to the country. With this framework in mind, let us examine some of the government's key objectives and the opposition to them: GDP growth rate to be increased from 6 to 8 per cent, which will shorten the time in which the major portion of the population can live decently; and increased outlay on education, health and infrastructure. If these objectives are fine, then the means of achieving them must be acceptable. The main problem in achieving the 8 per cent GDP growth is the gap between what we save as a nation and the investment required to achieve a 8 per cent growth rate. There are two ways to bridge this gap: Foreign direct investment and reduction of dissavings and fiscal deficit. FDI will seek appropriate return, and therefore has to be in the mutual interest of the investor and the country. We must bury the bogey of foreigners controlling our economy.

Can a commercial organisation function outside the laws of the country? The issue of foreign exchange drain can be offset by gains in terms of employment, technology and reciprocity. It is a huge mistake to link employment or job security with getting companies to be efficient and promoting competition. Organised labour accounts for just 10 per cent of the labour force. We cannot hold the country's millions hostage to protecting non-productive employment of organised labour. Labour has and must have rights, but they also have duties. A honest day's work for a day's pay.

Labour laws fair to all is a prerequisite to creating investment and employment. Parts of the public sector are a negative contributor to our savings. Somebody pays for losses of public sector enterprises. It is imperative that these be turned around (if possible), sold or closed down. If current management cannot do it, we offer it to others: If they see value they will bid, or we close them down and salvage what we can. A reduction in deficit becomes important to make funds available for investment in education, health and infrastructure.

To this end, we need to move from a income-based tax bias to one based on consumption. Most countries have gained by moving to VAT. We also need to dump the bogey of taxing the well-to-do at a high rate, as this only results in evasion and corruption. We can reduce non-productive expenditure of the government, by targeting subsidies directly at the less fortunate. For example, the poor do not use LPG; cheap electricity subsidises the rich, who are heavy users of electricity; and the marginal farmer hardly uses fertiliser. Food procurement and distribution is a wasteful mess.

Ideology-based economics coupled with vested interests harm the common man while claiming to do him good. India has on its side GDP growth, good reserves, sound financial infrastructure, favourable demographics and a English-speaking population. The global economy is in transition and developments are favourable to us. We need to ensure that we do not mix politics, economics, social needs and strategic imperatives. Capitalism with distributive justice should be our maxim. The writer is Managing Director, HDFC Bank. THE TIMES OF INDIA : October 11, 2005

Gandhian economics is relevant

Pulin B Nayak

In recent years there appears to have been a resurgence of interest in what may be called Gandhian economics. Gandhiji first enunciated some of these ideas about a hundred years ago. These are contained in his Hind Swaraj, written in 1908 during a voyage from London to South Africa.It was later published as a booklet. Gandhiji's economic ideas continued to evolve over the next four decades after he returned to India for good at the age of 45. He altered some of his more extreme positions on, say, machinery, but on a number of core formulations his conviction was unchanged.

Even at the height of Gandhi's virtually unchallenged position during India's freedom struggle there were many within the Congress party, some of them his closest confidants, who were never impressed with his economic formulations. These included, notably, Jawaharlal Nehru and Jayaprakash Narayan. Nehru never challenged Gandhiji's overall moral and political pre-eminence, but his emphasis on heavy industry and investment planning was at variance with Gandhi's ideas. Hind Swaraj was a severe condemnation of modern civilisation. It aimed for self-rule in a context where the twin principles of satyagraha and non-violence were the core postulates. As one who had the most perspicacious understanding of the Indian countryside, Gandhi felt that the key to the country's progress lay in the strengthening of the decentralised, self-sufficient village economies. He had a strong adherent in J C Kumarappa, who was possibly the first to coin the expression, Gandhian economics.

Gandhi made a trenchant critique of machinery, saying that it was a grand, yet awful, invention. In Hind Swaraj he observes: "It is machinery that has impoverished India". Further, he says: "Machinery is the chief symbol of modern civilisation; it represents a great sin". This was no doubt an extreme position. Few agreed with him on this, but it would be fair to say that Gandhi continued to change his position on this question. But fundamentally Gandhi opposed machinery because he thought it displaced labour and it concentrated production and distribution in the hands of a few. This is an old question in classical political economy with which Ricardo grappled at length. Gandhi's concern was not trivial; one needs to address the question of the appropriate choice of technique when looking at a real economy. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Gandhi's economic formulation was his theory of trusteeship.

This was developed as an alternative to the doctrine of socialism or communism. The thesis was that the capitalists would hold their wealth as trustees for the service of society. Trusteeship was thus to be thought of as a moral compact between the wealthy and society at large. This thesis has been roundly critiqued in several quarters. But in the present conjuncture when command economies are in retreat and globalised capitalism is the prevalent mode, the need for a moral and ethical basis for business practices has never been more keenly felt. Two further features of the Gandhian mode ought to assure for it a very special place in the history of economic thought.

• First, Gandhi advocated the precept of limitation of wants to take care of one's need and not greed. This is a counterpoise to the entire edifice of mainstream economic thinking which is based on the notion of a continuous expansion of the goods space to satisfy unlimited wants. It is conceivable that this may yet turn out to be the single major Gandhian insight that could dictate the agenda of the long-term sustainability of the ecosystem.
• The second has to do with the idea of focusing on the well-being of the poorest and weakest member of society that is contained in Gandhi's talisman. This was one of the last notes that Gandhi left behind in 1948. This was an intrinsic part of Gandhi's moral view of the world. It was articulated at least a decade before John Rawls's early writings. Gandhi's idea, later developed in Rawls's A Theory of Justice published in 1971, was to profoundly alter the course of theoretical welfare economics.

The writer is Director, Delhi School of Economics . THE TIMES OF INDIA : October 3, 2005

Bhutan: Gross National Happiness

Sociologists said the happiness barometer appeared to follow in the all-singing, all-dancing tracks of Bhutan's King Jigme Sigme Wangchuk, who is increasingly notching up publicity points for his relatively recent model, which measures Gross National Happiness rather than Gross Domestic Product. The new survey came just hours after Venezuelan economist Frank Bracho declared that trying to measure happiness could actually threaten it, but commentators said the new market focus on the happiness quotient, rather than possessions and wealth, may be a welcome and positive move away naked materialism.

The survey, which uniquely tried to quantify every nation's satisfaction with "the good life", found widespread regional disparities in India's categorization of happy, satisfied and dreadfully dolorous people. Gfk-NOP said the happiness breakdown, country-by-country, across five continents was part of a larger annual study of consumer attitudes, values and behaviours. Wheeler said this was the first time since 1997 that "we have included questions on what makes people happy (and) how happy people deem themselves to be." RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL, Thursday, October 06, 2005 TIMES NEWS NETWORK

SAMPADA initiative

Please go through the philosophy of SAMPADA initiative which I have launched. It is the distillation of my personal experience of life gained by witnessing the circus of the life placing myself in the ring itself rather than sitting on a cushy seat in the stall. Sampada implies blissful selfless wealth whereas Sampatti means prickly selfish wealth. We are engulfed with a sense of competition with each other. Had co-operation in lieu of competition been the driving rule of the world, then all the problems would have been certainly disappeared. If the sense of service to humanity as a way of serving God can be inculcated in all of us, what a radical shift we would witness in the way the world conducts its work? Nothing seems to stir us. Is it because, we fail to see the same self in others that we do readily seeing within us. SAMPADA initiative will ensure a confident march towards restoring compassion and predictability in the society.

The cause of SAMPADA may appear inconvenient (as it amounts to reversing our attitude), but it is magnificent. It exhorts people to contribute some TANA (Physical Involvement); MANA (Dedication); DHAN (Wealth) and SAMAY (Time) for social purpose in a selfless manner. The real learning comes when one changes one's perception , learn to view the world in a different light. Changing one's socio-economic orientation from "SAMPATTI" to "SAMPADA" will be a such learning. Hope you will extend your best possible help to our ( not mine only, as it belongs to you too) SAMPADA initiative so that a secure , tranquil and prosperous world may come in its own place.

Bibek Kumar Anand

Convener "SAMPADA"Tilkamanjhi, Jawaripur, Bhagalpur, Bihar, India, 812001

E -Mail ids - 1. sampada369@yahoo.co.in 2. sampada369@gmail.com 3. sampada369@hotmail.com 4. anand_bibek9@rediffmail.com

Conversations With Indian Economists

by V. N. Balasubramanyam

India has a whole bunch of people with a wealth of knowledge and experience (retired RBI governors, former advisors to the central government, prominent reformers, etc) who remain a valuable source of reliable information of the past and present economic system. I think a concerned effort must be made to engage them in a dialogue in understanding the real problems faced rather than pointing fingers at politicians and policy makers!! A complete netcast of the six hour Commanding Heights storyline that aired in three parts in PBS is available here. Also included are some essays in the same website. posted by fullymubbed @ 04:09

The forgotten Swami Dayanand

A pity that his agenda of social liberation doesn’t interest his followers
VALSON THAMPU
Indian Express, Monday, November 15, 2004

Maharshi Dayanand was a rare spiritual genius whose vision and mission represented an unprecedented stirring in the ocean of Indian spirituality. The Arya Samaj, in its authentic version, holds the potential to be an effective antidote to the spiritual decay that we see around us in the form of communalism, casteism and religious obscurantism. Sadly, the Arya Samaj, in the recent decades, seems to have compromised its mission. The cultural and intellectual vitality it awakened seems to have ebbed. It did yeoman service earlier by catalysing an intellectual and spiritual effervescence in the stagnant pool of religiosity. One wonders if it still does.

Maharshi Dayanand represented the resurgence of reason in religion. Those who see reason and faith as contraries know neither. Faith intuits and accesses truths that belong to the realm of revelation. But the harvest of revelation has to be articulated in the idiom of reason. What is not reasonable has no place in religion or it will regress quickly into blind faith and obscurantism. Dayanand is a role model for all those who take their religion seriously. Spirituality gives us courage, as it did Dayanand, to break out of the prison of blind faith and exercise the God given capacity for rational analysis — the secret of our inner freedom.

Second, every genuine spiritual leader in history has also been a religious reformer. There are two types of religious leaders: custodians of orthodoxy who perpetuate the status quo and those to whom religion is a call to know truth and honour God. This makes them concerned about the decay in the core of their religions. Dayanand was particularly appalled by the gulf between the Vaidic vision and popular Hinduism. So he raised the battle cry, “Back to the Vedas.” His greatest contribution was not that he reformed Hinduism. His was a clarion call to reform the idea of religion itself. Spirituality was an agenda of human liberation for him and that is why he found caste ridden Hinduism a spiritual anathema.

To him there was an innate connection between idol-worship and casteism. He realised that caste was the darkest blot on the Vaidic faith. The business of religion is to empower people to fulfill their arya (noble) destiny. It is a great pity that Dayanand’s followers have not remained faithful to his agenda of social liberation. Since Independence, evils like caste, communalism and women’s oppression have increased. Surprisingly, most Arya Samjis only stand by and watch this choreography of corruption. It makes one wonder if the Arya Samaj is now a movement or if it has become a monument.

Multilateral thinking

Our mental compasses do not point to the West alone. They point every-where. Not Lateral thinking; this is multilateral thinking.

Vinay Kamat
STOI- 22.2.04

Rule of law

From time immemorial, we have idealized the rule of law in precept and undermined it in practice. We have forgotten Cicero’s warning that

§ ‘we are in bondage to the law so that we might be free’
and that
§ ‘howsoever high you may be, the law is above you.’

We ignore Montesquieu who saw

§ ‘liberty as the right to do as the law permits’

and we violate William Penn’s apt words,

§ ‘Law is the insurance we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium we pay for it.’

Abhishek Singvi
HT- 21.4.04

Schumpeter, Schumacher

E.F. Schumacher was born in Germany in 1911 and took a class from Joseph Schumpeter in the late 1920s in Bonn. It was Schumpeter's course that convinced Schumacher to become an economist. Few realized when "Small is Beautiful" was published that E.F. Schumacher’s economic theories were underpinned by solid religious and philosophical foundations, the fruits of a lifetime of searching. In 1971, two years before the book’s publication, Schumacher had become a Roman Catholic, the final destination of his philosophical journey. Schumacher considered his conversion of supreme importance. This can be seen from the fact that he considered his spiritual work, A Guide for the Perplexed, to be his most important achievement.

'Pop handed me A Guide for the Perplexed on his deathbed, five days before he died,' says his daughter. He told her 'this is what my life has been leading to'. Yet when she began researching her biography of her father a lot of people were 'astounded' when they discovered his conversion. 'They hadn't realized that he had become a Catholic. They thought it was a real let-down, a betrayal'.' For all the songs of praise to Schumacher's achievement many, it seemed, had missed the point. By Joseph Pearce October 25, 2004

Voice of India

The article Hindu Society under Siege by Sita Ram Goel explores the challenges facing the modern Hindu awakening from the harmful residues of the past. The author is a prolific writer on Hindu nationalism and the founder of the “Voice of India” publishing house; he died in 2003 at the age of 82. In his earlier days, he was attracted to communism but later under the influence of his mentor Ram Swarup, who was a follower of Sri Aurobindo, he became an ardent Hindu revivalist. His unmatched scholarship and rigor is a dread to Marxist and secularist writers who seek to dominate the intellectual space in India today, and are opposed to the national vision of Swami Vivekananda. posted by IndiaWatcher @ Monday, July 04, 2005 6:19 AM

Sri Aurobindo: The Spiritual Anarchist

A spiritual age of mankind will perceive the truth. It will not try to make man perfect by machinery or keep him straight by tying up all his limbs. It will not present to the member of the society his higher self in the person of the policeman, the official and the corporal, nor, let us say, in the form of a socialistic bureaucracy or a Labour Soviet. Its aim will be to diminish as soon and as far as possible the element of external compulsion in human life by awakening the inner divine compulsion of the Spirit within and all the preliminary means it will use will have that for its aim. In the end it will employ chiefly if not solely the spiritual compulsion which even the spiritual individual can exercise on those around him, and how much more should a spiritual society be able to do it, that which awakens within us in spite of all inner resistance and outer denial the compulsions of the Light, the desire and the power to grow through one's own nature into the Divine. For the perfectly spiritualised society will be one in which, as is dreamed by the spiritual anarchist, all men will be deeply free, and it will be so because the preliminary condition will have been satisfied. In that state each man will be not a law to himself, but the law, the divine Law, because he will be a soul living in the Divine and not an ego living mainly if not entirely for its own interest and purpose. His life will be led by the law of his own divine nature liberated from the ego. -- The Human Cycle -- 'Conditions for the Coming of the Spiritual Age', pg. 243 spiritofnow (spiritofnow) wrote,@ 2005-05-06 00:31:00

One Cosmos Under God

In my view, the Judeo-Christian and Hindu traditions are the missing parts of one another. In exploring and conquering the material world, the former extends from the center to the periphery, or from the One to the many. Vedanta goes in the other direction, from the periphery back to the center, from the many back to the One. In reality, neither approach is completely valid or invalid. Rather, the Real would be a dynamic synthesis (not mere blending) of the two, a "transcendent position" that unifies the Eastern and Western hemispheres of the global brain, allowing us to live in a "third" dialectical, or "transitional" space between the external world and the mysterious Subject that is the source of both the world and ourselves. Dr. Reddy, like me a student of the Indian sage and mystic Sri Aurobindo, writes that "Mankind has benefitted broadly by the two central spiritual streams which were complementary to each other. The one that watered the West has been essentially the aspiration for the salvation of the world, the emancipation of humanity [through] the descent of God's grace.... The [stream] that was perfected in the East and especially in India was the liberation of the individual through his ascent into the Divine himself. An exclusive stress on the first results in preoccupation with the material world, whereas the all too exclusive preoccupation with individual liberation leads to complete disregard of the world of humanity. An integration of these two ways, a wider and luminous fusion of their insights, will provide a tangible and enduring basis of spiritual life on the earth." posted by Gagdad Bob at 8:15 AM 1 comments

Harmony of Interests and Moral Relativity

Thank God Carr shed some light on this and despite his utopian hopes, recognized this is not the best idea. Going back to my claim that achieving a global will is impossible, the truth is that the factors that give rise to the divergent interests around the globe cannot be easily obliterated. These differences are not just a product of our reason, like Kant would want to believe, that can be easily switched off by merely enlightening our reason banks. Instead, they are deep-rooted divides born of each nations' turbulent history and struggles. Moreover, these factors are not just social or cultural, but geopolitical and economic and cannot be swept away with a shift in thinking or attitude, but make up the fiber of a nation. They are hard realities that breed the difference of interests between the first world and the third world, between theocracies and democracies, between capitalism and communism. As long as these differences remain, which I would predict will be as long as civilization exists, there cannot be a harmony of interests.

Carr has done an invaluable service by unmasking the interests of various dominant groups whether they are in economics, politics or even in any other field. I believe that this neo-Marxian critique eventually gave rise to critical theory, which went on to do the same thing essentially. His case is irrefutable, with his quotes from Briand, Wilson, Hitler, Churchill, Toynbee and Cecil. It is amazing how the exposition of their policies flowed not from absolute principles but from practice, to suit their national interests.

In 1919, a Hindu nationalist turned Yogi named Sri Aurobindo wrote about the possibility of a League of Nations and what it would look like. When reading this qoute, think of the League and of the UN:"The idea of international unity to which this intervention of the revived force of nationality is leading, takes the form of a soc-called League of Nations.Practically however, the League of Nations under present conditions or any likely to be immediately realized would still mean the control of the earth by a few great Powers—a control that would be checked only by the necessity of conciliating the sympathy and support of the more numerous smaller or less powerful nations. On the force and influence of these few (Great Powers) would reset practically, if not admittedly, the decision of all important debatable questions. And without it there could be no chance of enforcing the decisions of the majority against any recalcitrant great Power or combinations of Powers." The Ideal of Human Unity, 1919. So it was with the League and indeed their vested interests as Carr points out. Now the same is true of the UN now and what Sri Aurobindo said is the same. But consider this, the UN was supposed to be more effective than the League, so how could it have turned out like it is? posted by Sir Francis Bacon at 11:42 PM

Money or Harmony?

Ananda- Bhaga (Enjoyment, Share)- Shudra: Service, Surrender- Marx's Labour

Ananda/Chit- Mitra (Harmony, Love)- Vaishya: Desire, Libidinal Economy- Freud, Lyotard

Chit/Tapas- Aryama (Force)- Kshatriya: Power, Leadership- Nietzsche, Adler, Foucault

Sat- Varuna (Purity)- Brahmana: Knowledge, Nobility- Kant's Sublime, Habermas' Dialogue

Country as Corporation

New Model China by Kenichi Ohmae
Tomorrow's World Business Strategy Review, Vol. 15, pp. 11-17, December 2004 Kenichi Ohmae
Leadership Business Strategy Review, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 32-64, Autumn 2005
Rob Goffee , Gareth Jones , Alex Alexander , Anthony Landale , Orit Gadiesh , Des Dearlove , Steve Coomber , Nada Kakabadse and Andrew Kakabadse