Society
Alternative Model for
Development
by Prem Verma
The primary
driving force behind today’s globalization and so-called liberalization
is self-interest. It is promotion of self-interest that oils the engines
of globalization and the free market is driven by the consumerism borne
out of self-interest. I must have more – more goods, more comfort, more
luxuries, more of everything that makes my life comfortable – without
regard to any other human being. This is so contrary to everything that
our Indian culture teaches us – care for others, service before self,
visitors and neighbors before worrying about ourselves. In fact, what
would Gandhiji would have thought of this materialistic crazy world ?
The path we are taking is so much opposite to what he believed and
practiced.
As I said before, besides self-interest, globalization promotes
consumerism and a craze for possessions. Under this suicidal hunger for
more, not only we will never have enough; we will also be destroying and
consuming the natural resources at such a fast rate that stark poverty
of resources will stare in the faces of our future generations. We are
hell bent on destroying nature and the environment under the false
promise and glitter of globalization and thus leaving behind a world of
conflicts for our future generations. Will our children ever forgive us
?
This globalization, urbanization, free market economy motivates us to be
selfish and purely money-minded. A simple living man is looked down upon
because we have stopped putting premium on scholarly pursuits like art,
philosophy, music, history, etc. Economics is our only Goddess and
profit the supreme deity. So where is the question of simplicity,
humility and generosity ? We are supposed to flaunt our riches and
mundane wealth and the newspapers today are obsessed with how many
billionaires India has and has any Indian made it to the top ten richest
men in the world. How come we are not concerned with how many poor
people we have and what is the welfare index? A recent editorial that
appeared in The Statesman is worth repeating :-
“Amartya Sen’s reference to India as a country that flounders between
Sub-Saharan Africa and the Silicon Valley had at least presupposed a
single entity. The subtext of the UNDP’s Human Development Report for
2007-08, virtually points to two countries in one. Despite the second
highest growth rate in the world, the report has few bouquets to offer
in terms of indices of welfare. The data on the human development index
(HDI) – life expectancy, education and income – is chilling; it fully
bears out the currently fashionable appellation of Incredible India.
From the 126th slot in 2006 and 127th out of 177 countries in 2005, it
has now been placed in the 128th position. So dangerous has been the
process of slipping and sliding that India ranks below Equatorial Guinea
and Solomon Islands in terms of the overall HDI. These places exist on
the map, we know; if globalized India finds itself in their company the
message quite starkly is that the orchestrated growth model and the
high-voltage development mean little or nothing in tangible terms.
Specifics are still more damning. With life expectancy placed at 63.7
years, India ranks below Comoros (64.1) but may yet derive comfort from
the fact that it is a notch above Mauritiana (63.2). The failure in the
education sector is a national disgrace. For all the talk of a Knowledge
Commission and universal education program, Malawi and Rwanda boast a
higher adult literacy rate than does India. The report has even
questioned the country’s commitment to education in terms of public
spending which dropped from 12 per cent in 1991 to 10 per cent in 2006.
Health was also accorded a relatively lower priority. The public
spending of 0.9 per cent of GDP was only a fraction of Iceland’s 8.3 per
cent. Civil strife may not have been a parameter of the UNDP report. It
is now established that Rwanda is doing better in the search for
learning. But if it has incurred international notoriety on account of
man’s inhumanity to man, India’s record has been quite as dismal if
Gujarat, Bengal and Assam are held up as case studies. The grot and size
of human development is overwhelming. If an individual is judged by the
company he/she keeps, so too must India.”
Many people congratulate us that we are living in India which is rich in
ores and minerals and has an abundance of natural wealth. They tell us
that with rapid large scale industrialization, India can become the
leader of the world in terms of development. They all wonder why we are
not doing so speedily and willingly and the country seems to be
sleeping.
Many multinational industrial giants tempt us with the globalization
development model that offers the false promise of tremendous employment
and consequent happiness to all. If only they can be given the ores and
minerals to exploit, they can make this country a glittering spectacle
of modernity with large industries, expensive malls, modern townships,
tall skyscrapers, etc.
The future looks very enticing and there is wonder all over why India is
not enthusiastically jumping onto the bandwagon and taking care of all
its pressing problems.
Let us analyze
If we aspire to become like America, the eminent historian and writer of
social issues, Mr. Ramchandra Guha warns us, “To approach the norm set
by US - where two citizens in three own a car – 600 million Indians will
have to drive around in their own, enclosed, private vehicles. And where
will the steel and aluminium to make them come from ? And the oil to
power them ? And the roads to drive them on ? The mind boggles at the
number of square miles of earth that shall have to be devoted
exclusively to mining. Or at the number of oil wells that would be
required to move the minerals to the smelting plants to the car
factories and eventually to the showrooms. Or at the number of peasants
who will be displaced to build the highways these cars make necessary.
Or, finally, at the number of tons of greenhouse gases that this mining
and manufacturing and driving will cumulatively release into the
atmosphere”.
What we need for development of this country that will be on an
equitable basis for all is the now-discarded model of Gandhian economy
which was based on each producing the need of the other through a large
cluster of small-scale and cottage industries where people’s gainful
employment becomes the overriding criterion. We don’t need these
expensive SEZ’s where, in the words of our own Government spokesman,
Union Commerce and Industry Secretary Mr. G.K. Pillai, “A total of 137
SEZ’s that had been notified so far in the country with allotment of
land will invest a total of Rs. 1 lakh crore and this will result in 1
lakh jobs”, i.e. Rs. 1 crore investment to give employment to one
person. What a misuse of public money!
I am neither an economist nor a social thinker, but what I am clear on
is that we don’t need more slums, more displacement of farmers from
farmlands, more uprooting of tribals from their natural occupations,
more slavery of labor to produce more billionaires, and definitely we do
not want more progress in the name of attractive label of
“liberalization”.
We have to opt for a development model which will be village based and
people oriented, consisting of self-reliant and self-governing small
groups. The development model therefore will have to be of people living
in small communities and producing mostly for self or local consumption
on small machines.
This is not setting the hand of science backwards, as Jayaprakash
Narayan declared in 1957 when endorsing the Gandhian model of
development. As he continued to say, “Science and centralized
large-scale production and large conglomerations of human habitations
are thought to go necessarily together. Nothing could be more absurd.
Science is of two kinds : (a) pure science and (b) applied science. I
would call pure science alone science and the other technology. Now, the
application of science does not depend upon science itself but upon the
character of society. Large-scale, big machine production was profitable
to the money makers, so technology took the course of that particular
type of production. The money makers were the dominant class in society
and their will had to be done. Government also – irrespective of
ideologies – preferred centralized, big-scale production because that
was necessary for war making (or defence, if you please), and – no less
important – because it also concentrated great economic and, therefore,
political power in their hands. Thus governments and profiteers combined
to create the Frankenstein of modern society. Pure science had no say in
the matter. Rather, had the scientists their way, many of them, I
believe, would be happy to smash many of the engines of production and
destruction that their discoveries had helped to create. But supposing,
society had pursued not the aims of power, profit and war, but of peace,
goodwill, cooperation, freedom and brotherhood, science could have been
equally applied to evolve the suitable technology. If that were to
happen, it would be not regression of science, but progression in a
creative rather than destructive direction”.
The basis of the development model therefore would have to be, as so
well explained by Schumacher in “Small is Beautiful” :
An
important part of the development effort should by-pass the big
cities and be directly concerned with the creation of an
‘agro-industrial structure’ in the rural and small town areas.
Primary need is creation of work-places, literally millions of
work-places. We have to maximize work opportunities for the
unemployed and underemployed.
To quote Gabriel Ardant, “It is important that there should be
enough work for all because that is the only way to eliminate
anti-productive reflexes and create a new state of mind – that of a
country where labor has become precious and must be put to the best
possible use”.
Hence the new development model must satisfy the following
criteria –
Workplaces
must be created in villages and small towns where people are living now
Workplaces must be cheap enough for creation in large numbers without
high capital inputs and imports
Production methods must be simple, not requiring high skills
Production must be mainly from local materials and mainly for local
use.
Let us remember that globalization destroys the culture and civilization
of a nation and has no regard for its rich heritage and history. This
single-minded pursuit of self-interest and running after material
prosperity has only resulted in –
Vast
population displacements and genocide becoming, in the Swedish writer
Sven Lindquist’s words, “the inevitable byproduct of progress”
Serious rich-poor divide resulting in continuous conflict and unrest
in society
Destruction of nature and environment through insatiable urge for
consumption of goods and luxurious comforts
Gradual erosion of ethical and moral values with little or no
examination of means to achieve the desired ends, resulting in
disappearance of qualities like generosity, kindness, humility and
altruism
Art, music, humanities have been sacrificed at the alter of free
market economies where measurement is carried out in terms of monetary
value not spiritual need.
We know now
that man must live in balance with nature. The degradation of
environment, the unbridled consumption of our resources, the squeezing
of farmlands, the mania over machine productivity and the stress on
efficiency of mass production, the dehumanizing of our population, the
alarming chasm of rich-poor divide – all these can only produce a bare
world devoid of emotions and relationships where human feelings don’t
count and man is at the bottom of pile of our priorities. This alarming
scenario is staring before us and we are looking the other way.
Hence the urgent need for immediate adoption of the Gandhian model of
development to prevent the impending catastrophe looming over us which
threatens to destroy the life of our future generations for the promise
of a short-term gain of comfort for us.
To conclude, I would like you to ponder over these prophetic words of
Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi wrote the following as early as 1929 and 1936 –
“I would categorically state my conviction that the mania for
mass-production is responsible for the world crisis.”
“I do not believe that industrialization is necessary in any case for
any country. It is much less so for India. Indeed, I believe that
Independent India can only discharge her duty towards a groaning world
by adopting a simple but ennobled life by developing her thousands of
cottages and living at peace with the world. High thinking is
inconsistent with complicated material life based on high speed imposed
on us by Mammon worship. All the graces of life are possible only when
we learn the art of living nobly.”
Boloji.com is owned and managed by
Boloji Media Inc Privacy Policy |
Disclaimer No part of this Internet site may
be reproduced without prior written permission of the copyright holder.
