Fifth Column: Set to Stagnate

India Today
October 5, 1998

FIFTH COLUMN
Set to Stagnate

Beware the swadeshi brigade's economic fossils

Tavleen Singh

A Gandhian's path crossed mine recently. He was a middle-aged man of gentle demeanour but deep convictions. He wore the finest khadi, had lived humbly his entire life and made a detailed study of what he called Gandhian economics. Never having thought of the Mahatma as an economist, I asked him what Gandhian economics was.

Instead of answering the question immediately he gave me a preface: "It took 70 years for socialism to fail. It has taken seven years for capitalism to fail. When are we going to realise that the only thing which will work in our country is Gandhian economics? Because India lives in her villages, you see, and there our biggest problem is unemployment."

What is Gandhian economics and in which book was this theory expounded, I asked, interrupting what was turning into a reverie. The Gandhian replied that although there was no specific book, there were economic ideas that had emanated from the Father of the Nation. Upon these, we should be building all our future economic plans. The ideas, he said, were based on Gandhi's basic philosophy that the village was the most perfect unit on the planet and if the village economy functioned perfectly then India would become a prosperous, happy land.

In other words, we should be wearing only khadi (as Madam Sonia recently ordained for Congress members), manufacturing only the sort of goods that can be produced easily and simply at the village level and living out the 21st century in this sort of simple, undemanding way. No potato chips, no computer chips either.

Frankly, I would have dismissed this Gandhian as an eccentric and forgotten him completely had I not read shortly afterwards in one of our leading newspapers almost identical views expressed by one of the leading economic thinkers of the RSS. This gentleman is also a founding member of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM). The SJM has become increasingly active lately because of what is being perceived in swadeshi circles as the collapse of global capitalism.

In the SJM's blinkered world view, East Asia's recent economic problems are proof that we were right not to reform our economy too quickly. The SJM overlooks, as usual, the fact that countries like Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia used to be bicycle economies like our own but have become motor car economies in the past 20 years. Their citizenry is mostly literate and lives with a few basic 20th century necessities like sanitation, clean drinking water and electricity. Our people, on the other hand, live in conditions that would have been considered horrific by 19th century standards.

But according to the neo-Gandhians who are emerging from the RSS stables, we do not want progress of the kind that East Asia emulated from the West. We want to live with the simplicity Gandhiji advocated. Two sets of khadi clothing (one to wash, one to wear), a mud hut, two square meals, a glass of goat's milk and thou.

Now what is most interesting about this mythical rural idyll is nobody in rural India wants it any more.

Shortly after my conversation with the Gandhian, I travelled to Tamil Nadu. While driving through a particularly backward area I stopped for tea in a small village. The owner of the tea shop was a middle-aged lady. We got talking and I asked her how much she earned every day from her shop. She replied that in good times, when many tourists stopped by en route to nearby Kodaikanal, she could make as much as Rs 150 a day. "But this year," she added, "the tourists haven't come. So I average about Rs 50. It's nothing. I barely manage to eat twice a day."

The lady would have been a terrible disappointment to the SJM. She wore a sari made of synthetic material and had never heard of khadi. She also wanted, desperately, to be able to afford a television set and a nice house. The greatest improvement she had seen in her village in recent years was the fact that water was now available through a handpump. This made life so much easier, she said, thanking M. Karunanidhi's Government for it.

The Tamil lady was expressing pretty much the sort of sentiments you hear in villages across India. People want progress and, sadly, it has to be said that they also want consumer goods. They do not want Gandhian economics, which would serve mainly to keep them the way they are -- with the additional burden of khadi.

When I pointed out to my Gandhian friend that most people in rural India had abandoned Gandhiji's favourite fabric for drip-dry stuff because it wore better and did not need to be ironed, he said, "Well, in the society we are talking about there will be no need to iron clothes." So we are speaking really of a subsistence economy, I asked. Yes, he affirmed, that is what we are talking about.

So these neo-Gandhians are not coming out of the villages of India but from the ranks of our urban middle classes -- most of whom have no comprehension of what rural Indians want or what village life is like. The problem is they cannot be simply wished away with their silly ideas and simplistic solutions. They cannot be wished away because they are backed by the might of the RSS, the alma mater of most of the people who currently rule us. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, have all proudly marched around in khaki knickers at one time or the other. Will they be able to resist Gandhian economics?

If not, then just as Nehruvian socialism kept us desperately poor for half this century we can look forward to Gandhian economics keeping us as desperately poor through the 21st. Saare jahan se achcha...

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