Ideas on Economy

Gandhi’s concept of Swaraj had its own brand of economic vision. He wanted a decentralised economy without state control. Gandhi dismissed both capitalism and Western socialism—the former for its exploitative excesses and the latter for its connection to industrialisation. Both, he believed, led human beings to crave for luxury and self-indulgence. Gandhi wanted people to get rid of greed and make do with just the bare necessities of life. He developed the idea of village Sarvodaya. He advocated a “back to the roots” vision when production was “simultaneous with consumption and distribution and the vicious circle of money economy was absent. Production was for immediate use and not for distant markets.” What he wanted was the revival of ancient village

communities in which agriculture prospered, industry was decentralised business was through small scale cooperative organisations. He also wanted the participation of people at all levels. In a letter he wrote to Henry Polak in 1909, Gandhi expressed the view that India’s salvation lay in unlearning what had been learnt; he wanted the railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors, and other modern trappings to be discarded, and the so-called upper classes to learn to live the simple life of the peasant.

He was against largescale industrialisation. He had strong objections to labour saving machinery. “Men go on saving labour, till thousands are without work and thrown on the open streets to die of starvation”. He was not against instruments and machinery that saved individual labour. He wrote that “mechanisation is good when the hands are too few for the work intended to be accomplished. It is an evil when there are more hands than required for the work, as is the case in India”.

The capitalist who amassed wealth was a thief, according to Gandhi. In his opinion, if a person had inherited wealth or had made a lot of money through trade and industry, the amount was to be shared with the entire society and must be spent on the welfare of all. He put forward his theory of trusteeship under which he wanted the capitalists to be trustees, and as such would take care of not only themselves but also of others. The workers would consider the capitalists as their benefactors and would keep faith in them. So there would be mutual trust and confidence, and as a consequence the ideal of economic equality could be achieved.

Bose considered economic freedom to be the essence of social and political freedom. He was all in favour of modernisation which was necessarily to be brought about by industrialisation. He believed that India’s downfall in the political and material sphere had been brought about by the people’s inordinate belief in fate and the supernatural accompanied by an indifference to modern scientific developments, especially in the field of war weapons. He felt the backward agriculture had to be modernised. The labour that was ousted from the agricultural sector as a result of such modernisation could be helped only with the development

of industry, which could absorb the surplus labour from agriculture.

In his speech at the Haripura Congress session, Bose expressed his opinion that, for India to progress, a comprehensive scheme of industrial development under state- ownership and state-control would be indispensable. And he spoke about the need to set up a planning commission to advise the national government. He also spoke about abolition of landlordism and liquidation of agricultural indebtedness. He was much impressed by the success attained by the Soviet Union in economic development through rapid industrialisation within a short period of time.

Bose had his reasons for demanding industrialisation for India. It would solve the problem of unemployment. Socialism, he said, was to be the basis of national reconstruction and socialism presupposed industrialisation. Moreover, industrialisation was necessary if India were to compete with foreign countries. Industrialisation was also necessary for improving the standard of living of the people at large. Bose classified industry into three categories: heavy, medium, and cottage. Heavy industries, he said, form the backbone of the national economy. But he was fully aware of the great importance of cottage industries. “Industrialisation does not ... mean that we turn our back on cottage industries.

. . . It only means that we shall have to decide which industries should be developed on a cottage basis and which on a large- scale basis.”