This book by EF Schumacher was first published in 1973 without much
fanfare. No one noticed when it was released. But if people celebrated its 25th
anniversary and is still being referred to by serious economists, then it speaks
of its volume & its relevance even today. By size it is just 250 pages, but
is packed with lot of punches. The beauty is, it just not lists the ills of the
present day modern economics, but gives simple solutions for those ills. I am
highly influenced by its simple analogies and solution oriented arguments. Most
of my blogs and readings are influenced in this same direction. It is also
closer to Hindu & any other religious way of life prescribed giving a lot
of importance to the individual spiritual quest.
The author quotes Gandhiji in several occasions. Hence I can say it
hinges on the principles Gramodyoga & Grama swarajya - of people
employment, empowerment. It is principled on - If people are empowered to rule
themselves; then economy will take care of itself. But if economy is primary
concern, then people care takes back seat.
The Modern Economics: Something Bad
Modern economics is the primary driver of the politics today all over
the world. (Except may be Bhutan. Bhutan
has taken the Pledge to remain carbon neutral & measure their success by
Gross National Happiness, which makes me believe they are on the right path
& can be a guiding force & light for the rest of the world).
The politics is always about people, eradicating poverty, hunger, establishing
peace & permanence. So while politics is all about people, modern economics
derails it from focusing on people happiness to people prosperity.
The basic tenet of modern economics is: Peace is attained by
prosperity. So get rich and then get others rich. The easy reason
is once they get rich why would rich go to war? They gain less and lose a lot.
The author quotes Lord Keynes a noted modern day economist – ‘Until we
reach universal prosperity we pretend “foul is fair and fair is foul” for
foul is useful & fair is not’.
So basically the modern economics dictates to enrich yourself ‘somehow’,
‘anyhow’ for that is the road to peace.
The problem with this theory is while enriching oneself there is no
definition of ‘enough’. So it creates enormous stress on limited world
resources putting them on a collision course with not the poor but with other
rich. So the rich go to war. Rich & the poor suffer. Peace is disturbed.
Gandhiji quotes “Earth has enough for every man’s need but not enough
for every man’s greed”. It can be extended to say earth is not enough for even
one man’s greed.
Ancient Wisdom: Need to seep through
into politics
So what’s the solution? Author has a chapter called Buddhist economics.
But he admits at the beginning, itself, that it is the same tenets from any
other religion, be it Christian, Hindu or any other.
The religion preaches at individual level. The individuals make up
society, society makes up nation & it makes the world etc.,
The religion preaches: ‘Liberate oneself from the cravings for material
& obtain maximum human satisfaction with minimal consumption’.
Man’s needs are infinite & inifinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual
realm and never in the material.
With this wisdom the economic policies and politics of managing nation,
people & meeting their aspirations has to be undertaken. In that endeavor,
the author precinctly argues chapter by chapter: Small is Beautiful. Small land
ownership. Small production, minimal destruction. Minimal consumption. Small
water tanks, small district units, local produce, local consumption. Etc.,
Unemployment: Growing concern
One of the blame for unemployment is on population growth. Author
argues why additional people cannot do additional work? But that requires
resources. So what? Earth is bounty. But there is a clash of rich who have
control over the earth resources. So it boils down to how rich control
economics & politics depriving poor of their land rights.
The modern day economics argues: Agri ‘culture’ is uneconomical,
unviable. It has to be made Agri ‘business’ & Agri ‘Industry’. For economists
anything culture is unviable. It has to be rooted out. They always argue
politics has to be away from culture, and be secular.
The author argues, that the Agriculture when rightly done as in the
ancient times with a bit of modern touch, provides, peace & permanence.
Agriculture has a wider aspect: 1. It keeps man in touch with living
nature. 2. It will humanize and ennoble man’s wider habitat. 3. It produces
food for self and to trade. Besides it provides maximum employment. Especially it
is true for our country.
So the right solution from government should be – Instead of drift away
from Agi, 1. Reconstruct rural culture & 2. Reopen land for gainful occupation
to large number of working people, making Agri viable and attractive.
This will yield land use towards ideal health, beauty & permanence.
This will yield maximum employment too. Agriculture combined with vocational
work like Khadi weaving, art, temple building, sculpture, handi-crafts can
bring about long lasting peace. This has been our ancient wisdom in our
country.
Intermediate Technology: Right solution of technology for Humanity
The counter argument to the Small is Beautiful is that it kills
innovation and limits scientific utility to the world. But this argument only
by the rich. The poor just need basic necessities to be met first.
The author puts forth the need for intermediate technology to help
alleviate worker’s effort.
I would like to draw a simple analogy from the author’s this particular
thought process. It is like Charaka of the Gandhiji’s Khadi Gramodyoga.
A simple comparison is: The power loom employs thousands of people at a
particular place; it also consumes a lot of earthly resources from land, water,
electricity. It requires a lot of capital forcing only rich to fund and run it
employing others. It requires enormous transportation, distribution, marketing,
inventory management process for consumption of the produce. It becomes
unviable to reach the hinterlands of India. Instead it gets exported and made
available at cheaper rates only in cities forcing city people to consume more
than what they need.
The handloom on the other hand requires very minimal capital affordable
by anyone. It can be established across all 5 lakh villages across the country.
It provides employment across length and breadth of the nation and not
constrained to a particular factory place. Its earthly resource needs are
zilch. Consumer is right at the door step or maximum in a town nearby.
The author generalizes the Intermediate Technology as:
1.
Must be indigenous meeting the needs of the
locals by the locals
2.
Very easily accessible and affordable
3.
Equipment and operational harm to the nature
should be within the limits of the nature’s recuperative force.
One must understand that the colonial powers who shaped today’s modern
economics was primarily interested in supplies & profits from the colonies
& not in development & sustenance of the natives. Hence the modern
economics is ‘Export oriented & Import dependent’.
Summary
The book has a lot more to offer and ponder. It deep dives into the ills
of nuclear energy and argues that the solution lies in ‘altering our pattern
of living with lesser energy needs’. The modern economic performance
metrics like GNP, GDP are ripped apart based on its inhuman centric approaches.
Energy, fossil fuel, our dependence on it is deeply discussed. Some solutions by
way of real scenario case study are provided for new patterns of ownership of
factories. Interesting analogy of how man likes predictable output & hence
eliminates all ‘living’ elements in industry approach, implementing same
ideology on Agri – making it business than culture is described well. The ‘living’
elements are unpredictable & hence to be eliminated is the modern way of
thinking and it is dangerous for all ‘living’ including humans.
The only additional thing that I would like to add from my side is, while
common man should live within limits, the country needs to defend itself
against great many odds of the bad world. So the destructive technologies like
nuclear energy, warships, war planes need to be developed and maintained to
ensure peace for the people within the country.
One of the interesting further reads on the ills of GDP centric growth
is in the below article by Devinder Sharma:
