A SEER AMONGST ECONOMISTS
by J.C. Kumarappa
Economics as it is taught in Indian schools and colleges is in complete alignment with the rest of the curriculum. Our young men are taught principles deduced by western thinkers from observations made in western countries. Economics is a social science and men react differently under differing environments. Therefore, men in India, under the influence of totally different ideals, social customs and natural surroundings, do not react identically in the same way as do westerners. Hence it is a folly to use western standards to measure an Eastern mind. This use of a wrong “yard stick” accounts, in a large measure, for the failure of our economists to help us understand the economic problems that confront us today. Our so-called economists and professors of the subject are too intoxicated with Western doctrines to be creative factors in the reconstruction schemes that are attempted at the present time.
Western economic organization is founded on the activities of cities convinced of the merits of the creation of a multiplicity of wants; while Indian civilization centres round the village with the city as a necessary adjunct. While economic science is largely materialistic our “Arthasastra” is tinged with religious and social ideals. Wealth forms the end of economic activities in the West, while India can only consent to yield the third place to the Vaishya.
Such being the gulf that separated the western view point from the Eastern, it is no wonder that any attempt to introduce bodily Western thought into our present problems has met with complete failure. It is therefore necessary for an unsophisticated man of action to act under the guidance of intuition rather than be impelled by thought to find ways and means of alleviating poverty that stalks our land. As far as Gandhiji is concerned Economics is not a science but an art. He does not imbibe his principles from a well stocked library but the ribs of starved millions provide the shelves from which he draws his inspiration. He does not obtain his materials for his thesis from government blue books sitting in an arm chair but from the life he shares with the villagers. His face is not turned towards Throgmorton Avenue to enrich the impecunious farmer but he plies the charkha to fill up under-employed moments. Economics is not a subject to be attended to in the study but is part of his very life and religion. His attempt is not to create work to increase consumption and stimulate production but to organize villages so as to enable them to be independent of the exploiter who casts greedy eyes on the little that a farmer is able to produce. He tries to obtain freedom, not from without, but from within, to release man from the thraldom of Mammon. He has turned our thoughts towards the village as the centre of our national life. Our genius is such that India cannot take her rightful place amongst the nations of the world unless she draws her sap from rural life. Gandhiji has sensed this fact and so, in spite of so-called leaders and economists laughing him to scorn, he has ceaselessly striven for the amelioration of the tiller.
When this is achieved we would no longer need a Round Table Conference to settle our future. Our hope lies, not in financiers, or industrialists, but in the simple man behind the plough. Let the rich deal with their riches as a trust; let the learned dedicate their knowledge to the service of the masses. Let us think out ways and means of occupying the farmers spare time, let us fight to release him from the clutches of the oppressive revenue collector, let us devise methods of financing him which will redeem him from the shackles that the government has bound him with by taccavi loans. Let us take away the cup of poison that the Excise Department places at his lips. Then he will be free and India with him.
(Published in Special no. of The Student’s Outlook, Allahabad University. Also contributed to Gandhi Birthday number of the Bombay Chronicle, 1931. Source: Kumarappa Papers, NMML)