AN IRON IMAGE WITH FEET OF CLAY
J.C. KUMARAPPA
“Provided government and the people pull together and certain conditions are satisfied,” God’s Will will be done on earth as in Heaven. This broad generalisation is in perfect keeping with the pious sentiments showered by Sir Ardeshir Dalal at the last General Policy Committee Meeting explaining the progress of his reconstruction plans. Only his schemes did not include the item of who is to bell the cat and how? With all his good intentions and well meaning efforts, poor Sir Ardeshir is realising that he is a mere cog in the imperial machinery.
Referring to the scandalous protection enjoyed by British capital in our country under the present Constitution he bewails helplessly that “It is not possible for the industrial development of India to proceed unhindered so long as these constitutional provisions remain on the statute book.”
Sir Ardeshir would wait till the “Political difficulties... are over” to disclose the foundations and ground-work which he is busy preparing. It does not require a planning member to prophesy this. Once this nightmare of British civilization is disposed of the prosperity of the people will be assured by their industry. The country will turn green as after a spring shower. What is holding them down is this terrible foreign yoke and exploitation.
There is little that distinguishes his schemes from the nebulous plans that have been placed before us from time to time by the National Planning Committee for the last several years. There is a talk of regulated key industries with Public utilities as a government preserve. Even for these modest socialistic suggestions is there any guarantee that the imperialist government will support it seriously for a moment otherwise than as a “Punch and Judy” side show, to divert popular attention from their unholy negotiations and alliance with the USA for the methodical exploitation of the world rid of their German and Japanese competitors? It appears to us poor Sir Ardeshir will live to bemoan the futility of his genuine efforts. After our experience of the use made of the Reserve Bank his talk of an Industrial Finance Corporation gives us the creeps. The fewer the organisations under British rule the better. Every institution they start in the line proves a halter on our industrial progress. The Reserve Bank had proved itself during this war to be a good sponge to soak up every drop of blood left in the country. To this has been added a Tariff Board! Thus will go on the snowball of exploitation!
Sir Ardeshir had been detailed out to plan the economic activity of a country of 400 millions. Even a little thought that he has given this subject will hardly touch one or two million. The masses have been left severely alone. These teeming millions have to be left to their own devices. Is there to be no planning for them?
The only attempt in this programme to encourage people’s activity has its motive in the demobilisation scheme of the forces. What is to be done with these men who had risked their lives for British imperialism, is the theme which holds the fields. He talks about maintaining the standard of living that had risen during the war. He is presumably thinking of soldiers smoking cigarettes instead of bidis, drinking beer instead of buttermilk and tea instead of water and wearing khaki uniforms instead of dhotis and steel helmets instead of cloth caps or turbans. He has conveniently forgotten the standard of living of the millions who starved to death in 1943.
Practical planning need not wait for the academicians to make up their minds. Such planning is as old as society. It is pre-thought out development of society to an accepted ideal whatever it be. The last century saw worldwide plans put into operation by the imperialistic and capitalistic countries which cannot exist now for one moment if their nefarious plans are frustrated. The USA developed her steel industries from a protected infant to a mammoth giant within half a century without even placing as much as a blueprint before the public. England shut out Indian manufactures early in the last century and has developed its industrial octopus under a programme of all kinds of preferences—imperial or otherwise. These are some examples of surreptitious planning by interested groups to benefit themselves regardless of the cost to others.
What we want now are the ways and means of bringing about a desired order of society for the mutual benefit of all. Viewed in this way in so far as the present government does not represent the people it is not competent to plan notwithstanding the good intentions of the persons entrusted with it. the system is rotten to the core. Not being responsible to the people it governs, this government is not under their control and so cannot be safely trusted to plan for the people’s future. If it plans at all it will be planning for those who are its masters thousands of miles away.
Any plans intended for the welfare of the people should have the economic activity of the masses as the centre. Their diet has to be balanced. Food grains, vegetables, fruits, gur, milk and its products should have priority over all other production. Industrial and money crops must yield place to these. Plans should allow for the production of a copious supply of all other necessities of the people such as clothing, building materials etc. Production should not be looked upon as an end in itself. Distribution of wealth must naturally be an outcome of production. Cloth, sugar, oil, building materials etc. produced by a mill restricts distribution however much the quantity may be greater than the production by village and cottage industries.
People must produce for themselves by processes easily accessible to them. This should be the centre of all plans. Then should radiate from this—as being accessories to it—all other organised industries. Steel rolling mills will supply the raw materials needed by a village smith. Forest will be planned to supply the needed seasoned timber for the carpenter. The irrigation canals and tanks will water the fields and village roads will be built with the bullock cart as it spatron to meet its needs. The plans will be people-centred and so will have their own ballast and equilibrium. The plan that Sir Ardeshir is thinking of puts the cart before the horse and is material-centred. He is planning for materials and not for the people. It is therefore ton-heavy like an iron image with clay feet. This will topple down any moment. Such a social order will have to be buttressed with violence as Russia and Germany have proved beyond dispute.
No plan is worth the sacrifices a planned economy entails unless it visualises life as a whole and provides for the development of all the faculties of man. Man is more than a mere animal to be contented with a well regulated dairy life of cattle to be fed, watered and grazed at regular times and sumptuously. We need much more than this, and that cannot be provided by merely organising large-scale production of goods which Sir Ardeshir is striving hard for, even if he should succeed in his efforts.
(Source: Gram Udyog Patrika, vol vii, November 1945).