Development Without Destruction

Development Without Destruction Economics of the Spinning Wheel Nandini Joshi 1 2 Development Without Destruction Economics of the Spinning Wheel Nandini Joshi Navajivan Publishing House Ahmedabad- 380 014 3 Rs. 100/- @ Nandini Joshi First edition Copies 1000 November 1992 Printed & Published by Jitendra T- Desai Navajivan Mudranalaya, Ahmedabad-380 014 4 for my parents JYOTSNA and UMASHANKAR JOSHI 5 6 PREFACE This book is an attempt to put forward a simple but, for that very reason, powerful concept of the spinning wheel (the charkha). The concept derives its conviction from the fact that the charkha provides a concrete strategy, universally available to one and all, which has a tremendous impact both on the individual and on society. It is incredible as well because it offers, as this book proposes to discuss, a specific solution to complex problems, an unmistakable solution to perplexing problems and a common solution to a multitude of problems simultaneously. The charkha is of course an age-old instrument belonging to all parts of the world till just two centuries ago. After the 'industrial revolution', it was Mahatma Gandhi who revived it in India, achieved great success and yet could not, during his lifetime, achieve his cherished dream he had perceived through it. As a philosopher has put it, no force is so powerful as the idea whose time has come. Is the charkha such an idea? Although the charkha is usually considered a useful instrument in some cases, the purpose of this book is to indicate that it is indispensable for tackling a multitude of problems. Although it is believed to be a relief measure for the poor, the objective of this book is to show that it is the very foundation of a prospering society. Although it is supposed to be unviable, impractical and non-implementable, the aim of this book is to demonstrate that it is the most profitable, practical and implementable strategy. Although it is regarded inconsistent with the 20th century development, the goal of this book is to suggest that it is the very thing that could carry the world into the 21st century. One of the major drawbacks of this book is its emphasis on only the economic aspect of the charkha. The charkha is an economic concept, being an instrument of production; nonetheless it is the only instrument of production - except for its counterpart, the spinning machine - which has profound political, social, psychological, cultural, environmental and, above all, ethical implications. Gandhi 7 conceived it in its entirety and therefore far more intensively, which had a vital bearing on various aspects of an individual's as well as a society's growth. Although readily implementable, the charkha is a step in the direction opposite to the one in which the contemporary society is moving. It is therefore very hard to accept it at first thought. The writing of this book gave me sleepless nights in the beginning as I had to part with the conventional tools and techniques and unlearn much of my formally-taught economics. The reader might dismiss the argument as it tears apart the existing norms and rules, and the more learned the reader the quicker might be the dismissal. However, on second thought one might get convinced as the complex problems of the contemporary life seem to fall in place. For simple people, at least, the concept of the charkha presents no problems. I have a wish that this book reaches the young people and the village people. My brief experience indicates that they immediately grasp and thoroughly appreciate the strategy of the charkha. An earlier version of this book was written several years ago. But my father gave me an invaluable warning to try implementing the ideas before advocating them. That changed the book in many ways. Gradually, an earlier chapter on 'Technology for Development' had to be deleted to my astonishment, and. new ones on 'Uplift of the Disadvantaged', 'Democracy at the Grassroots' and 'Relating Agriculture to Industry' had to be added. I still do not feel ready for publishing this book as my experiment has been brief, many errors still remain and much more work needs to be added. The purpose of this publication is to initiate a debate on the vision of the charkha and begin thereby its implementation in many places. In my search for a way to tackle the problems of poverty, neither my education in economics nor my work in the economics departments of, successively, an educational, a governmental, a private sector and a United Nations institutions proved helpful. Later, after I started meeting people in their huts and occasionally working with them, I went 8 through many failures accountable to my previous knowledge or the lack of it. It is the learning from these failures that has brought me to the present stage. I wish to take this opportunity to acknowledge that the economics, to say the least, that was imparted unintentionally by the people is something I had never learnt before. According to my analysis of future economic development, like that of many, the contemporary mass-scale and machine-based industrial structure is neither sustainable nor useful for achieving even economic gains such as prosperity. The book forwards a strategy for shifting from the present system of mass production for global markets to a system of local production for local market. The unique characteristic of this strategy is its providing a concrete and practical pivotal step for achieving this goal, namely, the local production of cloth for local market through the charkha in each village. A theoretical contribution of this work lies in its pointing out the need (1) to turn towards the local market to undertake production for gaining self- employment, (2) to begin with the production of cloth, (3) to accomplish the cloth production through thousands of elderly and weak people with the use of the charkha, so that the rest can produce other things to exchange with cloth and so with one another, and (4) to concentrate only on starting a pitloom and charkhas in each community, knowing that the rest will follow automatically. Of course, once one comes to the charkha, the whole world of Mahatma Gandhi with immense potentiality opens up. Gandhi spoke and wrote most extensively and spiritedly about the charkha, the centre of his philosophy throughout his life. As an economist I was baffled by his conclusion in one of the very few books he wrote: "Nothing in history has been so disgraceful to human intellect as the acceptance among us of 'the common doctrines of economics as a science. I know no previous instance in history of a nation's establishing a systematic disobedience to the first principles of its professed religion." The consequent loss of our ability to find meaning and relevance of things and events around us is reflected in the agony of a young man I met, for instance, in Moscow: 9 "Please excuse me. ... "Why?" "I am drunk, Last night I drank. We are in a deep crisis." "Economic? Political?" "Yes. ... Crisis of LIFE." "What do you mean?" "I do not understand, He does not understand, Nobody understands." As Gandhi had pleaded : "What we had to prove was the indispensability of the entire economics of khadi (handspun cloth)." This book is an attempt in that direction. Conventional economics has over the past two centuries brainwashed us so thoroughly that we do not seem to even comprehend the contemporary crisis engulfing the world. It is possible to trace back the roots of this crisis in the destruction of the charkha, which was simultaneous with the rise of the 'industrial revolution' and the parallel rise of the conventional economics. My great and inexhaustible source of inspiration and strength has been the lives of my parents. My mother, remarkable as a woman for giving up gold and always wearing khadi, as did my father, a poet, abundantly adding to the lives of everyone around, gave me an insight into the inner beauty, wealth and strength one can not only possess oneself but also impart to others. The present small effort is only one step along the path lit by the blessings of my parents. I am aware that this book hardly measures to the task before it. But the failures are attributable to me and never to the concept of the charkha which, as will emerge from the argument made in the following pages, is an eternal foundation of prosperity and peace. 7 October 1992 Ahmedabad Nandini Joshi 10 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author gratefully acknowledges that some parts of this book, in different form, have been published or are scheduled to be published, in the following books and journal. Paving Pathways to Work, The Hague, 1987; Futures of development, Beijing, 1991; Humanity, Environment and Philosophy, Nairobi, 1992; Linking Present Decisions to Future Visions, Budapest, 1992; Challenges of a Changing Global Order, Kyoto, 1993; Construction Beyond 2000,Helsinki, 1993; The Encyclopedia of the Future, New York,1993; Rabindranath Tagore and the Challenges of Today, Simla, 1988; The Collected Works of Rabindranath Tagore, in Japanese, volume 12, Tokyo, 1992 and Futures, special issue on South Asia, October 1992. The initial version of the thesis was published in Sanskriti, a Gujarati journal, October-December 1984. A special acknowledgement is to Mr. Jitendra Desai, the managing trustee of Navajivan Trust, and his colleagues for the warm support and care they gave during the publication of this book. 11 CONTENTS Preface vii Acknowledgements xi 1 Abolishing -Unemployment and Poverty 1 2 Conditions of prosperity 34 3 Uplift of the Disadvantaged 57 4 Democracy at Grassroots 76 5 Industrial Revolution in Retrospect 89 6 Crisis of Economic Philosophy 100 7 Bankruptcy of Conventional Economics 109 8 Relating Agriculture to Industry 123 9 Human Values in Economics 133 10 Vision of the Charkha in the Words of Gandhi 144 11 Beautiful Struggle for a New World 167 Appendices : I Construction of the Charkha 182 II Ruin of Handspun Indian Textiles and Birth of 191 Industrial Revolution III Tagore's View of the Charkha.

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