Venu
Madhav Govindu and Deepak Malghan
This article first appeared
in THE HINDU Young World in 2 parts on 4th and 11th of January 2003.
Reproduced with the permission of the Authors
In the summer of 1949 the
Planning Commission was meeting at the Rashtrapati Bhavan to chalk out
a strategy for the economic development of newly independent India.
One of the participants in the meeting arrived in a horse drawn tonga
and was ordered off the road at the outer entrance of the Rashtrapati
Bhavan. He protested and was told that the roads were being cleared
for Pandit Nehru and was allowed to pass only after he explained that
he had to reach the meeting before Panditji did
This ordeal was repeated
at the next two gates. Worse, in spite of an official protest it was
repeated the second day when he threatened to arrive in a bullock cart
on the following day. During a discussion on roads in the meeting he
raised the issue and said that a bullock cart driver in a democracy
was as much a citizen as the Prime Minister and that it was an insult
to deny him the use of a public road. Nehru agreed that every citizen
was equal but suggested that the restriction was meant to protect the
cart drivers from accidents in an area with many motorised vehicles.
Our delegate replied that when there are two persons in a public place
and the presence of one is likely to be a menace to the other, commonsense
would lead to restraining the source of danger rather than the possible
victim. He further suggested that under such circumstances he would
instead put up notices saying "motor cars and lorries not allowed"
evoking peals of laughter.
Be it giving a few, rich
car owners more privileges than the majority non-car users or other
issues, societies have to constantly make conscious choices. They have
to often choose between decisions that benefit the few or the larger
public good. In India where the vast majority is poor, there is an even
greater responsibility in this regard. Our history therefore is full
of debates and struggles for serving the larger public good against
the smaller private good. While we are familiar with the contributions
of leaders like Gandhi and Nehru to these debates, there were several
contemporaries of Gandhi who felt it was not just enough to politically
stand up for the larger public good. They argued that only by adopting
particular paths to economic development could the larger public interest
be served.
This straight-shooting
delegate, J.C.Kumarappa was one such visionary who believed that India's
future was secure only in economic development that protects the environment
and is pro-people especially the poor. As we celebrate his birthday
today, it would be useful to recall his life and work and understand
why it continues to be relevant this day and age.
Born Joseph Chelladurai
Cornelius on the 4th of January in 1892, he became an important associate
of Mahatma Gandhi. Trained first as an accountant, he later studied
economics in the United States and analysed the plunder of India's wealth
by the British. Wiser after his studies he returned to India, chose
to call himself Kumarappa and to work closely with Gandhi. Gandhi saw
Kumarappa as someone who intuitively understood his ideas and being
capable of implementing it in practice. Kumarappa went on to play an
important role in Gandhi's attempts to transform Indian society and
economy according to non-violent principles. For Kumarappa, violence
was not just physical violence. Any activity that harmed human beings
and nature was considered violent. Thus a farmer selling milk to a dairy
while depriving her own children its nutritional benefits would be committing
a violent economic act. A government that subsidises electricity mostly
used in urban areas and by rich landowners at the expense o f the poor
would be another example. Similarly, a farmer trying to increase his
yield by indiscriminately using chemical fertilizers and pesticides
would be indulging in violent economic activity because he is poisoning
the soil and the people who will consume his produce. Such a perspective
is important since we often fail to recognise the violence inherent
in current forms of social and economic organisation and the severe
problems it causes.
How many of us would look
at a swank golf course or massive flyovers with speeding cars as violence?
On the contrary they are viewed as symbols of progress in a modern economy.
But Kumarappa challenges us to scratch the surface - to look at the
underlying 'moral content' of these structures. Are we comfortable with
the fact that a golf course catering to a handful
of people is built on prime public property, guzzles precious water
and pollutes ground water with chemical fertilizer runoff? Is it appropriate
to spend crores of rupees on flyovers used by private cars while neglecting
the needs of public transportation used by many more citizens? Some
of the violence is not even so subtle; consider the 'Gulf Wars' caused
by the world's dependence on petroleum as a source of energy.
Kumarappa is well known
for his advocacy of an "economy of permanence" which would
have public welfare as its objective instead of only a profit motive.
Consisting of small, local units and supplemented by a few industries
this economy would make judicious use of human and natural resources
without damaging the environment. One of the biggest problems with the
modern economy is that it is very 'efficient' at generating wealth but
very bad at distributing it equitably. Moreover the ecological damage
caused by industrial production is often severe. The biggest barrier
to equitable distribution of wealth is the high concentration of our productive resources in the hands of a few which inevitably leads
to severe exploitation of the poor and the weak. Although the modern
economy is blind to this problem, no enlightened society can ignore
it and should not separate the means of producing wealth from its distribution.
Kumarappa had grasped this idea early on. We should view his insistence
on a village based, decentralised economy in this light and not as an
old-fashioned idea of no importance today. Today its relevance is obvious
when we consider the shameful situation of our godowns overflowing with
food grains while millions of Indians are hungry in a year of drought.
Kumarappa was also one
of those rare individuals who practiced what he preached and showed
great probity in his personal and public life. In 1934, after the Bihar
earthquake, Kumarappa was maintaining the accounts of the relief efforts.
When Gandhi and his party arrived, Kumarappa refused to pay for their
travel expenses. On hearing this Gandhi demurred since he had traveled
to Patna for the sole purpose of helping with the relief work. Kumarappa
explained that to maintain discipline in the operations, he had set
a limit on the daily allowance of volunteers at three annas per day
and would refuse to pay anyone who exceeded it! On hearing this Gandhi
agreed with his decision. In contrast look at contemporary India and
its rulers. If the integrity of our decision makers is any indicator
of the moral content of the present economy, is it a wonder that we
see mostly violent and exploitative economic systems around us?
Many of the ideas and questions
that Kumarappa discussed in his large body of writings more than seventy
years ago are very much alive in our modern debates on sustainable development
and environmental consciousness. It is this farsightedness and contemporary
relevance of Kumarappa to our crisis-ridden world that makes it important
for us to revisit and carefully reconsider the life and work of this
profound thinker and practitioner of an "economy of permanence".
For the younger generation of today - to ensure their own future, the
thinking of leaders like Kumarappa should be made relevant to both their
personal lives and in national economic decision-making.