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Economics was developed as a social science nearly exclusively by the British economists, roughly between 1776 and 1930. Earlier it was referred to as Political Economy. Most continental European languages do not have an exact corresponding term for Economics.
The father of modern economics, Adam Smith, who for the first time called it as Economics and a science of wealth, in 1776, all through advocated that Economics is a branch of Ethics, a discipline studying morality and setting norms of moral (responsible) behaviour.
His was the time when Mercantilism was being slowly replaced by the emerging Capitalism, based on industrial production. He was a strong advocate of a market mechanism, free from any government interference, so that the players in the free market mechanism viz. entrepreneurs and buyers, should use the potentials of mechanised large scale productive capacity generated by the Industrial Revolution (1750), furthering one’s own self interest. He believed that, left to itself (laissez faire), the market mechanism will decide that equilibrium price, which will be attractively low enough for buyers to buy and attractively high enough for the sellers to sell, simultaneously.
We can pardon his romantic belief in the market mechanism, because the nascent capitalism that he saw, made him confuse the necessary condition of a free entry in the market, for a sufficient condition of an army of entrepreneurs flooding the market.
Entrepreneurship, particularly industrial entrepreneurship, demanded extraordinary skills and attitudes, which was not every mercantilist entrepreneur’s cup of tea. Hence, the so called ‘thorough going competition’ was only a facade. There were open or tacit agreements among entrepreneurs, who were birds of the same feathers, exploiting both the unorganised labour and consumers, who were not socialised enough to come together and collectively bargain with the entrepreneurs. The legal machinery banned trade unions even in the democratic countries, under the pretext of protecting free competition among workers, under laissez faire. Second, any new entrepreneurs had a tough time in getting an entry in the market, packed with the early starters.
The real witnesses to the domestic industrial capitalism getting converted into an imperial capitalism, were the so called, ‘Neoclassical economists.’ Alfred Marshall (1842-1924) witnessed the British economy of the late 19th century, growing on the capital and captive market provided by the colonies, through the so called ‘economic drain. He took on himself the responsibility of washing the blemish on Economics being a dismal (disgusting, gloomy) science, put by Carlyle (1795-1881), a Victorian thinker.
Carlyle maintained that Economics, being a science of wealth, as defined by Adam Smith, teaches people to be greedy and so it is a dismal science. Marshall tried to defend his discipline by pleading that Economics studies wealth, no doubt, but it also studies human (material) welfare as the end (aim) of the use of wealth and that is the more important part of Economics. His own disciple, Lionel Robbins in the 1920’s, however, completely dissociated Economics from welfare and gave the so called ’scarcity and optimisation’ oriented definition, which clearly reflects the influence of the Cartesian Newtonian conceptual framework. The Marshallian insistence on human welfare being the objective of economic activity put a responsibility on the various economic agents.
With the Robbinsian thrust on ‘optimisation of resource use’, the engineering aspect of economic policies, as Dr. Amartya Sen puts it, became the sole objective of economic activities to the complete exclusion of the ethical aspect. The Homo Economicus syndrome was the inevitable side effect of Neoclassical economists’ world view, based on the Cartesian Newtonian conceptual framework, which fostered the European science, technology and the world view from 18th century. Briey, we can note the distinguishing characteristics of this conceptual framework as follows:
1) René Descartes (1598-1650), a philosopher and a mathematician from France and Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1724), a physicist and mathematician from UK, developed the so called Cartesian Newtonian conceptual frame-work. They never met, but Newton picked up the baton from Descartes.
2) The framework maintains that the universe functions like a machine, strictly according to the laws of deterministic mathematics.
3) The universe is a three dimensional space. Time, which is independent of the space, flows absolutely and unidirectionally from the past to the present and the future.
4) The ‘ultimate building blocks’ of all matter are the atoms, made indivisible by the divine design. (Newton’s ‘Optiks’)
5) The observer of any scientific experiment is totally an outsider to it and so is absolved of the moral responsibility of the results of the scientific experiments.
Economics, particularly after Lionel Robbins, accepted this conceptual framework and developed the so called Homo economicus syndrome. Economic rationality, under this ‘Economic Man’ mindset, was confined to making only the economically optimum and technologically feasible use of the scarce resources, totally ignoring the social, moral and environmental effects of such a ‘rational’ acquisition and use of resources.
The sense of responsibility towards the society and environment, which existed among the pre neoclassical economic thinkers, emanated from the relatively greater dependence of the human society on nature for subsistence. With chemical fertilisers and machinery used for agriculture, it became less and less dependent on the natural factors.
Second, by that time the concept of an exclusive ownership of nature by the human society became much stronger and the environment was looked upon as an inexhaustible source of raw materials and a bottomless pit for all the effluents (wastes) that industries and growing urban population generate.
The growing prosperity of the already privileged classes in the society, enforced by the total absence of a sense of responsibility towards nature and society, provided the necessary booster for what the Bhagawadgeeta refers to as the Asuri Sampat or ‘the diabolic mindset’. We will discuss this in the session V of this series and learn how best does it identify the ‘crisis of extinction’ that the human race today is confronted with.
“Oh mother earth, whatever I dig of you, let that quickly grow again. Oh the most efficient cleanser, never shall I hit your vitals or your heart.“
Comment:
The ancient pharmacologist who had to dig the earth for the medicinal roots, used to humbly pray the mother earth, (unlike his modern counterpart who unjustifiably considers himself the owner of nature). Second, by using the vocative ease, most efficient cleanser, the ancient pharmacologist also displayed his environmental awareness, which is sadly lacking in the modern
people. He knew that the earth (nature) accepts all the dirt and waste that we throw on it and processes them so that we get them back as useful resources again.
Question:
In the context of the phrase, `most efficient cleanser’, fully explain the following process of nature.
1. “Nature does not produce any waste, though every living being does”.
2. Waste is an inevitable outcome of a consumption or production process, which the producer finds uneconomic to use.
The interference with the life supporting cycle of nature by the homo sapiens sapiens (the modern wise man), has reached catastrophic proportions. But, unfortunately, the awareness of the fundamental nature of this problem is either absent or exists in a a onesided, if not in a prejudiced form. Most analysts, particularly from the West, suggest solutions which either border on faith or aim at treating the outward symptoms of the problem e.g.
- all we need to solve this problem is a cheap and clean technology,
- the Creator of the universe, who created us in His own image’. will intervene at a critical moment and fix the problem and
- the mother earth has the potentials to take this challenge and save a unique phenomenon in the known universe viz. life.
The Clean Technology cult conveniently forgets the harsh reality that the topnotch scientists and technocrats of the industrially advanced countries are engaged in the research of more and more destructive weapons. You must have heard an oftquoted aphorism, “We today, wield the ability to destroy the earth twenty one times, but we cannot use this ability more than once.”
Second, the so called clean technology, even if available and used, will at the most mitigate the problem of pollution of the air, water and land. These pollutions are just outward symptoms of a deeprooted disease viz. our unscientific attitude towards nature. Particularly the modern industrial civilization has looked upon nature as an antagonist, to be defeated and exploited as a source of all raw materials and a bottomless pit in which we can go on dumping our industrial and urban waste for ever.
Third, nature (i.e. the mother earth) has existed for four hundred and fifty crore years and will continue to exist, even after our selfdestruction. Our existence for a hundred and fifty years as an industrial civilization, is not even a nanosecond in the universal watch of the stars and planets.
You must have realised by now as to how the expectation that the solution of the problem of our survival, should also come from the West, where this problem emerged, is like a postdated cheque on a crashing bank.
Even the most ardent crusader against the problem of Global Warming today, the ex Vice President of the USA, Mr. Al Gore, in his otherwise convincing documentary on this issue viz. ‘Inconvenient Truth’, comes out with a remedy of only the symptoms of the problem. He too exhorts particularly the American people to use small and more fuel efficient cars, so that the Carbon Dioxide emissions can be minimised and the Global Warming can be mitigated.
Global Warming is one of the outward symptoms of the environmental imbalance; caused by the unbearable human interference. The fundamental question is, “Do we, the homo sapiens sapiens, the only so called, ‘rational animals’ have the courage to accept the ‘inconvenient truth’ that our irrational and reductionist attitude towards nature, springing from the Cartesian Newtonian conceptual framework which has shaped the Western psyche for last 300 years is responsible for the crisis?” Shall we gather courage to switch over to a new attitudinal framework, if it is proved to be more scientific and probably the only one available for the survival of our race?
It is at this point, that the ‘Traditional Wisdom’ of our country, provides an alternative and a humane solution to the problem of extinction that stares us in our face today. It attacks the problem directly and does not have any side effects, to be cured by supplementary medication.
It is holistic in its approach in that it does not look at a problem/situation alone, but takes it as an integral part of an entire system.
It emphatically maintains that every privileged entity in nature has a corresponding set of obligations and responsibilities. Similarly, the privileged sections in the society, have a corresponding responsibility for the sustenance of even the weakest of the weak sections, because they too have a meaningful role to play in a social structure.
Admittedly, conflict (or its civilized version viz. competition), is an important principle in the sustenance of life. It does eliminate those individuals (human or nonhuman), who are unfit to survive for various reasons. But our traditional wisdom also emphasises the interdependence and the resultant cooperation (intentional or intuitional) among the species. Nature is not keen on the survival of any individual animal/plant. But it goes to any length in providing facilities, which protect every species, because it has been given a specific role in the cyclical mechanism of resource-generation.
Our traditional wisdom never takes the human beings in their reductionist connotation of ‘an economic man (Homo economicus)’, as does the entire neoclassical school of economists from UK. Hence, our researchers established four objectives of the human life called the four Purushartha. They are, Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha.
Briefly, they can be explained as follows:
- Dharma means duties and responsibilities.
- Artha means resources.
- Kama means desires and
- Moksha means salvation i.e. freedom from the cycle of births and deaths.
The noteworthy feature of these objectives is that the two worldly objectives viz. Artha and Kama, which incidentally, are the subject matter of Economics, have been placed within the boundaries of Dharma and Moksha. The message is loud and clear. The worldly objectives of satisfaction of wants by earning and consuming resources, have to be achieved within one’s duties and responsibilities towards the society, which provides you with the protection and strength to prevail over other life forms and towards nature, which provides the natural resources and accepts your wastes, to be converted back into useful resources for your sustenance. The other boundary to these objectives is the ultimate aim of our life viz. Moksha i.e. salvation, meaning realising (not only knowing) the divinity of every soul.
This is why Lord Krishna in the Bhagawadgeeta says,
VII 11
Oh Arjuna, I appreciate that gratification of wants, which is in consonance with one’s duties and responsibilities..
How many and which wants should a rational person gratify? Only as many and those which lie within one’s duties and responsibilities towards society and nature. How should one earn resources? In such a manner that will not hurt the smooth functioning of nature and society. Nature and society are the manifest form of the Ultimate Reality (God) in our tradition. The first is the source of life and sustenance and the second, permitted us to bypass the cruel principle of natural selection, in spite of our most fragile physique, endowed with practically no defence mechanism against predator animals, even of comparable sizes. Several examples of exhortations in the ancient and medieval Sanskrit literature, will be presented in the subsequent sessions to prove how our ancestral wisdom provided sufficient warnings about our behaviour towards our surrounding and articulated the solutions to these problems as exhortations with the divine sanctions (Dharmic sanctions).
This session comes to a conclusion with the following examples:
1)
Only so far as the earth is endowed with the hills and mountains, covered by trees and jungles, will our children and grandchildren survive.Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, in his epoch making documentary, ‘A letter in the year 2070′, articulates the details of the kind of the questions our children are going to ask us about the horrible life they have to live because of our selfdestructive policies of economic development.
2) 
Like a garland maker, pick up only those many flowers as are needed. Never uproot trees, as does a charcoal producer.
Can we afford to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to these exhortations? How are we going to face our children then?
Introduction:
The sociopolitical and psychocultural structure of a society is shaped, if not governed, by the technoeconomic forces. The progress of the human society from the fragile bodied food gatherers and scavengers to the creators (or destroyers) of the environment can be traced over four stages, through the changes in the technoeconomic factors. These stages are,
(a) man within nature,
(b) man with nature,
(c) man against nature and
(d) nature against man.
(a) Man within nature was a prehistoric stage, when the human herds were subsisting only on nature’s bounty like most other animals. However, every other animal was provided with one or another type of a skill, which the human species lacked, e.g. long and sharp fangs and nails of the carnivores, the physical strength of a horse or the huge body of an elephant and gorilla. The food shortage compelled each individual in a herd to work all through the day and that provided, at the most, a subsistence level of living. Karl Marx calls this stage as, ‘Primitive Communism’ because, there was no surplus and so no concept of private ownership.
(b) Man with nature By the time, man learnt the art of agriculture and animal husbandry, there was a quantum change in the lifestyle. A durable type of food (viz. grains), a surplus over the daily need and a technology (of agriculture) that compelled the herds to stay at one place, were the factors responsible for the change. The surplus food permitted division of labour and specialisation. The art of consciously building and managing organisations, encouraged further division of labour and specialisation.
This stage lasted the longest in the human history, approximately from 7000 BC to the end of the 18th century AD. Though agriculture was certainly an interference with environment, nature could take it in its strides.
(c) Man against nature The rise of the mercantilist society in Europe towards the close of the 14th century, developed what is referred to as the sensate attitude. The respect and a sense of obligation about nature, that existed in the agrobased economies of the earlier period was gradually replaced by the sense of ownership of nature, which was looked upon as a resource, to be exploited for obtaining goods and services for an ever increasing standards of living for those privileged people, who possessed the required purchasing power.
The ‘ownership complex’ under the sensate attitude was further strengthened by the Industrial Revolution of 1750. The mechanised production process further reduced the human dependence on nature. Second, the increased production demanded an ever expanding market and additional sources of raw materials and energy. This led to the colonisation of the Asian, African countries and occupation of the New World by the growing capitalist powers. Hence this stage is referred to as Man against nature.
(d) Nature against man This is the stage in which we are living today. The capacities of nature to generate energy and materials were not only overused for a fast industrialisation and the resulting consumerism, but nature’s ageold processes of cyclical regeneration of resources were also disrupted by the human interference. The bad effects of these are now experienced by us. The air, water and land pollution, the Green House Effect, the resultant Global Warming, the hole in the Ozone layer exposing us to the carcinogenic U.V. radiation from the Sun, overurbanisation causing the problem of urban waste management, a loss of quality of life in spite of an ever increasing average standard of living, an ever widening gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, leading to the problems of Naxal and other terrorist movements etc.
As Swami Chinmayananda puts it “The tragedy of the human society today is the decreasing happiness in the face of increasing comforts.”
A common belief nurtured by the majority of the enlightened population in our country is that the solution to these problems must also come from the West, wherefrom these problems have come.
How far is this an operationally meaningful expectation?
Let us open an E-dialogue on this issue from today.
