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The progress of a nation is measured in terms of its economic growth. The only available measure for assessing the economic growth is the growth of the so called Gross Domestic Product or the national income, which is the money value of the goods and services produced in the country over a financial year, counted avoiding double or multiple counting of the same good in the successive stages of its production. This is the best possible definition of the national income of a country. It has many statistical and economic problems, both on the conceptual and computational criteria. But, here we will consider only those problems which are relevant to our topic.
1. National Income is the total of the incomes of all the people in a nation. When it is computed for measuring the rate of growth of a country’s economy, its distribution over various socioeconomic strata of the society, like for example, employers Vs employees, rich Vs poor, productive Vs unproductive (like gamblers) and creative Vs counter productive (like controllers) strata is not counted. The average income (or per capita as it is called in the economic literature), is many a time deceptive if not misleading. A simple example will show how. In a group of two persons A gets Rs. 100 and B Rs. 2. Their per capita income is Rs. (100 + 2)/2 = Rs. 51. If in the next year, A’s income becomes Rs. 500 and B’s Rs. 3, the per capita income becomes Rs. (500 + 3) / 2 = Rs. 251.5. This means the Gross Domestic Income increased by [(503 - 102)/102] X 100 = 393:14% and the Per Capita income increased by [(251.5 - 51)/51] X 100 = 392:16%: Both these are fantastic rates of growth. But, can such a society stay stable? The obvious answer is ‘no’. The relatively poorer sections of the society will soon come to realise that their poverty is not exclusively due to their being relatively inefficient, but due to the social structure that does not offer them an equal opportunity to develop those abilities. In any society at any time and in any field of an economic activity there are always some early starters, who have already established themselves well in the field. Hence, a newcomer has to develop an exceptional ability to ward off their superior resistance power, which bars his/her entry into the coveted field, be it entrepreneurship, education or any other field of empowerment. The proponents of competition usually maintain that (i) it is an important natural force that chooses only the fittest individuals and species for survival and (ii) it is a socioeconomic mechanism which guarantees the principle of income distribution viz. ‘getting according to one’s ability’. Both these statements require an equality of opportunity for developing one’s own abilities, to each contender, which is hardly there in any society at any time. In his eye opening satire on Communism, viz. Animal Farm, George Orwell, has effectively presented this failure of a collectivist society as, “All animals on the Animal Farm are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Conflict (or its civilized version, viz. competition) is an important principle of life, both in nature and in a society. But, nature has sustained life on this planet by ingeniously reconciling conflict with cooperation and interdependence of the various species. Unfortunately all branches of knowledge developed under the Cartesian Newtonian Conceptual framework, have emphasised conflict to the near complete exclusion of cooperation as a basis of life. In the field of social sciences, particularly Economics and Political Science, both in capitalist as well as communist writings, this heavy imbalance towards conflict is so obviously seen. We have noted how capitalist thinkers idealised competition as though it is the (only) value in life. But even the founder of the so called ‘Scientific Socialism’ viz. Karl Marx, used to proudly call himself a ‘social Darwinist’, because Charles Darwin propounded the principles of ‘Struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest’ in his first publication, ‘On the origin of species’ (1859). Marx recognized that Darwin’s work provided an explanation for all activities of nature, thus supporting his world view.
A serious side effect of the unwarranted stress on conflict was the mindset of fighting and conquering nature. The proponents of this view, never realised that even though we conquer nature, we will still be on the losing side, as we are an integral part of nature and not its adversaries.
This is not to suggest that conflict or competition is not an important principle of life. Conflict and cooperation (interdependence) are the two principles on which nature has built its entire superstructure. Nature could do this, because it has successfully reconciled these two principles. Similarly, society is also sustained on both cooperation and conflict, reconciled scientifically. Stressing only conflict may affect the stability of the society and balances in nature.
2. We take raw materials and energy from nature. As these bear no price tag, the computation of the cost of production, includes only the cost of extraction of these inputs not the cost of their production to nature. It is precisely this low cost of the natural inputs that swells the profits of the entrepreneurs, who use them. However, the solid, liquid and gaseous wastes that are generated in the process of production and distribution are recklessly thrown on the environment. The cost of their management is dumped on the public authorities like the municipalities and is ultimately paid by the tax payers.
3. Nature creates new resources only by recycling resources. Through innumerable food chains, water cycle, nitrogen cycle etc. nature processes all the waste that is generated in its activities. Hence, nature does not create any wastes though each living being does. This creation, use and recycling of resources by nature and all its components, had continued for millenniums, before the industrial age began on the earth, in the year 1750. Today in the economic literature, economic development is identified with industrialisation of a country.
Industrialisation increased the demand for raw materials and sources of energy from nature. This destroyed the jungles and the life forms that lived therein, disturbed the cyclical mechanisms of resource regeneration by nature and created mountains of no biodegradable wastes like plastics, thermocoles which cannot be processed by nature. Worse still, the leftovers of the Thermonuclear electricity plants continue their radiation for 50,000 years. The increasing content of CO2 in the atmosphere, due again to the industrial activities and also the destruction of the jungles, causes global warming with disastrous effects on the weather cycles.
In short, our enthusiasm about increasing the consumer good basket has endangered the life on the earth. Unfortunately, the solution for this does not lie in better and cleaner technology. That may work only for the outward symptom of the problem rooted in our attitude towards nature.
It is here, that the traditional wisdom of our society provides a sustainable solution.
Please note that our ancestors never praised poverty or hated wealth. They knew for certain, that wealth is essential for lifting the human society above the subsistence level of animals. But they never over looked the fact that wealth or prosperity is only a means and not an end. Second, repeatedly have they exhorted the people that as the desire for more and more resources is never ending, a rational control over one’s mind, the fountainhead of all desires, is the key to a sustained happiness.
Hence, Yogawashishtham, the ancient treatise on Yoga, defines Yoga as
Yoga is controlling the tendencies of the mind.
An earlier text Kathopanishad, is more articulate on the issue of saturating warns. It wants,
No man will ever be fully satisfied, with whatever money he earns.
An anonymous poet goes into greater details. He maintains that just as a dearth of purchasing power is a horrible state of affairs, so is the availability of too much money. Like fire, money also should be earned only within moderate limits.
A lack of purchasing power as well its excess, both these are perilous, just as a lack as well as an excess of fire is dangerous.
Each one of us has to draw the lines marking the safe zone between the two perils, for oneself.
The ultimate objective of economic development within the Cartesian Newtonian conceptual framework, is saturation of human wants. Even though capitalism, socialism and mixed economy, propound different methods and the resultant different socioeconomic models, their ultimate objective is the same. Raw materials and energy resources, obtained from nature, have to be used in technologically feasible and economically optimal ways, to generate goods and services, in ever increasing quantities, for ultimately saturating human wants. The three economic systems differ only in the mode of distribution of these goods and services. Whereas a capitalist economy depends on a free market mechanism, a socialist economy gets this job done through a public distribution system and the mixed economy uses a judicious mixture of these two modes. The activities required for this objective consist in searching for newer and newer sources of a variety of natural resources, developing newer and ever more efficient technologies, supported by the basic sciences and through them, improving the efficiency levels continuously and obtaining the suitable distribution systems for reaching the ever increasing flow of goods and services to the end consumers. This is what the present economics is all about.
Human wants are unlimited, they recur and also increase with an increased availability of expendable resources. Compared to the wants, the expendable resources available to the consumers are scarce. Hence, we have to scale our wants and grade them according to their relative urgency and intensity and choose among the alternative uses of the scarce economic resources, so that the maximum possible wants are satisfied within the limited budget. This, in short, is the statement and the solution of the so called economic problem, generally accepted all over the world today.
A basic question, which has to be asked here is “Is the conceptual framework, wherefrom this interpretation of economic rationality has emerged, universally and eternally true?” Even the conceptual framework of the physical and natural sciences (the so called ‘hard sciences’), developed by René Descartes and Sir Isaac Newton, has undergone a near total transformation with the Einsteinian revolution, around 1920. How can the so called soft sciences, like Economics, claim their Cartesian Newtonian conceptual framework to be both universal and eternal, when the technoeconomic and psychocultural environment in the world has undergone a total metamorphosis? Prima facie reasons seem to be,
1. the global forces whose vested interests are hinged on this conceptual framework, are economically and militarily invincible in the today’s unipolar world and
2. the proponents of this framework for the social sciences today are either ignorant of the ghastly consequences of this framework on their own children or they do not care about it.
The disastrous consequences of the Homo economicus syndrome and the consumerism, unleashed by it, are bound to destroy the life on this planet very soon and any corrective measures to be taken cannot be postponed even by a smallest measure of time. We have to realise that it is literally a now or never situation that we are facing.
The only workable solution of this problem is the change in our outlook towards nature and the society. Today, under the influence of the economicism, that we learnt with modern economics from the West, we have forgotten our traditional attitude of reverence for nature and society, as the manifest forms of the Ultimate Reality. It is time we have regenerated this attitude, for ours as well as our children’s survival and wellbeing.
Society is not only a social mechanism created for performing some collective activities. It is a complex organisation, consisting of many component organisations (like family, community and nation), which together have saved our species from the cruel principle of natural selection, encouraged division of labour and specialisation, which continuously increased productivity and also permitted even the handicapped people to lead an honourable life. It is because of the society that we prevail over the other animal and plant species, in spite of such a fragile physique and a total absence of any natural gift, like strong claws and sharp fangs. Specialisation led to the explosion of knowledge and the availability of all the comforts that we enjoy today. If the society were not to be formed, human species would still have been scavenger animals, living purely by escaping (not fighting) the predator animals. A well-functioning society is an essential prerequisite of civilization.
Similarly, the human society draws from nature food, fodder, firewood, fertilisers, minerals, many industrial raw materials and medicines for its use. The only mechanism which possesses the exclusive capacity to convert solar energy into matter is plants. Plants hold the groundwater and make it available during the non-rainy seasons. Plants absorb the CO2 and provide Oxygen required for sustenance of life. It is high time, we have realised that nature existed for millennia before human beings appeared on the earth and will exist (probably more happily) even when we kill ourselves through destroying the life supporting cycles, through our irrational objective of economicism, aiming at saturating our wants through consumerism. Second, want saturation is a self defeating process because, wants multiply with an increased availability of resources.
Hence, our traditional wisdom repeatedly exhorts people not to be driven by economicism, consumerism and want saturation. A verse from Brahmapurana (XII 41) articulates this in a very effective way.
The entire available stock of rice, barley, gold, animals and women in the world will not be sufficient for satisfying the desires of even one man (let alone saturating them). Knowing this for sure, a wise person is not enamoured into chasing want gratification.
Do we need to comment on these words of wisdom, particularly relevant for today’s homo sapiens sapiens?
