BY S. M. Y. SASTRY

Philosophically, Gandhiji is convinced that wholesale industrialisation is a curse to mankind. His war, as he repeatedly points out, is not on the machine but on mechanisation. His abhorrence of industrialisation seems to be based mainly on two considerations: Firstly, there is the so-called Hindu view of life which sees salvation in a limitation of one’s desires and one’s wants to the point of complete elimination, while the modern view sees the development of the human personality in the expansion of wants and desires and their final gratification. Every book on economics starts with the assertion that "man’s wants are unlimited and illimitable." Industrialisation on a mass scale assumes that the satisfaction of wants would lead to the development of further wants, and that activity would be necessary to satisfy these new wants. Activity itself creates wants: and these wants result in activity. Gandhiji asks what would happen to the eliminated ninety, were a machine to replace a hundred men and give employment to ten. Protagonists of industrialisation would answer that the more efficient methods of production cheapen the product and therefore extend the demand for it: further, that this would leave a greater margin in spending power and therefore create new wants in seeking to satisfy which the other ninety would be absorbed. We see before us constantly new avenues opening up as activities increase: the Press, the Cinema and the Radio have grown to magnitude before our eyes, and these have absorbed a certain amount of otherwise unemployed labour. This view that man’s wants increase and ought to increase with activity, and that they should be satisfied, is essential for a proper understanding of the functioning of industrialisation. Hindu philosophy had ever placed an emphasis on ‘Limitation and Conquest of Desire and not the Satisfaction of the Desire as the Path,’ and Gandhiji would undoubtedly prefer a return to a much simpler life. This explains his uncompromising opposition to industrialisation, while he baffles his critics by asserting that he is not opposed to the machine as such.

The other consideration is about ‘the ills of industrialisation.’ A confusion arising out of the failure to distinguish between the organisation and its tool seems to be responsible for attributing these ills to industrialisation. Capitalism, though it at present utilises industrialisation as the efficient tool, is separate and must be distinguished from industries and the machine. The East India Company represented mercantile capitalism which was as ruthless in exploitation as the factory. Mahadev Desai seeks to answer the question, ‘Was there no terrible exploitation before the Machine Age?’ with ‘Was the gulf separating the rich and the poor wider then or now?’ This is not answering but merely evading the question. The tool being finer and more efficient, the exploitation is intensified. The difference is merely quantitative and not qualitative. Elimination of exploitation will not be effected by merely reducing the gulf separating the exploiters and the exploited.

Gandhiji himself seems to be unconsciously aware of this: for in his ‘definition’ of ‘Swadeshi’ he incorporates the clause that "labour should have a living wage and be comfortably housed while the welfare of the children of the labourers should be guaranteed by the employers." This means that he recognises that even with the most primitive tool, or in fact with no tool at all, there can be exploitation–and exploitation which is as intense. The khadi - producer who employs a needy woman to spin for him eighteen hours in the day and pays but two annas for the labour, or the employer who engages a coolie to lift heavy loads for twelve hours and pays but two annas again is as guilty of exploitation as the owner of a factory. "Is not the institutional burden of the factory system itself great?" asks Mahadev Desai. The burden can and has been eliminated by the proper utilisation of the plenty which industrialisation procures. The evil is of the Capitalist organisation, not of industrialisation.

As a result of this unconscious or deliberate confusion, springs another objection to industrialisation. ‘Don’t you see,’ asks Gandhiji ‘that if India becomes industrialised we should need a Nadirshah to find out other worlds to exploit?’ Capitalist industrialisation assuredly does require other worlds to exploit, not so the Socialist industrialisation. Gandhiji hits the nail on the head when he says, "We have to concentrate on, the village being self-contained. manufacturing mainly for use." For elimination of exploitation is possible only when production is for use, and this is exactly what the Socialist mode of production aims at. Where he is erroneous, however, is in holding that the unit should only be the small contemporary village. There is no sanctity in the present day village being an appropriate unit for the primitive or, to be more correct, the handicraft mode of production. With greater productive capacity the unit can and must increase. In fact even if the whole of India were to become one economic unit it does not lead to exploitation so long as production is for use. ‘I am aiming at reinstating man turned machine into his original estate,’ says Gandhiji. It is the Capitalist mode of production that reduces labour to a commodity and turns man into some- thing less than a machine. Conquest of nature is our heritage. Industrialisation alone will enable us to conquer drudgery and provide that state of comfort in which alone a proper civilisation can flourish. We should not forget that Hinduism developed and preserved its culture perhaps to a very great extent by liberating one class entirely–the Brahmins–from the struggle for existence. Socialist industrialisation will extend to all sections of the population this freedom from intense pre-occupation with the struggle for existence, and will enable all classes to contribute to the freedom and to partake in it. There will then be no necessity to leave it as the prerogative of one particular class.

There is a pointless discussion in this book¹ whether too much of leisure is not an evil and whether two hours of activity in a day would suffice to keep a man away from mischief. We in India need not be afraid of too much leisure for ages to come. Supposing we conceive of an aim to provide each family with a well-built house with all the modern conveniences, and this aim is not more impossible of achievement under Socialist conditions than is at present our aim to win independence from an Imperialist power, there will be scope for immense activity: so much have we to build in fact that with the most rapid industrialisation it will take decades; and the population increase which now baffles us will not present a problem, since it will provide an automatic market leading to a greater absorption of labour to minister to its needs.

Gandhiji’s ideal is therefore incompatible with the modern Socialist ideal. Apart from his philosophic stand, all his objections refer only to the Capitalist organisation of production–though he would apply it indiscriminately to industrialisation as such.

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None the less, this disagreement about the ultimate ideal need not lessen our appreciation of the benefit of the Village Industries programme as enunciated by Gandhiji. A variety of reasons makes it desirable that even Socialists should lend their whole-hearted support to this programme and not dismiss it with a sneer.

If India is to be industrialised, it must be either on Capitalistic or Socialistic lines. Immediate industrialisation on Socialistic lines is out of the question since it can be done only by Socialist State: if industrialisation must come now, therefore, it can happen only on Capitalistic lines.

To a Capitalistic industrialisation of the country there are innumerable objections, for with Gandhiji we must hold that it would involve a search for the markets; it would intensify the exploitation of labour; and, last but not least, it would lead to immense unemployment. The Capitalist mode of production can provide full ernployment only in an ever-expanding market. At the present time those conditions are wanting, Capitalism being in a decadent stage, as is proved by the existence of unemployment in the most advanced countries during the most prosperous times.

Indian capitalists have, further, shown themselves singularly inefficient, and cannot be trusted even to industrialise the country properly. During the Civil Disobedience and aggressive Swadeshi days, the Indian producers, trading on Pure sentiment made immense profits. Cases are on record where the Bombay Cotton Mill-owners distributed 100% profit. No Reserve fund was kept, and nothing was done to improve the productivity of their machinery, so that, later, when the intense Japanese competition set in, the industry was found to be almost in bankrupt conditions. The State had to rush to its aid, which meant that the general consumer was made to pay for the inefficiency of the Indian Capitalists. If Capitalist industrialisation is thus un-desirable, it leaves us only the Village Industries programme for being put into immediate practice.

For the poverty in India is so stupendous that urgent means must be found to relieve it. We cannot wait till the establishment of a Socialist State for its solution. Further, the problem we have to face is the existence of partial unemployment almost for the entire agricultural population: for agriculture provides occupation for only five or six months in the year. The return from it is so low that it cannot sustain them even during those five or six months, not to speak of the whole year. Hence avenues for supplementing the agricultural income are essential. Mere industrialisation can never be the means of thus supplementing agricultural income.

The merit of the Village Industries programme as enunciated by Gandhiji consists of its essential suitability to serve this purpose. The points of the programme are eminently workable; they require little or no capital; and they can be fitted into the existing agricultural frame-work so that the programme can be put into immediate practice. Apart from Khadi, the three industries that are prominently mentioned are the hand-pounding of rice, production of ‘gud’ (Jaggery) and the conservation of hides and skins–the last being especially beneficial to the vast mass of Harijans. As Gandhiji points out, this would effect a saving in the enormous wealth that is at present running to waste. The other point which he raises about the nutritive value of hand-pounded rice and ‘gud’ also deserves appreciation. Indian food, eminent medical authorities have repeatedly pointed out, lacks nutritive value. The trouble of course is poverty. The substitution of milled rice for the hand-husked rice and of sugar for ‘gud’ deprives the food of the little value that is in it. A revival of these industries therefore serves a double purpose: it not merely increases income but improves health.

The field that Gandhiji has covered, as he himself admits, is not exhaustive. There are innumerable industries which can, with a little help, be made to serve the immediate needs. The development of dairies and poultries deserves special mention, as these are very essential and also fit into the existing agricultural frame-work.

Without giving up their ultimate aim about the establishment of a Socialist State or Society, the Socialists are co-operating with other classes in the struggle for national independence. Likewise, while affirming their faith in the ideal of Socialist industrialisation, they can and must effectively co-operate, for the present, in carrying out the Village Industries programme to the extent to which it does not negative or prevent the ultimate ideal of Socialism. There is no mental dishonesty in accepting a set of conditions as temporary and promising full co-operation within those limits and on that understanding.

Further, it need not be supposed that, even in a country of full Socialist industrialisation, all production will, or should be, carried on in huge factories owned by the State. It has been observed in Russia that not merely do Producers’ Co-operative Societies exist, carrying on production on a small scale, but they are actually thriving better in the Socialist atmosphere. The provision of electrical energy makes for diffusion of production, and these Village Industries may later on develop into Producers’ Co-operatives, utilising improved simple machinery–to which Gandhiji admits he has no objection even now–and be incorporated into the general scheme of production. Whatever may be their future destiny, their development at present need not stand in the way of future industrialisation. Meanwhile they perform a somewhat useful and necessary function.

It is time therefore that the Socialists and other protagonists of industrialisation should give some thought to the Village Industries programme and not be merely satisfied with calling it a reactionary programme. Mere negative criticism will lead us nowhere. If the present programme is in any way lop-sided it can be corrected, developed and better co-ordinated. The need for economic uplift with regard to large sections of the population is so pressing that efforts should be made to appreciate, within certain limits, the utility of the Village Industries programme, and to co-operate gracefully in carrying it out.