The Economy of Permanence: A Quest for a Social Order Based on Non-violence (स्थायी अर्थतन्त्र)

Economy of Permanence
your wants. But what is your want? Is a Rolls-Royce car a want? If you cannot
meet that want, are you poor? If a lady wants a lipstick and has not got enough
cash to purchase it, is she poor? There are wants which are primary needs, and
there are also wants which are artificially created. There are wants without
satisfying which a human being cannot live; they are needed for the expressing
of his personality and for the existence of his physical body. These are the
natural wants we shall endeavour to supply, not the artificially created wants.
What is the greatest of primary needs? First comes food. We may go without
clothing, but we cannot go without food. In our country we are having not
occasional famines, but repeated famines, and, therefore, the primary factor in
our plan must be the attempt to meet that situation. Food and the prevention
of famines; how are we going to achieve that? Is it by application of Capital?
Many people come out and say: "You apply capital and then your results will be
so much more". Learned economists have worked out the amount of capital to
be applied and the percentages of increased production that will result from it,
as if we have only to pour capital into the fields before they come up in crops!
That cannot be the case.
In our country, the tremendous factor for production is human labour. If we
wish to meet our needs we have got to utilise this enormous factor producing
commodities to satisfy hunger.
As regards the method of production, there is general feeling abroad that we
can build up the economic condition of the people by introducing large
centralised units of production with modern machinery. This is a conception
that requires to be examined carefully before we yield to it. Organising
economic production means bringing together various factors in the proper
manner. The chief of such factors are natural resources, capital equipment and
labour. Under varying conditions varying combinations of these may be called
for. In Britain, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, capital was plentiful
and so in their method of production capital equipment looms large. In the U.
S. A. labour was scarce while natural resources were almost inexhaustible,
hence they took to labour-saving devices leading to the advent of machinery.
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