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

Economy of Permanence
A secretary of a co-operative society was enumerating the benefits his
organization had conferred on its members by marketing the honey produced by
them. Proudly, he took me to show me a farm where the owner had
domesticated about 30 colonies of honey-bees in simple hives constructed out
of old mud pots. The bees seemed very active. Hundreds of pounds of honey
were being sent by this farmer to the society for marketing. I was much
impressed by the recounting of all this achievement and how much money it
had brought in. Just then a little girl, a child of the owner, came in running. I
asked her if she also knew what these honey bees were so busy about. She said
they were making honey. I next enquired if she liked honey. She looked blank.
Thinking she did not understand my question I repeated it in another form
saying "Don't you like the taste of honey?" She startled me with "I do not know
what it tastes like." I turned round to the owner and enquired if he did not give
his own children any honey. He gave me what he thought to be a perfect
answer. "How can I afford to use it at home when I get Re. 1/- per lb. at the
society?" My appreciative attitude vanished and I remarked to the elated
secretary of the society, "Your work is damned when this child does not know
the taste of honey. By offering high prices you are enticing away this honey
from the mouth of this child to the over-laden tables of the rich". The story is
the same everywhere with eggs, milk and other articles with high nutritive
values. In the N. W. F. Province, where eggs were once largely produced and
locally consumed, the consumption of the local population has fallen
considerably since the military authorities of Rawalpindi, Quetta and Ambala
began to draw on these supplies.
Money valuation benumbs the faculty for the better appreciation of higher
considerations, and results in a transaction which may be a gain to one party,
but leads to irreparable loss to the other. Instead of drawing on surpluses (as
we noted in the last chapter in the example of the boy with jilabis) it helps to
drain out vital sustenance, thus causing grave social loss which is not apparent
at the moment. It was the monetary mechanism that was at the bottom of the
great Bengal famine of 1943. It snatched away life-giving elements from the
mouth of the starving population before they were aware of it, by giving them
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