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

Economy of Permanence
values to make its presence felt. Any planned life that is too rigid to allow of it
and takes away or restricts beyond measure the individual freedom to act and
express his idea of values will be guilty of regimentation. Regimentation
deprives a human being of his individuality and lowers him to the level of a
cogwheel in an unalterable machine. Such regimentation of life from the cradle
to the grave, whatever be its merits or efficiency, will stand condemned as it
fails to answer our first requirement for the progress of a human being, the
right of freedom to express one's personality.
Regimentation certainly has its place and function where the objective is not
the development of personality but some joint effort-as in an army or a
factory-where each head or hand counts rather than the individual, who has to
be submerged in such cases in the general interest of the goal, which is the all
absorbing and supreme consideration and the individual is only the means of
attaining it. To us, the development of the individual being the objective, and
the organization only the means of securing it, there can be no place for
regimentation in our scheme.
For example, in a well conducted dairy, animals will be fed well on properly
prepared cattle feed, given salt and water in due time and in regulated
measure, stabled in well constructed sheds, taken out to exercise in the sun for
a while, rubbed down and cleaned daily and milked according to time table.
This is not what a human being needs if he is to rise above the level of mere
existence of brute beasts. A well regulated prison affords such conditions of
existence. Under prison rules it is even made a punishable offence to abstain
from proper sleep or rest or food which may have a deleterious effect on the
health of the prisoner. Such care is taken of the body of the prisoner. But that
is not life where freedom of choice and activity has been taken away.
It is, therefore, imperative that no plan should raise insurmountable wells on
all sides and reduce life into a jail. It should function like a fence that, while
protecting the field from the depredations of destructive intruders, does not
interfere or shut off air and light from the sequestered spot. The creative
faculties of those who belong to this House and who dedicate their lives to
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