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

Economy of Permanence
An excessive emphasis laid on wages, the product or the maintenance of a
complex standard of life, ignoring the higher faculties of man, deprives man of
the use of his freewill and distorts his scale of values.
Under such circumstances the labourer's condition and work are like that of a
bullock that drives an oil mill. The bullock being blind folded does not see
where or how it goes. Being controlled by its nose string, which is not even
guided by a man but is only fixed to the machine itself, the animal turns
eternally to the left walking round and round all day within a circumscribed
area getting nowhere by its movement. No doubt the oil presser gives it a little
oilcake, with a complacent feeling of generosity, out of the lot that is made by
the bullock's toil during the day. Our mill hands fare no better. The joy of life
and the healthy atmosphere of freedom are not for them. They are deprived of
all opportunities of growth and development. This is not work as designed by
nature. Hence it can only bring to the workers ruin and decay of their higher
faculties. No money wage can compensate for that loss.
While the manufacturers thus attempt to avoid for themselves drudgery and
appropriate only the play and pleasure of work our socialist friends dream of
scooping out leisure from work. Properly understood work of the right sort
contains leisure or period of rest within itself. Leisure is an integral part of
work just as rest is an essential component of a musical note. The two cannot
be taken apart. Leisure is not a complete cessation of all activities. That will
be death. Neither is leisure idle time. Idleness leads to deterioration. Beneficial
leisure provides rest to one faculty, while other parts of our personality are
being exercised. A mental worker at his desk needs an active hobby like
gardening to form a complement to the nervous strain caused by desk work.
Any work to fulfill proper function as ordained by nature, and not mutilated by
man, must contain these complementary parts in itself.
Once I was discussing this aspect of work with an experienced engineer. He
remarked that he could not conceive how there can be work and rest at the
same time. To explain this theoretically it may be difficult, but to demonstrate
it is easy, and so I suggested he should visit any artisan and analyse the
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