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

Economy of Permanence
The trend in modern life is to follow fashions by increasing the complexity
competitively while lowering the human standard in so doing.
In America, home-life is being rapidly broken up by false ideas of living being
disseminated. A couple may live in a flat of one or two rooms with 'labour-
saving devices'. The husband will go to work in the morning and so will the
wife. Each will have a snack breakfast on the way in some cafeteria, perhaps,
lunch at a factory refreshment bar or grill, and the two will meet in the
evening and have their supper in a restaurant and, if their combined income is
big enough to support a car, will go for a drive and visit a cinema and return to
their rooms to listen in to the radio. There is no house-keeping, cooking or
other attributes of the home. They will not care to have bother of having
children nor can their 'high' standard of living allow of it. These are they who
are slaving away for the manufacturers who set the 'high' standard so as to have
'hands' readily available for the factories. The casual labour that helped the
British gardener's wife, the parlour maids and other household servants have
been driven to the factory gates and have had their standard of living 'raised'.
Such 'high' standards are advocated not for the betterment of the people from
altruistic motives but to serve the selfish ends of interested parties.
Manufacturers, apart from diverting servants into factory hands, paralyse the
freedom of action and movement of their employees by such standards being
set up. The bargaining power of labour is reduced in the proportion in which
material standards are raised.
A mill-owner, who desires that his 'hands' should not seek periodical digression
but should be regular in their attendance so that his mill production may be
steady and not fluctuate, will plan on his workers leading a complex standard
of existence which he will be pleased to call a 'high' standard of living. To
achieve this end he will pay his workers higher wages, support a liberal-
welfare schemes, and get them accustomed to amenities of factory life such as
clubs, tea rooms, games, cinemas, good housing etc. The result of all this will
be, that the worker who gets used to live on this level of a complex standard of
the American couple we noticed, will be loathe to change places even if his
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principles were violated by the factory owner. Such a standard is expensive and
so he will have no reserves to fall back on, in case of being put out of
employment, and being habituated to spending money on material wants, these
would assume the role of necessities without which, he is led to believe, he
cannot live. Thus are his freedom of movement and bargaining power curbed
and the worker is glued down to his work bench. Such a standard functions like
a nose-string to a bullock. It is placed there to neutralize his freewill and to
make the worker amenable to the will of the employer.
The high salaries paid to public servants under a foreign government are of this
nature. Many a patriot has been drawn away from his path of duty by such baits
and has been so caught in the meshes as to deaden his conscience into adopting
strong measures against his own people which he would never have consented
to in his untramelled and detached state. Such persons have their sense of
values distorted and their will to act has been paralysed by the lure of colourful
and comfortable existence.
Again, looking at it from the point of view of the bargaining power of capital
and labour, if any dispute should arise between the employer and the workers,
the former, having greater financial reserves, can bide his time and wait till
the power of resistance of the workers is broken. The workers who live on their
wages cannot hold out long before they are faced with dire need and
starvation. But workers, whose method of living is simple and, therefore,
inexpensive, can resist longer than those whose living is complex and
expensive. Hence also is the employer interested in advocating a complex
standard of living for his workers so that his workers may not be in a position to
bargain with him long. Apart from these reasons concerning his workers, we
have already seen how the complex modes of living afford good markets for the
manufacturers as in the case of the British gardener's household. So both on the
side of production and that of sales, the complex standard is a profitable one
for the manufacturers.
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Industrial nations, like America follow such a policy as being one of 'enlightened
self-interest' but it is inimical to man's freedom of action and growth of
personality.
There are other objectives in introducing or following a complex standard of
life, but as these do not concern the masses intimately we shall but give a
passing notice to such.
Ostentation calls for a complex standard. A person may put his servants in
uniform to attract attention or appear distinguished. A uniform sinks the
personality of the servant and makes him a mere functionary. He ceases to be
'Rama' of 'Din Mohamed' and becomes 'Boy', Bearer, Peon, Chaprasi, 'Driver' etc.
Such servants (poor creatures that they are) do not possess such finery in
private life and so hug these uniforms and are proud of them. Ostentations
spending has been well termed 'conspicuous waste'. Such habits, in a poor
country like ours, must be regarded 'criminal waste'.
Then exclusiveness can only be ensured by a complex standard. Travelling first
class or paying high rents to live in aristocratic localities are of this category.
For our country no one standard can be fixed. Any form chosen will have to be
selected after fully taking into consideration the local demands of nutrition,
climate, facilities for human progress, opportunities for expressing personality,
etc.
In South India, rich as staple food may be adequate but it must be unpolished
and balanced with other articles like milk, dhal, vegetables, fat, etc. The
climate here may not call for much clothing or any foot-wear and a mat may be
sufficient bedding. In the North, wheat may do duty as a staple with other
articles to balance the diet. The severe cold of winter may call for more
clothing and foot-wear, charpoys or cots etc. So what is a necessity in one
place may be a superfluity in another. Hence the need to judge the mode of
life in close relationship with local circumstances and environment.
If the norm chosen is to lead to permanence and non-violence, it should fit into
the local economy of the people. We have, in an earlier chapter, noticed how
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nature works in cycles, the life of one unit forming the complement of another-
and how, if this cycle is broken, violence is generated accompanied by
destruction. The accepted standard of living, besides providing the opportunity
for the development of one's faculties and laying out the method of expressing
one's personality, should also form a link between the various members of
society whereby the better equipped help the less fortunately placed ones.
The British gardener's beds may be equipped with spring mattresses. These are
manufactured in factories with the labour of those who formerly, were helpers
in the gardener's household cleaning carpets and washing dishes-but were
displaced by labour-saving devices and drawn away by the factory owner by the
lure of a complex standard of life. Such mattresses are made of steel springs
which are themselves factory products. If any part of the mattress requires
attention the factory's 'service squad' will have to be called. There is no organic
unity between the life of the people and the production of such a mattress.
Our Dewan, leading a high but simple life, may sleep on a mat, not necessarily
a coarse one. It may well be a 'Patumadai' creation with silk warp and made of
reeds split into thirytows or even finer. Those mats are cooler than quilts or
mattresses and they are local products. The making of these provides scope for
the matweavers to develop their sense of art and skill in workmanship and
affords an outlet for their creative faculty; thus it helps in building and
expressing their personality. These mats have various artistic designs worked
into them and are so supple that they can be folded like silk. They are clean
being washable. Of course, the high quality ones are expensive. Mats may range
from 8 annas a pair to Rs. 200 each according to the material used and
workmanship involved. What the Dewan may spend on these will go directly to
support and maintain the artisans and their families and so forms a complete
cycle with the locally available reeds which constitute the raw materials. Such
an economy does not require the Army, the Navy and the Air Force to secure
their raw materials, find or make the markets and to keep the long ocean lanes
open and safe. Hence, they have no need of violence, as would be the case if
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the Dewan patronized spring mattresses made in Britain and included them in
his 'Standard of Living'.
Similarly also the Dewan's dhoti and other clothing, being of fine Khadi, made
to order, will encourage local spinners and weavers and afford them full scope
for development.
In such a manner, everyone of our requirements should be so linked up with
local production and the life of the people around us as to form a solid well-
knit economy. Only then will it lead to permanence, as it will promote healthy
growth without destruction by violence.
Frequently, the standard of life is described in terms of money and materials
without any reference to the lives of those around us. Such standards are
artificial and so are unstable and being superimposed and superficial will not be
permanent having no root in the very life of the people. The British gardener's
standard of life is laid out in that fashion. Such lead to regimentation and
standardization which are soul-killing.
There is no need thus to determine all the details that go to make life. What
we need to do is to take care of the minimum that is essential, and direct the
productivity of the people by conditioning their environments and making raw
materials etc. available to them, and then safely leave the rest to their
initiative and their ingenuity without further interference. Just as, if we want
to raise the level of water in a tank, all we need to do is to increase the
quantity of water in the tank. The level will rise of its own accord in obedience
to nature's laws without any further aid from us.
If people in our country are starving or going about ill-clad, they are neither
sliming for a beauty contest nor are they following the cult of the nude! They
know how and what to eat and what to put on. What is needed is not a
schedule but the goods-articles of food and clothing. We have to take steps to
make it possible to produce these in needed quantities.
If we increase productivity of the masses and direct consumption, so as to
afford a ready local market, the standard of living of the people will
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automatically rise. Such a natural formation of a standard will proclaim the
culture and genius of the people, and will be permanent being rooted in the
life of the people.
The British gardener's standard of living was strictly individualistic in that it was
not correlated to the life of the people around him. It was confined to the four
walls of his house. It is said "An Englishman's house is his castle" Yes, it
effectively shuts out the world however much of material creature comforts it
may provide for those inside. Such isolation from the life currents around them
is caused in our country also by those who follow western modes of life.
The norm we seek for is not for a single family or even a class or group but for
the local population as a whole. This means the norm will interlink the life of
everyone. In a way, our ancient village organization attempted something on
these lines when it tried to assure every inhabitant his subsistence by allocating
an annual share to each from out of the total produce of the village, in the
form of 'Baluta', 'Padi' etc., to its members who serve as barbers, chamars,
mochis. This system recognized that they all formed one corporate whole. But
what we want, is not merely provision for bodily existence, but a provision also
for opportunities of development of the higher creative faculties of man.
To refer again to our Dewan, when he wants a leather case for his papers, he
would call in the mochi, specify the quality of leather he requires, and the
shape, size and accommodation needed. The mochi, in his turn may get the
chamar to tan the required quality leather. All this will present several
problems which will have to be solved. This provides scope for ingenuity and
resourcefulness. Thus the Dewan's demand opens up opportunity for the
exercise of the creative faculty of those around him. If instead, the Dewan
walked into a British store and bought a readymade article, such a brief case
may not be exactly what he wants as he had only to choose out of the ready
stock. Besides, he may not even have exercised his mind as to what he wants.
The thinking would have been done in advance for him by the manufacturers,
not for him in particular, but as a general preposition. When he orders a thing
locally he himself thinks of the various details and decides the kind of article
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he wants and then directs those around him to produce it. In this way, the life
and thought of the consumer is closely entwined with the life and creative
faculty of the producer, each attempting to solve the problems formulated by
the other. Our lives are not independent entities but are closely one with
another. A proper standard of life will then be the silken strand which strings
together the goodly pearls of life-individual members of society. Such is the
Dewan's standard of living in that it connected up his life not only with those of
the spinners, weavers, mat-makers, chamars, mochis etc., but also with his
dumb fellow creatures such as the goat that fed on his dining leaf. No man
liveth unto himself. When factory made articles are used there is no such living
touch with the people around. Then the standard of living is coupled to lifeless
machines which are producers without any creative faculty that can be
developed.
Hence, our norm of life must be such as to bring together as a living organizm
the various sections of society in healthy cooperation. Such a norm will not be
calculated to be of use to isolated and segregated individual only but will
function as a binding cement of society as a whole. There will then be mutual
trust, unity and happiness which will be a source of strength and not of discord,
n that society.
The Nude cult and ill-clad poverty
The staple of raw cotton taken by itself is flimsy and weak. But when thousands
are spun together and the strands are twisted into a cabled rope it will be
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strong enough to tow an ocean liner. Such should be the result produced by a
satisfactory standard of living. It should be designed to bring together the
consumer and the producer into such intimate relationship as to solidify society
into a consolidated mass which alone can lay claim to permanence.
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XII. WORK

Although a most commonly used word yet 'work' is perhaps one of the few
words whose meaning people never take the trouble to consider. What is work?
What function does it perform in the economy as ordained by nature?

One of the great problems facing the nations today is the provision of work for
the millions, so it is imperative that the significance of work should be fully
comprehended. In an earlier chapter, we considered how in natnre the various
factors that make for continuity and permanence are brought together by
natural agents to serve the eternal order of the universe-worms as fertilizers of
the soil, birds' as carriers and sowers of seeds, bees as fluidizers of plant life.
Such is work and such is the life mission of these creatures in nature.

As regards man also, we discussed what life was, and what its constituents
were, apart from mere existence. As distinct from the lower orders, man could
exercise his freewill and bring together diverse units of nature to serve their
purposes better. In so doing he himself can develop his faculties and also be
able to express his personality through the application of his scale of values in
solving the practical problems before him. This then constitutes work for man
and also its function.

For a proper understanding of what work is, it is necessary to consider the
simplest form of it in the early history of man, shorn of all its manifold and
confusing appendages with which it is enshrouded today. The origin of work, in
its purest form, can be traced to the early days of man when his ways began to
diverge from those of the instinct-driven animals when he began to make
himself tools out of stones. His work was to supply his own needs using his
intelligence forethought and resourcefulness in a way similar to how a bird
builds itself a nest and goes about in search of food. Man worked to serve and
please himself. There was no wage other than the satisfying of his personal
wants. This activity was healthy enough to sharpen his faculties and to let him
grow as a thinking animal. He brought his finds and kills home, to his simple
cave-dwelling where his woman dressed them and got them ready for eating.

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Thus began housekeeping as the beginning of woman's work. To this day, at least in our country, women's work follows this pure form of supplying one's needs oneself in one's own home.

Constituent Elements of work: When work is analysed it is found that it is a compound of many parts, each contributing its share towards the achievement of the final goal. In the main it consists of routine and rest, progress and pleasure. We cannot isolate any one of those from the others and constitute it into a living unit capable of existence by itself, we cannot give the routine part of it to one man and the resting part to another, neither can a third party appropriate all the pleasure to himself. In music, each note has its characteristic timing or rest, which forms an integral part of the note itself which would have no meaning without that period of rest. A man, who aspires to become a musician, has to put in hours of routine practice of scales and chords, only by so doing can he ultimately obtain the joy of rendering in music his deep emotions. This routine cannot be * detailed out to one so that another may feel the joy of success. One may passively enjoy music-tune in the radio. But, that does not make a musician of one. Similarly, everything that is worth doing demands repeated practice.

To take another example, a proper diet is constituted of roughage, nutritive elements and taste. One who desires to have the taste only without the bother of masticating the whole meal, may, with the help of modern science, get what he wants but he will not be able to sustain himself on it for any length of time. So also the roughage in our diet plays the most important part of aiding digestion and full assimilation. Similarly, all the constituent parts of work are essential to get the best out of it and to let it serve its definite purpose ordained by nature.

Since time immemorial, man has used his freewill in trying to break up work into its component parts, passing on the routine to those who are helpless to resist and appropriating to the strong the pleasures to be derived from work. The routine was shouldered on the slaves while the master enjoyed the fruits of his labour. The civilizations of Greece and Rome were based on such

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misappropriation of pleasure and avoidance of routine. Consequently they have
perished leaving behind just their ashes of greatness to tell their tale as a
warning to us. Not heeding this, the modern industrial empires are repeating
the same effort to reserve for the manufacturing countries the benefits and
pleasures, while shifting unmitigated drudgery to raw material producing
countries. Being contrary to the order ordained by nature, such attempts are
bound to fail. In our own times we have a visible demonstration of the
devastating violence generated by such efforts to thwart nature. These
periodical global wars are the means through which the empire countries are
trying to impose their will on the rest of mankind. For a while they may appear
to succeed, but since the seed of destruction and decay is in it, any such
organization brought about by violent means will perish in due course.
We noticed, in previous chapter, how the makers of 'labour- saving-devices' by
their successful high pressure sales organization drove out household servants,
farmers and field labour, and converted them into factory 'hands' for
themselves to tend their machines. Such a transformation in England naturally
left its countryside uncultivated as there was none to attend to the farms and
fields. No country can live on coal, iron and tin. It must have food. This made it
imperative for England to hold other countries in political subjection to obtain
its food supplies and other materials, as it cannot afford to depend for such
essentials on the tender mercies of others or leave it to the vagaries of unaided
private commerce. Other countries, naturally, will not meekly submit to such
subjection, and, hence, violence has become the foundation stone of life in
England. Every alternate generation sheds its youth and talent on the battle
fields to accomplish and maintain its organization. Is this a sensible
arrangement? Generally speaking, the man in the street will acknowledge the
futility of this method which has to be sustained by periodical slaughter of the
innocents. Therefore, to confuse the issues, all the means available-advocating
a complex standard of living, a system of education giving false values,
glorifying violence-have been used to mislead the public, whose unquestioning
support is needed to maintain such an order. The devastating effects of such
propaganda are to be noticed in mothers' sacrificing the lives of their sons with

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pride for such a purpose, and wives urging their husbands to risk themselves on
the battle-fields. It is natural for a mother to take pride in the fact that her son
has been trained to murder other innocent sons on a mass scale and get killed
himself in the effort? Can a loving wife contemplate the sacrifice of her
beloved on the altar of International Robbery? Yet, these results have been
obtained by infusing into the minds of the people a scale of false values, which
treacherously enforces them to use their freewill to stray into paths of violence
and destruction, which in their normal lucid thinking they would naturally flee
from.
To make such a perversion possible violence has been glorified. Murder in retail
is visited by capital punishment. But murder in wholesale of innocent young
promising lives is rewarded by national honour being accorded to the doers of
such dastardly deeds, by the conferment of titles, by erecting monuments in
their memory in holy places of worship such as the Westminster Abbey or St.
Paul's Cathedral. Is there not something radically wrong in a system which has
to resort to such devious ways to maintain itself? The public is rendered sense-
less by having its finer feelings benumbed by this topsy turvy order. The
complex standard of living, we considered in the previous chapter, is helpful in
that it leaves the people no time to contemplate the situation in calmness. It
keeps them self-satisfled and complacent, leaving those in power to pursue
their ends unhampered.
The modus operandi is simplicity itself. We saw that as ordained by nature man
works only to satisfy himself. So his wants are the direct stimuli for him to put
forth the effort. Increase his wants and the greater will be his effort. Here is
the raison d'etre of the advocacy of a created multiplicity of wants, in other
words, of the so-called 'raising' of his material standard of living or making it
complex, which we noticed functioned like a nose-string to a bullock. It curbs
man's will restricting his freedom of movement and action and directs him into
the ways desired by the one who holds the reins. The one who is under such a
lead is soon bereft of his reasoning faculties and follows unquestioningly.
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We also noticed that today the world is under the heels of the large scale
manufacturer, who stands to gain by stifling the voice of the people and by
spreading an organization which will bring him profits either way. During peace
interludes he makes and sells bicycles, and, while war clouds darken the skies
he turns his attention to the manufacture of bombs and guns. To his dictates,
camouflaged by self-interest, the foolish public lay down gladly the lives of
their beloved to make this order possible. All this is directed towards isolating
the routine element of work with the discipline it involves, and securing only
the satisfaction and pleasure which labour well done brings with it.
Wholesome work provides our body with energy, health and rest just as a well
balanced diet does. It provides bodily exercise while affording, at the same
time, opportunities for mental development and satisfaction. The modern
tendency, however, is to avoid the discipline work involves, passing it all on to
one class of society which is helpless; reserving to the dominant class all the
pleasurable consequences of work. It is sought to distil out the component parts
of work to this end and then the bodily exercise alone in a pleasurable form,
without the drudgery part of work, is obtained in pill form in games like Golf,
Tennis, Cricket, Hockey, Football, etc. which are all naturally expensive
luxuries beyond the reach of the poor.
Truncating work in this manner is like the way they manage on ocean liners to
provide the muscles with the kind of movements they are accustomed to on
land in games and hobbies which for obvious reasons cannot be indulged in on a
boat. On such liners the gymnasiums are equipped with machines which provide
the substitutes for horse-riding, boating etc. The horseman bestrides a saddle
on a mechanical horse, holding the reins switches on the electric contraption
into a 'trot' or a 'gallop. The saddle gives the semblance of jerks one gets on a
horseback on land although here the rider has no live spirited animal under
him. Similarly, there are oars for the boating enthusiast to pull away at, seating
himself at a bench and kicking his feet on to a rest. The oars are provided with
springs to give the resistance of water. Here we have horse-riding and boating
bereft of the natural pleasures attendant on them on land-the scenery, the
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pleasure of movement through the air and over water. For a few days for the
duration of the voyage, such contrivances will answer the purpose but they
cannot be substitutes for all time for the natural counterparts.
Thus is work broken up into the component parts into routine and play, and
some people are relegated for all time to do the hard routine, and a few
appropriate to themselves the play part of it. When work is so divided without
the balancing factor, the routine becomes drudgery and the play part becomes
indulgence. Both are equally detrimental to human progress and well being.
The slave dies of privations and the lord of over-indulgence. These efforts,
which have been made repeatedly through the ages, have adequately
demonstrated over and over again their impotency to lead man to his maturity.
In our own generation, this attempt to secure the pleasures apart from the
discipline has let loose on humanity the wolves of war, pestilence, famine and
death. Are we not to cry 'halt' and take note?
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XIII. DIVISION OF LABOUR
Not one will dispute the benefits to be obtained from a division of labour,
which makes for specialization and efficiency. In our land, such specialization
has held sway since time immemorial and it has even gone to seed, having
become hereditary and caste bound. Such an extreme has also led to
difficulties and to a blind alley.
Under the plea of a wholesome division of labour, Western industrialists have
broken up work into minute processes in such a way that work and drudgery
have become synonymous terms associated with all the undesirable qualities of
a curse.
Work, to be healthy and beneficial to the worker himself, apart from all
considerations on the product, should have diversion and variety in sufficient
measure in every sub-divided unit of it to prevent its becoming a strain on the
nerves. There is, therefore, a limit beyond which division of labour cannot go
without impugning its claims to wholesomeness.
The sub-divided unit must be as near a whole industry in itself as it possibly can
be and not be reduced to a mere process of an industry. For instance, if
carpentry is to be subdivided, it may well be into wheel-wrights and oil-mill
makers. These two are highly skilled departments each affording full scope for
all the faculties of the artisans. The products also are complete marketable
units. Instead of this, if these crafts were further subdivided into makers of
spokes and felloes for the wheels on the one hand, and into hewers of wood on
the other, it would be verging on drudgery. In leather crafts, shoemaking or
even specializing in chappals can be a healthy unit, while the mere cutting out
of pieces of leather for the soles or the uppers of shoes cannot stand by itself
as a healthy sub-division. In modern factories, such division of work into its
minute processes has gone to such an extent as to limit a man's operation and
attention to driving a nail or screwing on a nut bolt. Take a shoe factory. An
electrically driven belt moving horizontally will carry hundreds of lasts on
which the various operations incidental to the making of a shoe will be
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performed by the operators stationed all along the line. As the bare last moves
up the first man on the line, who will have by his side a pot of sticky paste and
a brush, will dab the last with the paste on the sole as it passes in front of him.
He will repeat this operation on hundreds of lasts that will move past him from
eight in the morning till five in the evening with a break for lunch in the
middle.
To repeat such actions for eight hours a day for 300 days in the year is enough
to cause a nervous strain which will send the worker to the mad house
whatever may be the wages offered.
Is it any wonder that in the most indusrialized country in the world, in the U. S.
A., more people suffer from nervous disorders than from all other forms of
ailments ?* Man's constitution is not an inanimate machine. His system calls for
a balance of operations which will exercise all his faculties. This condition can
only be ensured by a wide enough unit of work.
Too small units, which are merely processes, are highly wasteful of man power
as it puts workers out of action in a short time. A hardworking labourer is made
a wreck by the time he reaches 45 years of age. But this wastage is shifted
from the manufacturer to society by the wage system rendering it possible for
the industrialist to flourish in spite of this great loss in man power. The
employer is totally unconcerned with the destruction his system of work
causes. If one of his workers breaks down he is immediately discharged and a
more youthful one is taken on. There is no love lost. The employer thinks no
more of dispensing with a man who has wrecked his life in his service than of
throwing away a smoked bit of a cigar. If anything, in casting off such worn out
persons he stands to gain as the younger man may bring in more energy. There
is no liability attaching to the employer for so drawing the life out of his man.
Is this not a callous waste of human faculties and life? Can such waste lead us
to permanence? Any little higher wage such workers may appear to enjoy is but
the realization of present value of their life after 45 years of age.
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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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proposition himself. He accepted this suggestion and took me to a school
master who eked out his living by making caps and requested me to point out
wherein lay leisure and wherein diversior or rest in the making of caps.
The school-master, on being asked to show us how he set about the task of
making a cap, brought out his work basket, took a piece of plush-like material
and cut out an oval shaped piece. Then taking some red coloured lining cloth
cut out also a similar piece. To this he attached some pieces of old newspaper
and stitched some floral designs with the sewing machine, and then sewed this
on to the plush top. After that with punches he fixed some eyelets through
these to serve as ventilating holes on the top of the cap. While the master was
busy with his manifold operations, I was explaining to the engineer that the
obtaining of the raw material presented certain problems for the master to
solve in international trade as the plush came from Italy and the red lining
cloth from Japan; that when the master was occupied with the cutting
operations with his scissors one faculty of his was functioning, when he was
sewing on the floral design the artistic faculty, when he was punching on the
eyelets for ventilators still another part of his nervous system was called into
action diverting his energies from the artistic employment the faculty of which
was now having its rest.
While we were talking about these matters the master's little child cried in the
backyard of the house. Promptly the master got up, left his work and ran to the
child, picking it up scolded his wife roundly for allowing the child to cry while
visitors were in the house. While the master was having this unholy row with his
spouse I said to the engineer, "There, now he is having his relaxation and
recreation". The engineer burst out into a laughter and got up to go saying "I
fully grasp your meaning".
Life when it is allowed to run its natural course is resourceful enough to provide
for itself all it needs without any further conscious effort on our part.
Such then is work and its function in life. It makes it possible for man to use his
faculties and develop himself during his own life-time and leave behind him his
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Economy of Permanence
personality indelibly stamped on the product of his work that which is the best
part of him.
We saw how an artist transfers his sense of beauty to a piece of canvas and
leaves behind a masterpiece for posterity to cherish and admire. While that
artist was dabbing bits of paint on to the canvas it must have seemed hard
work-drudgery of days and days. But such labour had to go into the making of a
masterpiece. A lithograph may avoid such drudgery and hard work but its
products are as wastepaper when compared with the work of the real artist.
Even before the work of the picture is launched on, hours of hard work were
necessary for the skilful mixing of paints and blending of colours. The colours
used at the Ajanta Caves must have taken decades to evolve to have attained
such perfection as to have lasted all these many centuries. The artists of those
times did not grudge the labour on it; and posterity pays its obeisance to them
for their peerless gift. Those artists did not devise ways and means of obtaining
the effect without the labour involved. Nature is a hard task-master. It never
awards permanence to grudgingly rendered work. If we wish to attain
permanence we must put in whole work, no transient labour which satisfies
only the passing moment will answer the purpose. Nature refuses to be
browbeaten or cheated.
Similarly, a beautiful emblem of devoted labour has been bequeathed to
generations yet unborn by those creators who hewed out of living rock the
whole edifice of a temple at Ellora. That sense of proportion and symmetry are
not the result of an attempt to shirk work nor the outcome of seeking shortcuts
so as to avoid labour. It is the product of an opportunity squarely faced. Labour
properly directed blesses those who work and also the products of their labour.
To give out one more example of faithful work well done, there is a steel pillar
near the Kutub Mimar at Delhi bearing an ancient inscription. This pillar has
stood in the open exposed to sun and rain, heat and cold for centuries on end,
yet, there is not a speck of rust on it. The composition of this alloy has
confounded the best of modern metallurgists. The iron smiths of old who cash
this wonderful pillar did not seek any shortcuts to produce this effect. They did
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not shirk the routine labour and discipline involved in manufacturing such
metal. They took work as nature meant it to be. Hence we have this monument
declaring that fact to us today.
One would associate the idea of wealth and comfort with the industry of mining
gold. But this system of relegating drudgery to one class and appropriating
pleasure by another has made the district of the most famous gold mines in
India one of the poorest localities. The farmer of that district has been reduced
to such a wretched condition financially that he is driven to maintain a 'dual
purpose cow', i.e., a cow yields a few drops of milk at one time and when dry is
used to plough the land !
While on a visit there I was taken down the shaft of one of the deepest mines,
about 7000 ft. There in darkness made visible by small Davy's lamps men
worked in tunnels, blasting the rock, in dust, in dirt and danger from morning
till evening for a pittance that hardly helped to keep the wolf from the door.
The strain of this labour was so great that men were completely done up when
brought up into the fresh air and light. This district contributes the greatest
revenue from liquor to the State. Is it a wonder that after the nerves of the
miners had been strained to this extent they should find refuge in the oblivion
provided by merciful alcohol? Venereal diseases are also rampant among such
miners. Wherever the nervous system is overwrought it is but to be expected
that it will naturally rush for relaxation made available in wine and women.
This is a pathological condition of the human constitution. At the end of my
visit, when the manager of the mine asked if I could suggest any social welfare
work that he can introduce for the betterment of the conditions of life of the
miners I gave him these two alternatives-1. The best welfare work will be to
restore the dignity of work and labour by closing down such a mine, or in the
alternative, 2. To provide more liquor shops to enable the men to drown their
miseries. It is needless to say that these shocked the manager, and that neither
of them were found acceptable as the company was one which paid the
heaviest dividends. Money and gold were much more to them than human
beings.

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