Rebuilding India – 5

Swami Vivekananda wanted India’s economic growth on the national lines

India was probably in her worst phase of history during the life-time of Swami Vivekananda. Dadabhai Naoroji had calculated that the national income of British India during 1867-68 was only 3.4 billion rupees for a population of 170 million, with the per capita income being just 20 rupees.¹ Besides he noted that huge wealth was being taken out of the country to England.  He declared in 1905 that about “34 million sterling or Rs.515 million were being drained out of India every year.”

The country had also been witnessing large scale famines on a continuous basis with millions of people losing their lives. Digby mentions the situation during the last quarter of the nineteenth century: “In the last twenty-five years of the past century more than one million of people died from famine and its effects on an average every year in a British –ruled country –that is two each minute, 120 each hour, 2880 each day; and, during the past ten years, the average has been nearly four each minute, 240 each hour, 5760 each day.” ²

Swami Vivekananda was a witness to the sufferings of the people. He interacted with them and the different sections of the society directly during his days as an itinerant monk in different parts of the country. Later during his visits abroad he learnt about the economic and social systems of the other countries in detail. His unique experience of moving with diverse groups of people across the country and outside, and his keen intellect provided him an opportunity to develop original ideas on different issues concerned with the lives of people, including economics. 

Swamiji’s ideas relating to economics place him as a true visionary. His thoughts for the economic systems at the Indian and global levels were far ahead of his times. Naoroji and Romesh Chandra Dutt, the two prominent economists, were conducting detailed studies and producing evidence to show as to how the Indian economy was being decimated by the British. Justice Ranade was the other notable personality who presented the economic issues before the people.  

While the economists and freedom fighters wanted the British to stop their exploitation, Swamiji went many steps ahead and argued for economic policies along the national lines for the development of the country. He said: “My ideal is growth, expansion, and development on national lines.³” Swamiji was perhaps the first leading personality to speak along such lines decades before independence.

After the ascendance of the West in the international scene during the eighteenth century, they saw to it that their ideas got prominence over the others. The concepts and practices of the ancient economies such as India and China were neglected. For this purpose, Europe developed its own set of historians and wrote a new history for the world.  As a result, the concepts and practices that sustained the Indian economy (as well as that of China and others’ also), for centuries as the most prosperous nation since the earlier periods lost their significance.

Hence for around two hundred years since the nineteenth century, the world was taught to believe that there were only two economic ideologies, namely communism and capitalism. Both of them are products of the West, conceived and developed in their part of the world, based on their own views and approaches towards life.  So the rest of the world had to sail with their ideas, concepts and practices, as the west was dominating the world.

But all these have changed in a period of just two decades. The communist ideology collapsed during the late 1980s with the breaking up of the Soviet Union into several pieces.  The global economic crisis during 2008 showed that market capitalism, the other economic philosophy of the West, has also failed. 

Hence it is now being realized that there could be different methods for economic development. Even the multilateral agencies openly acknowledge this as fact. So the attention is shifting towards exploring alternate economic thoughts and systems. In this connection, the Indian concepts, ideas and systems are gaining prominence.  

India is one nation that remained as a sustainable economic power since the ancient periods, till the time the Europeans began to dominate her. It is the same nation that has been emerging as a powerful economy after independence, in spite of the wrong approaches of the policy makers continuously for over six decades. Besides, India remains as one of the very few countries least affected by the global crisis.

The United States and many of the European economies are unable to find out the solutions to the problems faced by them even after five years of the melt down. Hence the rest of the world has started questioning them. Earlier before the meeting of the World Economic Forum during 2013, the Telegraph reported that the developing countries were bracing to tell the western leaders that their economic model has failed.⁴ 

Different studies, including the few conducted by the top international agencies and institutions, clearly indicate that India has her own methods of functioning, aided by the strong fundamentals and unique social and cultural backgrounds. So even the western experts and practitioners have now begun to speak of the Indian ideas and approaches.

Swami Vivekananda underlined even while India was under the British rule that India need to develop her own systems for the development of the economy. He wanted India to progress based on our own strengths and methods, without imitating and depending on other countries. As a pioneering thinker, he advocated an Indian economic model for our country, as he must have had a clear understanding of the economic fundamentals of India and the western world. That was long before the world witnessed failure of the western models and the emergence of India at the global level after independence. 

Sarup Prasad Ghosh notes: “The uniqueness of the Vivekananda doctrine lies in the fact that whatever remedies it suggests for India’s economic, political and spiritual regeneration derives from Swamy’s practical experiences of life. He used to meet the common Indian’s directly whenever he went to different places. This made him confident that India has to develop an economic model for herself which will take the peculiarities of her social life into consideration.⁵”    

References:

1.   Dadabhai Naoroji, Poverty and Un-British India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1996

2.   William Digby, A Prosperous British India: A Revelation From Official Records, University of Michigan Library, 1901

3.   Swami Vivekananda,  Complete Works, Vol. III, Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta, Sept.1992

4.   www.telegraph.co.uk

5.   Sarup Prasad Ghosh, Swami Vivekananda’s Economic Thoughts in Modern International Perspective: India as a Case Study, The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkatta,  2010

( Yuva Bharati, Vol 41, No 4, Nov. 2013)