B R Shenoy | My Idea of a Welfare State, Part I (1957)
This is the first part of a series, from a speech on the Welfare State delivered by B R Shenoy in 1957. The speech was published in the December, 1957 issue of ‘The Indian Libertarian’
The accent of the welfare state is, clearly, on welfare as there can be no welfare state without welfare. The question at once arises, whose welfare does the welfare state aim at achieving? The answer, probably would be the welfare of the common man. If it is objected that the common man is very hard to find, we would, probably, amend our answer and say that the objective of the welfare state is the welfare of the masses of people, the maximum of well-being of the maximum of people.
At first sight this answer might seem to satisfy the question well enough. But it really begs the question. We have said little more than that welfare is equal to well-being of man. We are still far from formulating the issues. If we wish to be scientific and logically consistent, we cannot run away from certain fundamentals of the problem of welfare. Human well-being is inseparably bound up with the immediate and the ultimate purpose of human existence. We cannot escape the question, what are we here for? Are we here to worship on the altar of man’s standard of living? Would it be right to say that the purpose of human existence is to live a life of carefree comfort? Much of our thinking to-day seems to move in that direction.
What is the Aim of Life?
What has Gandhi to say on the subject? He is always a good and safe guide in these matters. Gandhi had his feet firmly on Indian soil. His thinking went to the roots of our tradition. He has answered the question of what is the purpose of human existence in the Introduction to The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Says Gandhi: “What I want to achieve — what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years-is self-realisation . . . to attain Moksha. I live and move and have my being in pursuit of this goal. All that I do by way of speaking and writing and all my ventures in the political field are directed to this same end” ( p. 5). Since it is Gandhi that writes he means every syllable of what he has recorded. The purpose of all his activities, public and private — political activities not excluded — was the attainment of Moksha. This goal of life conforms to the traditional teachings of this land.
The problem of human welfare of how best to cater to it is not a recent problem. It is as old as the human race, and therefore, dates back to the early phase of this Manvantaric age when man with the lighting (activation) of Manas, which had been hitherto latent, acquired self-consciousness. Man has been since pursuing the goal of his life. The Compassionate ones who attained the goal helping the rest in the great task.
Our institutions and our way of life were attuned to it. The attunement was done scientifically and with rigorous logical consistency. Our daily duties and responsibilities on the mundane plane broadly fall under two categories, the wealth or income acquiring (Arthic) activities and the want satisfying (Kamic) activities. Since both activities had to be so regulated as to attain Moksha, their roots had necessarily to be well-grounded in Dharma. For speeding up the inner journey towards Nirvana, it is important that we acquire wealth only in consistence with Dharma and Dharma alone should govern the propensity for the satisfaction of wants.
Where does the state fit into this context? It is obvious that the State has no jurisdiction over the inner changes leading to self-realization, Nirvana. But the remaining three, Dharma, Artha and Kama, the thri-vargas, fall within its purview. The responsibility of the King, who symbolised the State, was to propagate the thri-vargas, subject to the over-riding requirement that the Arthic and the Kamic activities were always conditioned by Dharma. It is significant that, under Indian polity, sovereignity lay, not in the people, but in Dharma. The concern of the executive wing of the State, the king and his ministers, was to ensure that the rule of the sovereign, Dharma, prevailed. Dharma, like Truth, is indivisible and all-pervasive. The state enforced the Rule of Dharma in all the activities of the people coming within its ambit, in the administration of justice, in the collection and disbursal of avenues, in the defence of the country, and in every other of its functions and responsibilities.
A state where the Rule of Dharma prevails is a welfare state, the objective of welfare here being the creation, to the extent permissible on the governmental side, of conditions facilitating the attainment of the goal of life by individuals. How far can such a state go in developing its public sector of economic activity, to borrow a familiar phrase of present-day discussion on planning in India? It is relevant to quote here that tradition enjoins an individual to select a vocation which is homogenous with his nature.
You can access the original piece here. Visit indianliberals.in for more works by Indian Liberals dating back to the 19th Century.
