B R Shenoy | My Idea of a Welfare State, Part III (1957)

This is the final instalment of a 3-part series. The first two parts of the essay can be accessed here —

1. B R Shenoy | My Idea of a Welfare State, Part I (1957)
2. B R Shenoy | Minimum State: The Ideal of India, Part II (1957)

The Lurking Danger

The pressing necessity for a speedy increase in national output has presently riveted our attention on a successful execution of the Second Plan. An overriding emphasis on accelerated economic growth is beset with serious dangers to the welfare of the individual in the sense of maximum freedom to arrange and pursue his own affairs in his own way. This may lead, step by step, to a totalitarian state, so that, if the tendency was not curbed soon enough, we may be cutting at the very roots of welfare in an effort to accelerate the pace of attaining it.

Economic development was a function of invested savings. Savings were both limited and slow to grow in a democratic set-up, where the individual, after payment of tax, had full sovereignty of disposal over income. As habits of consumption changed slowly, savings in the short-run were a more or less rigidly fixed percentage of the national income, the change in the rate of saving responding only to changes in real national income. During the five years of the First Plan period the rate of saving in India rose 6 to 7 per cent of the national income. The rate of investment which this permitted yielded hut a commensurate rate of growth of national income, the rate during the First Plan period being 3.5 per cent per annum.

Communist experience has shown that it is possible to accelerate the pace of progress by an expansion of the public sector to cover the entire economy. The state would, then, take over from the pricing system the allocation of the resources of production among the several trades and industries, such allocation being effected arbitrarily by the Planning Commission. By reducing the allocations to the consumption trades sufficiently, it becomes possible, under this arrangement, to add to the quantity of saved resources and implement a plan of development much more speedily than a democratic set-up would permit. According to official statistics the rate of increase in national income of communist economies varies between 12 to 16 per cent per year. The rate of increase in U.S.A. during the past decade was 4.9 per cent. Under communist technique it may be possible to implement the Second Plan even without foreign aid.

Guided by Communist Advisers

In the formulation of the Second Plan we have availed of the advice of technicians subscribing to the communist philosophy of life. We are not without Marxists in the Administration and among our advisers. Some have advocated, in the interest of speed in production, communist planning under the euphemistic guises of “co-operativisation”, “physical controls”, and “extension of the public sector.”

But to take recourse to this device would be to sacrifice freedom for speed in economic progress. For, the changed conditions will no longer permit free enterprise, a free pricing system, free markets, and, what is most diabolical, freedom of choice of one’s own occupation. We will have total planning and a totalitarian state-a garrison police state in the name of planning. Is it possible to strike a via media between these extremes? We cannot surrender our freedom and have it at the same time. The self of matter and the self of spirit can never meet . . One of the two must disappear. There is no place for both.

To accept this development would be to extinguish with our own hands the best heritage of this land, which it should be our effort to revive. In the Indian context of poverty, the urgency to raise the ratio of goods to man needs no stress. But shall we do this at the sacrifice of the dignity and freedom of the individual?

What use is that welfare, which ignores the true goal of human life and sets aside the elevating Rule of Dharma?

A welfare state, which aims solely at Artha and Kama (suppressing Dharma or leaving it out in the cold), is devoid of true welfare. Our happiness and welfare (and also our greatness) would be in proportion to our success in recapturing and translating into our daily life and activities the Dharmapradhan ideal of life. To think that to do so, we would have to run away from the external appendages of the modern world or of the nuclear age of tomorrow is to miss the essence of that ideal. Consistently with that ideal our conception of a welfare state would be a minimum state. To quote Gandhi:

‘“That state is perfect and non-violent where the people are governed the least.”

(Harijan, 12 1940)

To summarise, the objective of life, was the attainment of self-realisation (Nirvana). The changes, inner to man, which characterised the progress toward Nirvana were beyond the jurisdiction of the state. But they were attained in the course of the mundane activities of man. These fell broadly under two categories Arthic (wealth or income earnings) and Kamic (want satisfying). The objective of life being Moksha, both activities were rooted in, conditioned by. Dharma. These three, Dharma, Artha and Kama, (the Thrivargas) fell within the ambit of the state. Their propagation was its sole purpose.

Sovereignty, according to Indian polity, lay, not in the people, but in Dharma. It was the responsibility the king to enforce the Rule of Dharma. A state where the Rule of Dharma prevailed was a welfare state, the objective of welfare being to assist man in the attainment of the goal of life. The welfare state of the traditional Indian concept was, thus, a minimum state. It was wholly antagonistic to a garrison police state. It did not conflict with the present-day idea of a welfare state guaranteeing minimum standards of consumption. In the excessive importance we are paying to the successful implementation of the Second Plan there was inherent danger to this concept of the welfare state as, insistence on the Plan, might, lead, step by step, to the adoption of totalitarian devices for raising the requisite resources. To prevent this we have to be constantly on the vigil.

(You can access the original piece here. Visit indianliberals.in for more works by Indian Liberals dating back to the 19th Century.)