Moksha, not motor cars—BR Shenoy's idea of a truly Indian welfare state
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 today seems to move in that direction.
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.
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 well-being of the maximum [number] of people.
What is the aim of life?
What has [MK] 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, '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.
Our Institutions and our way of life were attuned to it. The attainment 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-realisation, 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 overriding requirement that the Arthic and the Kamic activities were always conditioned by Dharma. It is significant that, under Indian polity, sovereignty 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 revenues, 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?
The essence of a welfare state
It follows that under the Indian concept of a (welfare) state, each individual should be left free to pursue his lawfully chosen vocation. Free enterprise, subject only to the rule of Dharma, is an essential feature of the economic setup of the (welfare) state. As the injunction applied to the king and the ministers, it follows, too, that the state, consistently with the rule of Dharma, cannot enter into the sphere of economic activities, which is the sacred domain of the private sector, even if the state was capable (which is a matter of serious doubt) of more efficient production than private firms. The rule of Dharma would restrict government activities to public utilities, basic industries (which the private sector is unable to undertake), basic needs of development, industries of strategic importance from the standpoint of defence, and the like. In particular, a policy of indiscriminate nationalisation of private enterprise was contrary to this doctrine.
Minimum state, ideal of India
This suggests that the Indian concept of a welfare state was a minimum state. It was wholly antagonistic to a garrison police state. The latter rests on violence and Adharma—under it, the individual is coerced into yielding to the will of the state, which, in practice, means the tyranny of an individual or a group of individuals, who are, for the time being, in possession of the machinery of state.
The concept of a welfare state today is linked up with the provision for all citizens of 'minimum' standards of consumption. It provides (or aims at providing) minimum standards of food, shelter, education, health, and income (either by way of minimum wages or public assistance for the destitute). The minima are a floor below which no individual would be allowed to fall. In an economy with an expanding national income, the minimum standards would be progressively lifted up.
This concept of a welfare state does not necessarily conflict with the Indian concept. It is the responsibility of an enlightened state to provide relief from abject poverty, which causes starvation or such other suffering. Even in the richer economies, there may be people in need of such relief. But how far shall the state go in lifting up the minimum for all? Will it be the responsibility of the state to provide the more unfortunate families of the nuclear age with motor cars, at least scooters, washing machines, refrigerators, telephones, television and radio sets, and the like? Or would we say that to do so would be going too far. I wish to suggest that this difficult problem may not confront the welfare state of the Indian conception. The limiting condition of the rule of Dharma will prevent the state from acquiring such large revenues as vulgar charity of this character may demand.
The need for ensuring minimum standards of consumption is great in under-developed economies, like ours, where the level of consumption of even foodgrains by the masses of people is below nutritional standards.
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, is devoid of true welfare. Our happiness and welfare would be in proportion to our success in recapturing and translating into our daily life and activities the Dharma-pradhan ideal of life. 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, p 12, 1940).
Sovereignty, according to Indian polity, lay not in the people, but in Dharma. It was the responsibility of 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 [Five-Year] 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.
This is part of ThePrint's Great Speeches series. It features speeches and debates that shaped modern India.
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