Swadeshi, not just a sentiment

By V. Krishna Ananth

``I FEAR that today the people - and especially the middle class - are slipping back into the habit of leaving things to the Governments, of sitting back and complaining that the Governments are not doing enough instead of doing more themselves. Unless we shed this apathy, unless the people take an active day-to-day part in matters that transcend their immediate concerns, freedom will not be safe.''

This was the lament of Jayaprakash Narayan on the eve of the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's martyrdom in 1978. A little over two decades since, those tendencies which the Lok Nayak thought were a threat to freedom (what he meant by freedom were the democratic institutions) seem to have developed into a dominant culture. Concerns for an egalitarian social order and the idea that economic growth shall not mean mere measurement of statistics and that, instead, it must address generation of employment to more people and building up of an infrastructure which could ensure health-care and education are no longer matters affecting the middle classes.

As a consequence, swadeshi, battle cry that galvanised the incipient middle classes and the rural peasantry into the mighty nationalist battle against the British rule - giving birth to India as a nation in the process - has become a bad word for the middle classes. Those willing to stand up to (not too many in any case) supermarkets and the culture they promote are simply being dismissed, by the intelligentsia, as cranks caught up in a time warp.

The swadeshi concept is by no means linked to any sentiment or appeal to any cultural denomination. It emerged in the political discourse during the call for boycott of foreign goods in 1905 and as it evolved in the three decades thereafter, was rooted in the logic of colonial economy. In this sense, it was not just a secular but also democratic struggle which formed the ideological basis during the Champaran satyagraha, the non-cooperation movement and the Civil Disobedience Movement.

It is crucial to bear this in mind and distinguish the campaigns of such platforms as the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (to which swadeshi is just another rhetoric as much as nationalism based on religious and cultural identity) from the idea of Gandhian economic principles and the socialist agenda held by such stalwarts of the freedom movement as JP and Ram Manohar Lohia, who donned the Gandhian mantle even while Congress leaders decided to reduce the Mahatma and his ism to mere symbols and images soon after August 15, 1947.

Those advocates of swadeshi (who oppose the indiscriminate capture of the market by big manufacturers, both national and multinational) are also frowned upon and accused of trying to stall ``development;'' the argument, as it goes, is that growth will be possible only when productive activities are freed from bureaucratic control and that growth inspired by market principles is anyday a better means to building an egalitarian society.

It is another matter (but important though) that the Nehruvian socialist experiment contributed significantly to setting up hurdles to poverty eradication; it is also a fact, in a sense, that the bureaucracy and the coming into existence of a large category of persons - clerks and section officers - caused a substantial government expenditure towards maintaining them (the money had to come from the welfare budget, leaving only a small fraction of allocated funds for poverty eradication programmes).

And there is the phenomenon of corruption too; after all, there is a section in the bureaucracy bestowed with powers with which it converts coal into granite boulders (as they are loaded on rail wagons) and even ensures, with mafia help, that tonnes of coal lying at the pithead vanish into thin air.

A substantial portion of the Government's funds meant to subsidise foodgrains supplied through the Public Distribution System in recent years has gone for covering the cost of running the establishment, storage and transportation of foodgrains rather than reaching the end beneficiaries.

The point here is that swadeshi in particular and opposition to the logic driven by the market in general are not the same as seeking to restore the old order; the old order did precious little to eradicate poverty, let alone help in establishing an egalitarian socio-economic set-up. The cry for swadeshi as against the current economic policy does not in any way mean opposition to anything that is foreign.

Swadeshi, after all, is not a sentiment; it has nothing to do with cultural or denominational notions of nationalism. Instead, the concept emerged out of a secular and democratic understanding by the early nationalists of the economic principles and the logic of development; Gandhiji applied this understanding in the agitation he led and made it a battle cry. It is in this context that the concept remains relevant even today.

The logic which was of critical importance to the Gandhian approach to swadeshi was that industrial activity in the country should be labour-intensive; now the population having crossed the one billion-mark is a reality the nation and its planners cannot gloss over. There is no way that a specified number of the people can be wished away simply because the idea of globalisation appeals to a section consisting the ruling elite, a section of the middle classes and those aspiring to reach these levels in their own way.

In other words, the craving for soft drinks and potato chips or even furniture manufactured with technology imported from the West (or is it from the Far-East?) can in no way justify the idea of allowing closure of the small and cottage industry. After all, making potato chips and soft drinks as also fruit juice does not require imported technology; it is another matter that small-time manufacturers of these products may not be able to package them in the way the multinationals do. But there is hardly any need for centralising the production of such goods and increasing the cost (on account of transport, advertisement, etc.).

Similarly, in a country with over one billion people, it must make economic sense to opt for labour-intensive technology in textiles rather than let machines do the job and reduce employment just to satisfy the large number of middle class men and women wearing brand shirts and trousers. After all, it has been established that cloth woven in the handloom sector is not just of the course variety. By encouraging the handloom weavers, the middle classes can even help in preventing suicides among them.

In this and many other ways it must be possible to see the relevance of swadeshi in the present situation. All those now questioning the logic of globalisation - employees in nationalised banks and the insurance industry to whom it means an imminent threat to their jobs and other sections of the organised sector - must also bother about the impact of the same set of policy initiatives on agriculture (the small and middle level peasants are beginning to face the brunt of withdrawal of the Quantitative Restrictions on several items) and on the unorganised workers in smallscale units across the country.

It is no use merely shouting slogans against the Government and expecting changes in policy measures. The middle classes - the employees in the banks, the salariat, the small entrepreneur - will have to ``transcend their immediate concerns'' such as brand clothes, the supermarket and indeed the colas and potato chips if they are serious about resisting the indiscriminate opening up of the economy in the name of globalisation.

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