Ecological Seer

VISIONARIES : A. RANGARAJAN

An appreciation of the life and work of J. C. Kumarappa: `Gandhi's economist'.

Displayed by permission of Resurgence (www.resurgence.org) and A.Rangarajan.

KUMARAPPA WAS a man ahead of his time and a seer who mostly walked alone. Scarcely remembered in his own country today, his contribution to ethical economic thought is monumental. Simply put, Kumarappa was Gandhi's economist. He advocated the village as the centre of economic affairs, the revival of village industries and rural technology and agrarian reforms. The home-spun khadi and swadeshi or economic self-reliance were institutions greatly enriched by Kumarappa.

Gandhi took great comfort in Kumarappa's confirmation of his own inner principles. Gandhi was intuitive while Kumarappa was a pragmatic analyst. Together they made a great pair. At times Kumarappa went beyond his mentor. Kumarappa realised that Gandhi did not dwell much on agriculture (Gandhi admitted ignorance of the subject as the reason), and on his own accord took steps to experiment with agricultural practices to orient them within the path of truth and nonviolence.

As evidence of his astounding foresight, as early as in 1945 (at a time when most of the world was mesmerised by the modern industrial agricultural techniques) Kumarappa wrote: "When we use chemical

fertilisers in the place of organic manures for a time we may obtain crops, but constant application of these destroys the earthworms as they cannot feed on chemicals. With the disappearance of earthworms the soil becomes heavy and ultimately loses fertility."

We see here the emergence of Kumarappa the ecologist. He developed a sound grasp of the role of watersheds, forest protection and irrigation tanks in water conservation and in sustaining an economy. Kumarappa was always in touch with ground reality and knew how to relate principles and ideas to actual programmes. When ill health confined him to his ashram in South India he wrote several reports and articles and these provide ample evidence of the singular insight he had gained.

KUMARAPPA, LIKE GANDHI, was the embodiment of sublime moral and spiritual values, living and practising all that he believed and preached. Throwing overboard flourishing career opportunities in India and in the UK as a chartered accountant, he embraced austerity and lived a simple life till his end. Born in 1892 into a devout Christian family, he was provided with a good education and went on to London and to the US for higher studies and employment. It

was at Columbia University in 1928, while working with Professor Seligman on a thesis on public finance, that Kumarappa experienced an inner shift. The following year, he met the Mahatma. Gandhiji had invited Kumarappa to discuss the latter's pamphlet, Public Finance and our Poverty. In it Kumarappa had explained how the British government was impoverishing India. This encounter would alter the course of Kumarappa's life in a decisive fashion. He became Gandhi's faithful follower.

In his books, Kumarappa discussed how, going down the prevailing economic path, wars are inevitable as nations vie with one another for raw materials and markets. As the modern transnational corporate-dominated economy breaks down national barriers and sovereign laws in its relentless pursuit of profit, the potential for conflict intensifies, further aggravating the situation.

Kumarappa elaborated on the kind of responsibility that hangs on us when we buy something. He wrote, "Moral values are always attached to every article for sale in the market. We cannot ignore such values and say `business is business'.

Goods produced under conditions of slavery or exploited labour are stained with the guilt of oppression." He was a critic of standardisation and viewed it as a bane that robbed the finer qualities of goods. Kumarappa recognised the wisdom and care needed in dealing with renewable and non renewable resources. He invented two peculiar terms for this concept: `current' and 'reservoir-type'. He gives numerous illustrations for the two categories and goes on to draw analogies to 'living off income' and `living off capital'.

Kumarappa's knowledge of economics and statistical methods was formidable. His criticisms were well founded and his observations incisive. While advocating decentralisation, he calculated and proved that the capital needed to provide full employment in a centralised model would be two thousand times the annual budget, whilst in stark contrast it would only be forty times in the decentralised scenario. He lamented that the government was intent on taking the suicidal centralisation route despite sound evidence to the contrary. For example, while proving the dangers of diverting land to cash crops, he

drew a precise table of what could be grown on 77,000 acres of land to sustain, nourish and clothe a population of 100,000 people. The details were amazing in depth and understanding.

In his book Why the Village Movement Kumarappa wrote: "Work is even more consequential than ceremonial religion. We may almost say that work is the practical side of religion. To deny man his opportunity to work is therefore to deny him the privilege of being a full-fledged human being... "Small wonder that E. F. Schumacher, on whom Kumarappa's works had great influence, referred to him as the "the Indian philosopher and economist".

IN 1955, PERHAPS in the evening of his life, Kumarappa spoke at the T. Kallupatti Ashram to university students and delivered a powerful message on the ways of modern economics. He said, "Though the Lancashire mill is located in England, its ramifications extend the world over. To work it, therefore, we need worldwide control of the cotton-growing soils, farmers, the research institutes, and the railway rates, ports, steamships, ocean routes and bases like Singapore, Aden and Gibraltar, and markets

too have to be controlled. Without such worldwide domination the Lancashire mill cannot be worked for one day. Such complete and widespread political control necessitates the army, navy and the air force." In a similar vein Kumarappa had warned that dependency on oil would lead to wars. The recent Gulf War is then after all a prediction coming true from the seer.

Thus we find every strand of thought has come to constitute a voice of alternative philosophy which appears in Kumarappa's writings and speeches. As the leading light behind the All India Village Industries Association (early awareness on appropriate technology!), Kumarappa sought to put these principles into practice. As a Gandhian he knew that unless something is put into practice it does not gain authenticity. In Kumarappa we hear one of the earliest voices against the globalisation that we witness today. He was a pioneer in ethical and ecological economic thought and would find a place amongst the pantheon of philosophers who have been offering a sane voice of alternative economics.

Resurgence No. 225 July/August 2004

Pages 48-49