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This article provides information about the difference between real progress and material progress on the basis of Gandhian perspectives:
In a speech delivered on December 22, 1918 at the Muir College Economics Society, Allahabad, Gandhi candidly addressed the question, “Does economic progress clash with real progress?” Economic progress largely refers to material growth and advancement, often without a ceiling.
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What is commonly argued in favour of material growth is the necessity of providing for the daily wants of people much before thinking or talking about their moral welfare. Moral progress is wrongly believed to come along with material progress.
There is no denying that the requisites for survival are food, clothing and shelter but for this, there was no need to look up to economics or its laws. I should not have laboured my point as I have done, if I did not believe that in so far as we have made the modern materialistic craze our goal, in so far are we going downhill in the path of progress. Hence the ancient ideal has been limitation of activities promoting wealth.
This does not put an end to all material ambition. We should still have, as we have had, in our midst people who make the pursuit of wealth their aim in life. But we have always recognised that it is a fall from the ideal. It is a beautiful thing to know that the wealthiest among us often own that to have remained voluntarily poor would have been a higher state for them.
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“You cannot serve God and Mammon is an economic truth of the highest value. We have to make our choice. Western nations are groaning under the heels of the monster—God of materialism. Their moral growth has become stunted. They today measure their progress in pounds, shillings, and pence. American wealth has become the standard. She is the envy of other nations. I have heard many of our countrymen say that we will gain American wealth but avoid its methods. I venture to suggest that such an attempt, if it were made, is foredoomed to failure. We cannot be wise, temperate and furious in a moment. I would have our leaders to teach us to be morally supreme in the world”.
He firmly believed that working for economic equality called for abolishing the conflict between capital and labour. In operational terms, this means bridging the wide gulf between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. Gandhi adhered to the doctrine of trusteeship.
Unemployment and underemployment in villages were because of acute pressure on land and absence of supplementary industries. He realised that the decay of the village industries tightened the noose of poverty around the neck of Harijans. Removal of untouchability and economic amelioration, therefore, were inextricably entwined with each other.
Against this backdrop, swadeshi acquired new urgency. He asserted that it was not enough that an article of use was being made in the country, it was important that the article was made in the village. He explained that some articles produced in villages might cost more than those produced in towns and cities, but one should still purchase them because purchase of these articles distributed wages and profits to the poor and to those in dire need.
The Gandhian approach to development in the real sense was directed at the poorest of the poor for whom acquiring two square meals a day was uncertain. In one village, he said, “Empty your pockets for the poor”. This was his one line speech. Money spent on all that exceeded the bare requirements for survival was treated as wasteful.
Alternatively, it could be used for providing meals to the poor. “The rich have a superfluous store of things which they do not need and which are therefore neglected and wasted; while millions are starved to death for want of sustenance. If each retained possession of only what he needed, no one would be in want, and all would live in contentment. As it is, the rich are discontented no less than the poor. The poor man would fain become a millionaire, and the millionaire a multi-millionaire. The rich should take the initiative in dispossession with a view to a universal diffusion of the spirit of contentment. If only they keep their own property within moderate limits, the starving will be easily fed, and will learn the lesson of contentment along with the rich”.