Schumacher on Gandhi –by Surur Hoda

Surur Hoda, co-founder of Gandhi Foundation, wrote this essay which first published in ‘Gandhi
and the Contemporary world’. In this article Surur Hoda writes about thoughts of Dr.E F
Schumacher on Gandhi ji and mainly focuses on his economic perspective.

Due to the visions of Gandhi ji about Gram Swaraj which basically means villages should be self
sufficient and there should be inter linkage between villages and villages should be decentralized
, many prominent personalities even from Indian National Congress disagreed and openly
criticize Gandhi ji saying he want to take India backward ,instead of modern industrial nation.
His thought on this was like if villages fall off then whole nation will fall. But modern
economist rejected his idea. Many people admired him but for economic policies they stood
against Gandhi ji.

Dr. E.F Schumacher, in 1973, started his speech about Gandhi ji by saying his as a people’s
economist. Schumacher was very much influenced very Gandhi ji’s thoughts on economist.
Gandhi ji never made a choice of economies over people ,he added. Gandhi ji had given
importance of religious teachings also, according to him a person will be more faithful and moral
if he practices his religious teachings. He always favored poor masses over goods manufacturing

The five main pillars of Gandhi ji’s economic thinking were Non violent, Simple, Small, Capital
Saving, Rural based. For Non Violent he means that Western Style of industrialization cant be
suitable for whole world and hence it cant be implemented. By simple, it reflects that with high
and complicated material life, high thinking is not possible. By Small, Gandhi ji’s meant that
production should not be on mass level but it should be by large people and hence more jobs will
be created. By Capital Saving he meant by capital intensive people will become more machine
minded. And lastly by Rural based he meant that economics development based on rural focused
,because more than 70% of India is directly or indirectly based on rural and hence rural based
development should be promoted.

Comment: I totally agree with Gandhi ji’s economics theories .specially his teachings on non
violent and rural based economy.

In the book ‘Small is beautiful’ Schumacher also mentioned Gandhi ji’s teaching.