RE-VISITING GANDHI’S IDEAL OF TRUSTEESHIP

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, KUDANKULAM ANTI-NUCLEAR SATYAGRAHA, INDIA, 26 Mar 2010

Vithal Rajan - TRANSCEND Media Service

A great hobby with literate Indians is following their statistics on growth. However much rents and fuel prices may go up, however unaffordable vegetables and milk may get, they feel cheered with good news about growth statistics. Particularly heartwarming is news that since a year ago Indian billionaires have doubled in number with 50 on the tally board! True, the Chinese have more, but ten of Asia’s top 25 are Indians, while there is only one Chinese. All this is good news but better is to follow. The cumulative wealth of Indian billionaires jumped from $ 118.9 billion to $ 227.9 billion in one year! This news was ample compensation for all those Indians struggling to send their children to school, or meet hospital fees for ill parents. Their chests expanded with pride – a famous phrase used by the late Rajiv Gandhi about India’s A-bomb.

But there was another Gandhi not so long ago who thought the proper purpose of wealth was to help others. Capitalist accountants would say immediately the idea of trusteeship is dead as a dodo, for even if all India’s billionaires dissolved their wealth at a stroke it would give only $ 227 per Indian, which would be meaningless to everybody. True. But one could do another kind of accounting.

Indian businessmen are not accustomed to investing their money for peanuts. Their normal business grosses them well over 20% every year. So, India’s most successful billionaire businessmen should be earning over $ 50 billion a year from their investments. As good capitalists they would be finding more ways for profitable investment of this $ 50 billion they earn in a year. But supposing they remembered the Mahatma and put aside a fifth of this increase in a trusteeship fund, could that $ 10 billion accomplish any good?

Half of India’s population, or roughly 100 million families, are very poor, and find it almost impossible to access credit from nationalized banks. So, for the $ 200 or so they need every year they go to money lenders who could even charge 50% rate of interest or more. Failure to repay money borrowed with interest leads to children being sold as bonded labour, continual harassment, suicides, or prostitution of women. The $ 10 billion trust fund could meet half the credit demand of the poor and still earn our capitalists 24% interest, which the poor will thankfully pay. The success of so many Microfinance institutions shows that the trust fund would be safe, and with the better management practices of India’s top business people the money will not only help the poor tide over difficulties but earn a reasonable profit for the super-rich.

Around eighty percent of India’s population is rural and lives on agriculture or related activities. But a quarter of that population are landless labour, and half the cultivators are small farmers with less than 2 hectares of dry land. Government subsidies for fertilizers and its huge expenditures on irrigation projects have basically benefited a small segment of rich farmers and agri-industry on whose political muscle depend votes for politicians and the maintenance of law and order by force. So, we can safely say that about 40 million small farmers are desperately looking for crop loans of about $ 1000 each, in time for the planting season before the rains. The only reliable source for this much needed money are the dealers, who will lend at a hefty price provided the farmers accept a package of fertilizers and pesticides, in quantity and quality almost always injurious to their land. The government which takes such solicitous socialist care of the rich abandons its farmers to the vagaries of the weather and the market. Many times, the cocktail of chemicals farmers are forced to use if they are to secure the money kills the land, and leads many to suicide later. India which was traditionally a great agricultural country now staggers from one agricultural crisis to another, killing the hand that feeds it.

The trust fund of $ 10 billion can meet the credit needs of at least a fifth of the small farmers, and by helping agriculture revive show the Indian government the way forward, despite the plethora of economists at the very top. The trust could recover its money within one cropping season by buying back, say, 2 tonnes of millet from every dry-land farmer it gives credit to, and by reselling the grain it could make a handsome profit of $ 2.5 billion on its $10 billion investment within four months! But this kind of investment requires knowledge of dry-land farming and the patient ways of the poor. It would be a highly profitable investment to make agricultural production grow sustainably, and very different from what is practiced by the rich, investment in easy channels where there is already money in plenty. Billionaires could show they have the intelligence to help small farmers, by creating a business network of facilities around farming, credit, appropriate quality inputs, farmer associations for proper crop balances in regions, warehouses, cold storage units, transport, information and advice on demand, links to markets, all so that poor farmers and the poor consumers could both survive.

The rich and famous in India are very busy acquiring real estate all over the country for ‘development,’ which could mean anything from upper-class gated luxury community living to individual mansions and golf courses. All this building requires hard work at low wages. The labouring poor are desperate for 100 assured days of work at a meager $ 2 per day. The government through its new and partially successful National Rural Employment Guarantee Act promises such work for only one person per family. The trust operated by the super rich could offer work for another member of a family from the bottom 50 million.

If all of this does not sound like giving money away but more like business, it would still be the most feasible thing we can aspire to. But let us assume Indian billionaires would really like to part with a small portion of their earnings. Can a $ 10 billion a year trust fund really do any good?

As the Indian Public Report on Basic Education has shown, the country lacks elementary standards in its schools. More than half its children drop out before they complete their sixth year of primary schooling, and the great majority of girls in rural India are illiterate, the greatest hurdle to development. The great Indian philosopher-saint J. Krishnamurti set up an exemplary school in Rishi Valley, and this school has developed a unique pedagogical model for rural out-of-school children, with negligible dropouts, and with the support of all the parents of a village. Children become literate and numerate and educated in a true sense, enabling them to succeed even in a failing educational system. The current total expenditures for such a small village school is less than $ 6000 a year. After a period of time, $ 3 billion a year from the trust fund could run such a school in every Indian village!

The second greatest worry for the Indian poor is caused by medical emergencies which permit unscrupulous doctors and clinics to fleece the poor of any savings they have and send them into irremediable debt. The government of India admits that around 50 million of its families are among the poorest of the poor. Premiums ranging from $6 to $ 12 per family can buy medical insurance against such emergencies.

The third and most vital need of the poor is food security. Trying to live up to its obligations, the government promises to supply through its Public Distribution System 25 kg. of foodgrains per family per month at the subsidized rate of Rupees 3 per kg. A poor family with two working adults, perhaps an aging parent, and two children, needs a minimum of 2.5 kgs. of food-grains per day to survive, based on the nutritional calculation that an adult needs at least 2500 kcal per day, and children and the aged a minimum of 1800 kcal each. It must be remembered that they have little money to buy eggs, milk, lentils or vegetables like the better-off and depend almost solely on cereals for their energy needs, and labouring strenuously all day they really need a lot more than this average international nutritional standard. However, the special committee of the Indian government appointed to the ascertain the present-day poverty line has slashed the required calorific need of a working adult to no more than 1800 kcal per day, perhaps under the kindly belief that it is a generous quota offering 50 kcal, or half a slice of bread, more than the 1750 kcal the Nazis gave to their captives in the Buchenwald death camp. Hence, the subsidized grain ration of 25 kg. per month per family will just about keep two adults working at Buchenwald levels, leaving to them the option of feeding parents and children any way they can since the market price of rice or wheat is 10 times higher than the subsidized rate. The billionaire trust could double the quantity of foodgrains made available to those below the poverty line at subsidized rates, and ensure that girls and the aged also get to eat.

Any of these options could be carried out without the super-rich feeling the pinch. The Mahatma would then be remembered in daily life and not only on national holidays.

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Vithal Rajan, B.A. Hons [McGill], Ph.D.[L.S.E.], worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast in the 1970s, and was founder-faculty member at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, U.K; Chair of World Studies, International School, Geneva; Executive Director of the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, Sweden; and  Director, WWF-International, Switzerland. He has worked in an honorary capacity with civil society for 30 years and was founder-chair of the Deccan Development Society, the Confederation of Voluntary Associations and SKS Microfinance in India. In 2006, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for high merit and lifetime achievement in the service of humanity.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 26 Mar 2010.

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