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Therefore. Sufficiency means moderation and reasonableness.”
The 2007 Human Development Report of the United Nations
Development Programme issued a warning “to avoid growth that is
jobless, ruthless, voiceless, rootless, and futureless,” and strongly
commended the Sufficiency Economy principle and human development.
Friends, when I read the above excerpts, I must confess, I felt
astonished. It confirmed my earlier thoughts of a clear parallel which I saw
between the philosophy of His Majesty the King and the concepts of
Father of our Nation Mahatma Gandhi on this issue. So, this seminar rightly
gives us an important opportunity to make a comparative study between
the two theories and draw some practical lessons from them for the
betterment of our peoples.
Now, I would like to briefly dwell on the principles of
Swadeshi
or “local self-sufficiency” as propounded by Mahatma Gandhi.
According to the principle of
Swadesh
i, whatever is made or
produced in the village must be used first and foremost by the members
of the village. Trading among villages and between villages and towns
should be minimal, like icing on the cake. Goods and services that cannot
be generated within the community can be bought from elsewhere.
Gandhiji believed that every village community of free India
should have its own carpenter, shoemakers, potters, builders, mechanics,
farmers, engineers, weavers, teachers, bankers, merchants, traders,
musicians, artists, and priests. In other words, each village should be a
microcosm of India – a web of loosely inter-connected communities.
Gandhiji considered these villages so important that he thought they
should be given the status of “village republics”.
The British believed in centralized, industrialized, and mechanized
modes of production. Gandhiji turned this principle on is head and
envisioned a decentralized, homegrown, hand-crafted mode of production.
In his words, “Not mass production, but production by the masses.”