My difficulties are two. One is whether it is possible to sell hand-made articles as cheaply as machine-made ones. The second is that out of the articles that have been enumerated in the scheme there is hardly any except Khadi which can become universal. They will not, in a large measure, be consumed locally and so will have to be sold in the cities. This is as it should be. The villagers should, develop such a high degree of skill that articles prepared by them should command a ready market outside. When our villages are fully developed there will be no dearth in them of men with a high degree of skill and artistic talent. There will be village poets, village artists, village architects, linguists and research workers. In short there will be nothing in life worth having which will not be had in the villages. Today the villages are dung heaps. Tomorrow they will be like tiny gardens of Eden where dwell highly intelligent folk whom no one can deceive or exploit.
The reconstruction of the villages along these lines should begin right
now. That might necessitate some modification of the scheme. The reconstruction
of the villages should not be organized on a temporary but permanent basis.
My second difficulty is that in the scheme under question, craft and
education have been divorced from each other. Graft, art, health and education
should all be integrated into one scheme. Nai Talim is a beautiful blend of all
the four and covers the whole education of the individual from the time of
conception to the moment of death. Therefore, I would not divide village uplift
work into watertight compartments from the very beginning but undertake an
activity which will combine all four. Instead of regarding craft and industry
as different from education, I will regard the former as the medium for the
latter. Nai Talim ought to be integrated into the scheme.
Harijan, 10-11-1946
"Begin with Yourself"
Correspondents have been writing, and friends have been seeing me, to
ask me how to begin the village industries work and what to do first.
The obvious answer is, "Begin with yourself and do first that
which is easiest for you to do."
This answer, however, does not satisfy the enquirers. Let me,
therefore, be more explicit.
Each person can examine all the articles of food, clothing and other
things that he uses from day to day and replace foreign makes or city makes, by
those produced by the villagers in their homes or fields with the simple
inexpensive tools they can easily handle and mend. This replacement will be
itself, an education of great value and a solid beginning. The next step will
be opened out to him of itself. For instance, say, the beginner has been
hitherto using a tooth-brush made in a Bombay factory. He wants to replace it
with a village brush. He is advised to use a babul twig. If he has weak teeth
or is toothless, he has to crush one end of it, with a rounded stone or a
hammer, on a hard surface. The other end he slits with a knife and uses the
halves as tongue-scrapers. He will find these brushes to be cheaper and much cleaner
than the very unhygienic factory-made toothbrush. The city-made tooth-powder he
naturally replaces with equal parts of clean, finely-ground, wood-charcoal and
clean salt. He will replace mill-cloth with village-spun Khadi, and mill-husked
rice with hand-husked, unpolished rice, and white sugar with village-made gur.
These I have taken merely as samples already mentioned in these columns. I have
mentioned them again to deal with the difficulties that have been mentioned by
those who have been discussing the question with me.[1]
Dangers of Mechanization
Mechanization is good when the hands are too few for the work intended
to be accomplished. It is an evil when there are more hands than required for
the work, as is the case in India... The problem with us is not how to find
leisure for the teeming millions inhabiting our villages. The problem is how to
utilize their idle hours, which are equal to the working days of six months in
the year. Strange as it may appear, every mill generally is a menace to the
villagers. I have not worked out the figures, but I am quite safe in saying
that every mill-hand does the work of at least ten labourers doing the same
work in their villages. In other words, he earns more than he did in his
village at the" expense of ten fellow-Villagers. Thus spinning and weaving
mills have deprived the villagers of a substantial means of livelihood. It is
no answer in reply to say that they turn out cheaper, better cloth, if they do
so at all. For, if they have displaced thousands of workers, the cheapest mill
cloth is dearer, than the dearest Khadi woven in the villages. Coal is not dear
for the coal miner who can use it there and then nor is Khadi dear for the
villager who manufactures* his own Khadi. But if the cloth manufactured in
mills displaces village hands, rice mills and flour mills not only displace
thousands of poor women workers, but damage the health of the whole population
in the bargain. Where people have no objection to taking flesh diet and can
afford it, white flour and polished rice may do no harm, but in India, where millions
can get no flesh diet even where they have no objection to eating it, if they
can get it, it is sinful to deprive them of nutritious and vital elements
contained in whole wheat meal and unpolished rice. It is time medical men and
others combined to instruct the people on the danger attendant upon the use of
white flour and polished rice...
Hence the function of the All-India Village Industries Association
must, in my opinion be to encourage the existing industries and to revive,
where it is possible and desirable, the dying or dead industries of villages
according to the village methods, i.e., the villages working in their own
cottages as may have done from times immemorial. These simple methods can be
considerably improved as they have been in hand-ginning, hand-carding,
hand-spinning and hand-weaving.
A critic objects that the ancient plan is purely individualistic and
can never bring about corporate effort. This view appears to me to be very
superficial. Though articles may be manufactured by villagers in their
cottages, they can be pooled together and profits divided. The villagers may
work under supervision and according to plan. The raw material may be supplied
from common stock. If the will to co-operative effort is created, there is
surely ample opportunity for co-operation, division of labour, saving of time
and efficiency of work. All these things are today being done by the All-India
Spinners' Association in over 5,000 villages.[2]
The Present State in India
Little do town-dwellers know how the semi-starved masses of India are
slowly sinking to lifelessness. Little do they know that their miserable
comfort represents the brokerage, they get for the work they do for the foreign
exploiter, that the profits and the brokerage are sucked from the masses.
Little do they realize that the Government established by law in British India
is carried on for this exploitation of the masses. No sophistry, on jugglery in
figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages
present to the naked eye. I have no doubt whatsoever that both England and the
town-dwellers of India will have to answer, if there is a God above, for this
crime against humanity which is perhaps unequalled in history.
The Root Cause
The present distress is undoubtedly insufferable. Pauperism must go
But industrialism is no remedy. The evil does not lie in the use of
bullock-carts. It lies in our selfishness and want of consideration for our
neighbours. If we have no love for our neighbours, no change, however
revolutionary, can do us any good.
I would destroy that system today, if had the power. I would use the
most deadly weapons, if I believed that they would destroy it. I refrain only
because the use of such weapons would only perpetuate the system though it may
destroy its present administrators. Those who seek to destroy men rather than
manners, adopt the latter and become worse then those whom they destroy under
the mistaken belief that the manners will die with the men. They do not know
the root of the evil.
The question about railways and telegraphs is really too insignificant
in relation to the great doctrine I have just discussed. I am not myself
banishing the personal use of these conveniences myself. I certainly do not
expect the nation to discard their use nor do I expect their disuse under
Swaraj. But I do expect the nation under Swaraj not to believe, that these
agencies necessarily advance our moral growth or are indispensable for our
material progress.
Machinery in the Ideal Condition
'Ideally would you not rule out all machinery?' Ideally, however, I
would rule out all machinery, even as I would reject this very body, which is
not helpful to salvation, and seek the absolute liberation of the soul. From
that point of view, I would reject all machinery, but machines will remain,
because like the body, they are inevitable. The body itself, itself, as I told
you, is the purest piece of mechanism; but if it is a hindrance to the highest
flights of the soul, it has to be rejected.
Machinery, The Practical Side
Machinery has its place; it has come to stay. But it must not be
allowed to displace necessary human labour. An improved plough is a good thing.
But if by some chances, one man could plough up by some mechanical invention of
his the whole of the land of India, and control all the agricultural produce
and if the millions had no other occupation, they would starve, and being idle,
they would become dunces, as many have already becomes. There is hourly danger
of many more being reduced to that unenviable state.
I would welcome every improvement in the cottage machine, but I know
that it is criminal to displace hand-labour by the introduction of power-driven
spindles unless one is at the same time ready to give millions of farmers some
other occupation in their homes.
That use of machinery is lawful which subserves the interest of all.
I would favour the use of the most elaborate machinery if thereby
India's pauperism and resulting idleness be avoided. I have suggested
hand-spinning as the only ready means of driving away penury and making famine
of work and wealth impossible. The spinning wheel itself is a piece of valuable
machinery, and in my own humble way I have tried to secure improvements in it
in keeping with the special conditions of India.
'Are you against all machinery?'
My answer is emphatically, 'No'. But, I am against its indiscriminate
multiplication. I refuse to be dazzled by the seeming triumph of machinery. I
am uncompromisingly against all destructive machinery. But simple tools and
instruments and such machinery as saves individual labour and lightens the
burden of machinery as saves individual labour and lightens the burden of the
millions of cottages, I should welcome.
What I object to, is the craze for machinery as such. The craze is for
what they call labour-saving machinery. Men go on 'saving labour', till
thousands are without work and thrown on the open streets to die of starvation.
I want to save time and labour, not for a fraction of mankind, but for all; I
want the concentration of wealth, not in the hands of few, but in the hands of
all. Today machinery merely helps a few to ride on the back of millions. The
impetus behind it ail is not the philanthropy to save labour, but greed. It is
against this constitution of things that I am fighting with all my might.
'Then you are fighting not against machinery as such, but against its
abuses which are so much in evidence today.'
I would unhesitatingly say 'yes'; but I would add that scientific
truths and discoveries should first of all cease to be mere instruments of
greed. Then labourers will not be over-worked and machinery, instead of
becoming a hindrance, will be a help. I am aiming, not at eradication of all
machinery, but limitation.
'When logically argued out, that would seem to imply the all
complicated power-driven machinery should go.'
It might have to go but I must make one thing clear. The supreme
consideration is man. The machine should not tend to make atrophied the limbs
of man. For instance, I would make intelligent exceptions. Take the case of the
Singer Sewing Machine. It is one of the few useful things ever invented, and
there is a romance about the device itself. Wife labouring over the tedious
process of sewing and seaming with her own hands, and simply out of his love for
her he devised the Sewing hands, and simply out of his love for her he devised
the Sewing Machine in order to save her from unnecessary labour. He, however,
saved not only her labour but also the labour of everyone who could purchase a
sewing machine.
'But in that case there would have to be a factory for making these
Singer Sewing Machines, and it would have to contain power-driven machinery of
ordinary type.'
Yes, but I am socialist enough to say that such factories should be
nationalized, or State-controlled. They ought only to be working under the most
attractive and ideal conditions, not for profit, but for the benefit of
humanity, love taking the place of greed as the motive. It is an alteration in
the condition of labour that I want. This mad rush for wealth must cease and
the labourer must be assured, not only of a living wage, but a daily task that
is not a mere drudgery. The machine will, under these conditions, be as much a
help to the man working it as to the State or the man who owns it. The present
mad rush will cease, and the labourer will work (as I have said) under
attractive and ideal conditions. This is but one of the exceptions I have in
mind. The Sewing Machine had love at its back. The individual is the one
supreme consideration. The saving of labour of the individual should be the
object, and honest humanitarian consideration, and not greed, the motive.
Replace greed by love and everything will come right.
'You are against this machine age, I see.'
To say that is to caricature my views. I am not against machinery as
such, but I am totally opposed to it when it masters us.
'You would not industrialize India?
I would indeed, in my sense of the term. The village communities
should be revived. Indian villages produced and supplied to the Indian town and
cities all their wants. India became impoverished when our cities become
foreign markets and began to drain the villages dry by dumping cheap and shoddy
goods from foreign lands.
'You would then go back to the natural economy?'
Yes. Otherwise I should go back to the city. I am quite capable of
running a big enterprise, but I deliberately sacrificed the ambition, not as a
sacrifice, but because my heart rebelled against it. For I should have no share
in the spoliation of the nation which is going on from day to day. But I am
industrializing the village in a different way.
Large-scale Production and Our Economic Problem
Our mill cannot today spin enough for our wants, and if they did, they
will not keep down prices unless they were compelled. They are frankly
money-makers and will not therefore regulate prices according to the needs of
the nation. Hand-spinning is therefore designed to the put millions of rupees
in the hands of poor villagers. Every agricultural country requires a
supplementary industry to enable the peasants to utilize the spare hours. Such
industry for India has always been spinning. Is it such a visionary ideal- an
attempt to revive an ancient occupation whose destruction has brought on
slavery, pauperism and disappearance of the inimitable artistic talents which
was once all expressed in the wonderful fabric of India and which was the envy
of the world?
We want to organize our national power not by adopting the best
methods of production only, but by the best method of both the production and
distribution. What India needs is not the concentration of capital in a few
hands, but its distribution so as to be within easy reach of the 71/2 lakhs of
villages that make this continent 1900 miles long and 1500 miles broad.
Multiplication of mills cannot solve the problem. They can only cause
concentration of money and labour and thus make confusion worse confounded.
India should wear no machine-made clothing whether it comes out of
European mills or Indian mills (written in 1909).
Do I seek to destroy the mill industry, I have often been asked. If I
did, I should not have pressed for the abolition of the excise duty. I want the
mill industry to prosper-only I do not want it to prosper at the expense of the
country. On the contrary, if the interests of the country demand that the
industry should go, I should let it go without the slightest compunction.
The great mill industry may be claimed to be Indian industry. But, in
spite of its ability to compete with Japan and Lancashire, it is an industry
that exploits the masses and deepens their poverty in exact proportion to its
success over Khadi. In the modern craze for wholesale industrialization, my
presentation has been questioned, if not brushed aside. It has been contended
that the growing poverty of the masses, due to the progress of
industrialization, is inevitable, and should therefore be suffered. I do not
consider the evil to be inevitable, let alone to be suffered. The A.I.S.A. has
successfully demonstrated the possibility of the villages manufacturing the
whole of the cloth requirement of India, simply by employing the leisure hours
of the nation in spinning and the anterior processes. The difficulty lies in
weaning the nation from the use of mill cloth. This is not the place to discuss
how it can be done. My purpose in this note was to give my definition of Indian
industry in terms of the millions of villagers, and my reason for that
definition.
The Economics of Khadi
The science of Khadi requires decentralization of production and
consumption, Consumption should take place as nearly as possible where Khadi is
produced.
The central fact of Khaddar is to make every village self-supporting
for its food and clothing.
Self-sufficient Khadi will never succeed without cotton being grown by
spinners themselves or practically in every village. It means decentralization
of cotton cultivation so far at least as self-sufficient Khadi is concerned.
Khaddar does not seek to destroy all machinery but it dies regulate
its use and check its weedy growth. It uses machinery for the service of the
poorest in their own cottages. The wheel is itself an ezqu8isite piece of
machinery.
I am personally opposed to great trusts and concentration of
industries by means of elaborate machinery. If India takes to Khaddar and all
it means, I do not lose the hope of India taking only as much of the modern
machinery as may be considered necessary for the amenities of life and for
labour-saving purposes.
Mass Production Vs. Production by the Masses
I would categorically state my conviction that the mania for
mass-production is responsible for the world-crisis. Granting for the moment
that machinery may supply all the needs of humanity, still, it would
concentrate production in particular areas, so that you would have to go about
in a round about way to regulate distribution, whereas, if there is production
and distribution both in the respective areas where things are required, it is
automatically regulated, and there is less chance for fraud, none for
speculation.
You see that these nations (Europe and America) are able to exploit
the so-called weaker or unorganised races of the world. Once these races gain
an elementary knowledge and decide that they are no more going to be exploited.
They will simply be satisfied with that they can provide themselves.
Mass-production, then, at least where the vital necessities are concerned, will
disappear.
When production and consumption both become localized, the temptation
to speed up production, indefinitely and at any price, disappears. All the
endless difficulties and problems that jour present-day economic system
presents, too, world then come to an end.
There could be no unnatural accumulation of hoards in the pockets of
the few, and want in the midst of plenty in regard to the rest.
'Then, you do not envisage mass-production as an ideal future of
India?
Oh yes, mass-production, certainly, but not based on force. After all,
the message of the spinning wheel is that. It is mass-production, but
mass-production in people's own homes. If you multiply individual production to
millions of times, would it not give you mass-production on a tremendous scale?
But I quite understand that your "mass-production" is a technical
term for production by the fewest possible number through the aid of highly
complicated machinery. I have said to myself that that is wrong. My machinery
must be of the most elementary type which I can put in the homes of the
millions.
'So, you are opposed to machinery, only because and when it
concentrates production and distribution in the hands of the few?'
You are right, I hate privilege and monopoly. Whatever cannot be
shared with the masses is taboo to me. That is all.
The Principle of Planning for India
Q. The Government has been introducing schemes of industrializing the
country for the maximum utilization of her raw materials, not of her abundant
and unused man-power which is left to (take care of itself as best as it can).
Can such schemes be considered Swadeshi?
Gandhiji remarked that the question had been well put. He did not
exactly know what the Government plan was. But he heartily endorsed toe
proposition that any plan which exploited the raw materials of a country and
neglected the potentially more powerful man-power was lopsided and could never
tend to establish human equality.
America was the most industrialized country in the world and yet it
had not banished poverty and degradation. That was because it neglected the
universal man-power and concentrated power in the hands of the few who amassed
fortunes at the expense of the many. The result was that its industrialization
had become a menace to its own poor and to the rest of the world.
If India was to escape such disaster, it had to imitate what was best
in America and the other Western countries and leave aside its attractive
looking but destructive economic policies. Therefore, real planning consisted
in the best utilization of the whole man-power of India and the distribution of
the raw products of India in her numerous villages instead of sending them
outside and rebuying finished articles at fabulous prices.
Decentralization and Nonviolence
I suggest that, if India is to evolve along non-violent lines, it will
have to decentralize many things. Centralization cannot be sustained and
defended without adequate force. Simple homes from which there is nothing to
take away require no policing; the palaces of the rich must have strong guards
to protect them against dacoity. So must huge factories. Rurally organized
India will run less risk of foreign invasion than urbanized India, will
equipped with military, naval and air forces.
Remember also that your nonviolence cannot operate effectively unless
you have faith in the spinning wheel. I would ask you to read Hind Swaraj with
my eyes and see therein the chapter on how to make India nonviolent. You cannot
build nonviolence on a factory civilization, but it can be built on
self-contained villages. Even if Hitler was so minded, he could not devastate
even hundred thousand nonviolent villages. He would himself become nonviolent
in the process. Rural economy as I have conceived it, eschews exploitation altogether,
and exploitation is the essence of violence. You have, therefore, to be
rural-minded before you can be nonviolent, and to be rural-minded you have to
have faith in the spinning wheel.
The end to be sought is human happiness combined with full mental and
moral growth. I use the adjective moral as synonymous with spiritual. This end
can be achieved under decentralization. Centralization as a system is
inconsistent with nonviolent structure of society.
Co-operative Effort
Q. Some women workers who earn part of their living by weaving mats
were advised by you the other day to work on co-operative principles. Bengal's
agriculture has been reduced to an uneconomic proposition through extreme
fragmentation of holdings. Would you advise farmers also to adopt co-operative
methods?
If so, how are they to effect this under the present system of
land-ownership? Should the State make the necessary changes in the law? If the
State is not ready, but the people so desire, in the law? If the State is not
ready, but the people so desire, how are they to work through their own
organizations to this end?
A. Replying to the first part of the question, Gandhiji said that he
had no doubt that the system of co-operation was far more necessary for the
agriculturists than for the mat-weavers. The land, as he maintained, belonged
to the State; therefore, it yielded the largest return when it was worked
co-operatively.
Le it be remembered that co-operation should be based on strict
non-violence. There was no such thing as success of violent co-operation.
Hitler was a forcible example of the latter. He also talked vainly of
co-operation which was forced upon the people and everyone knew where Germany
had been led as a result.
Gandhiji concluded by saying that it would be a sad thing if India
also tried to build up the new society based upon co-operation by means of
violence. Good brought about through force destroyed individuality. Only when
the change was effected through the persuasive power of non-violent
non-co-operation, i.e. love, could the foundation of individuality be preserved
and real, abiding progress be assured for the world.
Q. At East Keroa (in Noakhali) you advised peasants to work
co-operatively in their fields. Should thy pool together their land and divide the
crop in proportion to the area of the fields they held? Would you give us an
outline of the idea of how exactly they are to work in a cooperative manner?
A. Gandhiji said that the question was good and admitted of a simple
answer. His notion of co-operation was that the land would be held in
co-operation by the owners and tilled and cultivated also in co-operation. This
would cause a saving of labour, capital, tools etc. The owners would work in
co-operation and own capital, tools, animals, seeds etc. in co-operation.
Co-operative farming of his conception would change the face of the land and
banish poverty and idleness from their midst. All this was only possible if
people became friends of one another and as one family. When that happy event
took place there would be no ugly sore in the form of a communal problem.
Tanning
It is estimated that rupees nine crores worth of raw hide is annually
exported from India and that much of it is returned to her in the shape of
manufactured articles. This means not only a material, but also an
intellectual, drain. We miss the training we should receive in tanning and
preparing the innumerable articles of leather we need for daily use.
Tanning requires great technical skill. An army of chemists can find
scope for their inventive talent in this great industry. There are two ways of
developing it. One for the uplift of Harijans living in the villages and eking
out a bare sustenance living in filth and degradation and consigned to the
village ghetto, isolated and away from the village proper. This way means part
re-organization of villages and taking art, education, cleanliness, prosperity
and dignity to them. This means also the application of chemical talent to
village uplift. Tanning chemists have to discover improved methods of tanning.
The village chemist has to stoop to conquer. He has to learn and understand the
crude village tanning, which is still in existence but which is fast dying
owing to neglect, not to say want of support. But the crude method may not be
summarily scrapped, at least not before a sympathetic examination. It has
served well for centuries. It could not have done so, if it had no merit. The
only research I know in this direction is being carried on in Santiniketan, and
then it was started at the now defunct Ashram at Sabarmati. I have not been
able to keep myself in touch with the progress of the experiment at
Santiniketan. There is every prospect of its revival at the Harijan Ashram,
which the Sabarmati Ashram has now become. These experiments are mere drops in
the ocean of possible research.
Cow-preservation is an article of faith in Hinduism. No Harijan worth
his salt will kill cattle for food. But, having become untouchable, he has
learnt the evil habit of eating carrion. He will not kill a cow but will eat
with the greatest relish the flesh of a dead cow. It may be physiologically
harmless. But psychologically there is nothing, perhaps, so repulsive as
carrion-eating. And yet, when a dead cow is brought to a Harijan tanner's
house, it is a day of rejoicing for the whole household. Children dance round
the carcass, and as the animal is flayed, they take hold of bones or pieces of
flesh and throw them at one another. As a tanner, who is living at the Harijan
Ashram, describing the scenes at his own now forsaken home, tells me the whole
family is drunk with joy at the sight of the dead animal. I know how hard I
have found it working among Harijans to wean them from the soul-destroying
habit of eating carrion. Reformed tanning means the automatic disappearance of
carrion-eating.
Well, here is the use for high intelligence and the art of dissection.
Here is also a mighty step in the direction of cow-preservation. The cow must
die at the hands of the butcher, unless we learn the art of increasing her
capacity of milk-giving, unless we improve her stock and make her male progeny
more useful for the field and carrying burdens, unless we make scientific use
of all her excreta as manure, and unless, when she and hers die, we are
prepared to make the wisest use of her hide, bone, flesh, entrails, etc.
I am just now concerned only with the carcass. It is well to remember
here that the village tanner, thank God, has to deal only with the carcass, not
the slaughtered animal. He has no means of bringing the dead animal in a decent
way. He lifts it, drags it, and this injures the skin and reduces the value of
the hide. If the villagers and the public knew the priceless and noble service
the tanner renders, they will provide easy and simple methods of carrying it,
so as not to injure the skin at all.
The next process is flaying the animal. This requires great skill. I
am told that none, not even surgeons, do this work better or more expeditiously
than the village tanner does with his village knife. I have inquired of those
who should know. They have not been able to show me an improvement upon the
village tanner. This is not to say that there is none better. I merely give the
reader the benefit of my own very limited experience. The village tanner has no
use for the bone. He throws it away. Dogs hover round the carcass whilst it is
flayed, and take away some, if not all, of the bones. This is a dead loss to
the country. The bones, if powdered fine, apart from their other uses, make
valuable manure. What remains after the dogs have taken away their share is
transported to foreign countries and returns to us in the shape of handles,
buttons, etc.
The second way is urbanizing this great industry. There are several
tanneries in India doing this work. Their examination is outside the scope of
this article. This urbanization can do little good to the Harijans, much less
to the villages. It is a process of double drain from the villages.
Urbanization in India is slow but sure death for her villages and villagers.
Urbanization can never support ninety per cent of India's population, which is
living in her 7,00,000 villages. To re-remove from these villages tanning and
such other industries is to remove what little opportunity there still is for
making skilled use of the hand and the head. And when the village handicrafts
disappear, the villagers working only with their cattle on the field, with
idleness for six or four months in the year, must, in the words of Madhusudan
Das, be reduced to the level of the beast and be without proper nourishment,
either of the mind or the body, and, therefore, without joy and without hope.
Here is work for the cent per cent Swadeshi lover and scope for the
harnessing of technical skill to the solution of a great problem. The work
fells three apples with one throw. It serves the Harijans, it serves the
villagers, and it means honourable employment for the middle class
intelligentsia who are in search of employment. Add to this the fact that
intelligentsia have a proper opportunity of coming in direct touch with the
villagers.[3]
Compost Manure
The excreta of animals and human beings mixed with refuse can be
turned into golden manure, itself a valuable commodity. It increases the
productivity of the soil which receives it. Preparation of this manure is
itself a village industry. But this, like all village industries, cannot give
tangible results unless the crores of India co-operated in reviving them and
thus making India prosperous.[4]
Given the willing co-operation of the masses of India, this country
can not only drive out shortage of food, but can provide India with more than
enough. This organic manure ever enriches, never impoverishes the soil. The
daily waste, judiciously composted, returns to the soil in the form of golden
manure causing a saving of millions of rupees and increasing manifold, the
total yield of grains and pulses. In addition, the judicious use of waste keeps
the surroundings clean. And cleanliness is not only next to godliness, it
promotes health.[5]
Hand-made Paper
I was told that, if there were enough orders, the paper could be
supplied at the same cost as the mill-made article. I know that hand-made paper
can never supply the daily growing demand for paper. But lovers of the seven
hundred thousand villages and their handicrafts will always want to use
handmade paper, if it is easily procurable. Those who use hand-made paper know
that it has a charm of its own. Who does not know the famous Ahmedabad paper?
What mill-made paper can beat it in durability or polish?
The account-books of the old style are still made of that paper. But
it is probably a perishing industry like many such others. With a little
encouragement, it ought never to perish. If there was supervision, the
processes might be improved and the defects that are to be noticed with some of
this hand-made paper may be easily removed. The economic condition of the
numberless people engaged in these little known trades is well worth
investigating. They will surely allow themselves to be guided and advised and
feel thankful to those who would take interest in them.[6]
Machine Oil and Ghani Oil
Shri Jhaverbhai has also examined the cause of the decline of the
village ghani. The most potent cause is the inability of the oilman to command
a regular supply of seeds. The villages are practically denuded of seeds after
the season. The oilman has no money to store the seeds, much less to buy them
in the cities. Therefore he has disappeared or is fast disappearing. Lakhs of
ghanis are today lying idle causing a tremendous waste of the country's
resources. Surely it is the function of the State to resuscitate the existing
ghanis by conserving seeds in the places of their origin and making them
available to the village oilman at reasonable rates. The Government loses
nothing by giving this aid. It can be given, so Shri Jhaverbhai contends,
through co-operative societies or Panchayats. If this is done, Shri Jhaverbhai
is of opinion, based on research, that ghani oil can compete with the machine
product and villager can be spared the infliction of the adulterated oil he
gets today. It should be borne in mind that the only fat the villager gets,
when he gets any, is what the oils can give him. To ghee he is generally a
stranger.
He (Shri Jhaverbhai) has found out why this machine oil is at all
cheaper than the ghani oil. He gives three reasons, two of which are
unavoidable. They are capital and the ability of the machine to extract the
last drop of oil and that too in a shorter time than the ghani. These
advantages are neutralized by the commission the owner of this oil mill has to
pay to the middleman. But Shri Jhaverbhai cannot cope with the third reason,
adulteration, unless he also takes to it. This naturally he will not do. He
therefore suggests that adulteration should be dealt with the law. This can be
done by enforcing the Anti- Adulteration Act if there is one or by enacting it
by licensing oil mills.[7]
Bee-keeping
Bee-keeping seems to me to possess immense possibilities. Apart from
its village value, it may be cultivated as a hobby by moneyed young men and
women. They will add to the wealth of the country and produce the finest
health-giving sugar for themselves. If they are philanthropically inclined,
they can distribute it as health-giving food among sickly Harijan children.
There is no reason why it should be a luxury of the rich or an expensive
medicinal vehicle in the hands of the hakims and vaidyas. No doubt, my hope is
based on inferences drawn from meagre data. Experiments that may be made in
villages and in cities by young men and women should show whether honey can
become a common article of food or has to remain an uncommon article, which it
is today.[8]
Hand-pounding of Rice
In my writing on cent per cent Swadeshi, I have shown how some aspects
of it can be tackled immediately with benefit to the starving millions both
economically and hygienically. The richest in the land can share the benefit.
Thus if rice can be pounded in the villages after the old fashion, the wages
will fill the pockets of the rice-pounding sisters and the rice-eating millions
will get some sustenance from, the unpolished rice instead of pure starch which
the polished rice provides. Human greed, which takes no account of the health
or the wealth of the people who come under its heels, is responsible for the
hideous rice-mills one sees in all the rice-producing tracts. If public opinion
was strong, it will make rice-mills impossibility by simply insisting on
unpolished rice and appealing to the owners of rice-mills to stop a traffic
that undermines the health of a whole nation and robs the poor people of an
honest means of livelihood.[9]
I regard the existence of power wheels for the grinding of corn in
thousands of villages as the limit of our helplessness. I suppose India does
not produce all the engines or grinding machines.... The planting of such
machinery and engines on a large scale in villages is also a sign of greed. Is
it proper to fill one's pockets in this manner at the expense of the poor?
Every such machinery puts thousands of hand-chakkis out of work and takes away
employment from thousands of housewives and artisans who make these chakkis.
Moreover, the process is infective and will spread to every village industry.
The decay of the latter spells too the decay of art. If it meant replacement of
old crafts by new ones, one might not have much to say against it. But this is
not what is happening. In the thousands of villages where power machinery
exists, one misses the sweet music in the early morning of the grinders at
work.[10]
…… By M. K. Gandhi
[1] Harijan,
25-1-1935
[2] Harijan,
16-11-1934
[3] Harijan, 7-9-1934
[4] Delhi
Diary, pp. 270-71
[5] Harijan,
28-12-1947
[6]
Harijan, 14-9-1934
[7]
Harijan, 2-9-1939
[8] Harijan,
1-2-1935
[9] Harijan,
26-10-1934
[10] Harijan,
10-3-1946