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A book titled “Development as Swaraj: Towards a Sustainable and Equitable Future” was released in the city recently and underlines the imperatives of political decentralisation and economic self-sufficiency in establishing an exploitation-free social order.
The author Sumanas Koulagi whose PhD from the University of Success, UK was on a similar theme, spoke about how the book evolved and was an outcome of a decade long quest for answers to the questions on means to reduce disparity in society, to conserve wilderness and even on the metaphysical questions on the meaning or purpose of the impermanent life.
The book release held at the Ideal Jawa Rotary School had panelists A.R. Vasavi, a social anthropolgist, Deepak Malghan, ecological economist, IIMB, and M.S. Sriram, centre for Public Policy, IIMB who threw light on the issues grappled by the author while dealing with the subject.
Dr. Vasavi said there are potential solutions for civilisational crises in Mahatma Gandhi’s conception of swaraj and it has been demonstrated well in Sumanas’s book. Dr. Vasavi pointed out that the presentation of khadi processing as a symbol and key to a form of swaraj as discussed in the book, is based on a critique of State-based khadi industries, which, it was mentioned, were marked by bureaucracies and rampant corruption, and an elaboration of the possibility of khadi as a co-operative enterprise. Here Sumanas must be credited with enhancing the work of the Janapada Khadi unit in Melukote which now functions as a cooperative, said Dr. Vasavi.
Another panelist, Dr. M.S. Sriram, economist and literary personality said that globalisation was creating havoc economies of scale have become the golden rule to survive in the global market and automation is being considered as inevitable to maintain the international standards.
Therefore, physical labour is being seen as backward and undignified resulting in different forms of inequalities which are increasing in the society and the book effectively discusses the ways to tackle them, he added.
Dr. Deepak Malghan, also from IIMB stated that conception of efficiency is driving the modern world and it is one of the root causes for the current development paradigm of mass production, mass consumption, and mass destruction.
He outlined the close nexus between the notion of efficiency and colonial legacy and the need to replace efficiency by sufficiency to sustain on this planet. He said that, Sumanas’s book makes an important contribution towards this transition besides being relevant for the times as it argues for an exploitation-free world guided by the principles of swaraj.
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