New Delhi: The 2008 economic recession was not just a downturn but it also made us revisit much of the moral basis of modern market capitalism, said entrepreneur and author Jaithirth “Jerry” Rao.
In a conversation with ThePrint’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta and author Gurcharan Das on ‘Off The Cuff’ Friday, Rao added that the doctrine of trusteeship (rich holding their wealth as trustees) in relation to Mahatma Gandhi’s economic ideology has become more relevant today in light of the recession.
“Words like predatory and greedy became the way to describe a lot of behaviour [post-2008] and the very foundations of market capitalism have been questioned, and there needs to be a new opening up on that,” Rao said, elaborating that many of the responses to modern day capitalism have been too “technocratic”.
Rao’s new book Economist Gandhi: The Roots and The Relevance of The Political Economy of The Mahatma, examines Gandhi’s ideas on economics and their relevance today.
The author argued that Gandhi was not anti-capitalism and was heavily influenced by the Biblical Gospels, among others.
Gurcharan Das also concurred with Rao on the importance of Gandhi’s economic ideology in contemporary discourse.
“After 2008 and the inequality phenomena [as stated by French economist Thomas Piketty], market capitalism is on the defensive and in a way rightly so, as the needle had gone too far and now we are swinging back. I hope we don’t swing too far back to the licence raj,” Das added.
Also read: World-class Gandhi vs frugal saint — the battle at the heart of Sabarmati Ashram’s makeover
Gandhi and trusteeship
Much of the ‘Off the Cuff’ conversation revolved around Gandhi’s views on trusteeship. Rao noted that Gandhi did not advocate trusteeship from a societal perspective but from that of a rich person and he was a huge critic of leaving behind large amounts of money as inheritance for children.
“[Gandhi] has a way of trying to say that creation of wealth, accumulation of wealth is good, but how you spend it is important because wealth is instrumental. It has to be spent wisely and giving a large portion of it to your children, according to Gandhi, is not very wise,” Rao said.
Rao also stated that Gandhi maintained a close relationship with Quakers, a set of Protestant Christian denominations in Britain, who also had “extremely negative connotations associated with inherited wealth”.
“When [Gandhi] went to the roundtable conference in London, his first public speech was at a Quaker friend’s house,” Rao added.
On Gandhi and Gospels
In response to a viewer question on Mahatma Gandhi’s 1916 Allahabad speech and its role as a “distillation of the Gospels”, Rao cited the work of another Gandhi historian, Anthony Parel, and said that Gandhi had quoted extensively from A.R. Wallace, William Shakespeare and the Gospels in the speech.
“The basic creed that economists had adopted was that religion and economics were separate things. ‘If you want to be successful in commerce, you shouldn’t worry about religious matters’. Gandhi attacks that [creed] head on,” Rao said.
He added that Gandhi methodically debunked each aspect of that creed, from the “morally degrading” nature of “grinding populism” to Gandhi’s view of Jesus Christ as “the greatest economist of his age”.
Also read: Mahatma Gandhi’s glasses found in UK auctioneer’s letterbox, could fetch over Rs 14 lakh