The Unemployed

BY S. V. RAMAMURTI, I.C.S.¹

When we speak of the unemployed, the class that springs first to our mind is the unemployed among the English-educated people. During the nineteenth century, Europe underwent economic, political and social changes on a large scale. When England became responsible for the administration of India during the same century, it introduced European methods in Indian administration. English education was mainly an instrument for the application of such methods. The intellectual classes of India found that English education led them to lucrative employment. A stream of young men flowed from the old learning to the new. However it happened, the last Great War called halt to these developments. For the last two decades, the supply of educated men to cope with administrative needs has far exceeded the demand. This has happened not only in India but all over the world. For instance, the number of persons going in for higher education increased, in about two decades, two to three-fold in India and in the United States, while it increased six-fold in Japan. The causes which led to an increase in higher education and also to unemployment among persons so educated have been parallel in India and the world generally. But the effects have been more serious in India. English education has not only enabled the English to administer India according to their ways, it has also enabled Indians to seek a cultural fusion with the West. Vast store-houses of experience and knowledge which were accumulated through the millennium in India came into contact with the treasures of Classical Europe, and more often into clash with the vigorous growths since the Renaissance. Such a meeting, in the intimacy of an Empire growing into a Commonwealth, was full of promise for the evolution of world culture. But the unemployment among the English-educated is not only rendering such a meeting difficult, it is also producing a reaction against it.

There is another class of the unemployed about whom we have been hearing more and more in recent years–namely, the modern, industrial, urban workers. After the last war, industrial development in India proceeded at an increased pace. The phenomenon of periodic employment and unemployment, which is associated with large industries, has shown itself in India too. But the suffering among Indian factory workers is none the less real, and they rebel against it none the less violently. The security which the joint family system have the worker in his village ceases to be available as he settles down to his new employment. He finds it no longer possible to live simply and cheaply as he did in a village. The opportunities of towns give him new desires of enjoyment. Unemployment in towns is harder to bear than that in villages.

Next is the case of the unemployed among the industrial workers of the old type, sometimes urban but more often rural. The unemployment of the handloom-weaver is receiving special attention, because it is the one old-type industry which employs most people. But other artisans–spinners, blacksmiths, carpenters and so forth–are also suffering. The goods that they make are not so cheap as machine-made goods. The fashion for the goods that they make is passing away. The disintegration of the rural industrial life eats like canker into the village. The sustenance that agriculture derives from industry in slack seasons is removed. The mobility that a decentralized rural industry can give to the products of agriculture is lost. The channels for the flow of new ideas into the village are choked when the village artisans, through whom the old science and the old art flowed into the village, languish. The scope for the application of intelligence in the village to the resources of the village by the development of industries has vanished.

Next again are the unemployed among the rural agriculturists. They have had a long record of patient suffering and chronic under-employment. Each year is a crisis, when the season may or may not be favourable. Half the year, the agriculturist who can no longer take to the cottage industries which formerly flourished has no work to do. Yet all round the villages, new waves of thought and life are rising. The simplicity of the village, its contentment, its self-sufficiency, the structure of its life–all these are disturbed. The cultivator suffered from bad seasons, bad rulers, poor methods in the past. But the village built up safeguards against such evils. Such safeguards are now inoperative.

Last but not least come the followers of the old learning–the Pandits, the Vaidyans, the artists–whose wares are not fashionable and marketable among the new rich of India. This type of unemployment escapes attention because of the violence of the onrush of the new learning. Yet it is the most tragic. Here the very roots of Indian life, and not merely its leaves or branches, are drying up for lack of air and light and food. No one can expect India to efface the long centuries through which it searched, understood and experimented on life. We may hope that Europe will help to supplement, readjust, reorientate our life but not re-make it. Yet, with a prodigality of unwisdom, we are neglecting the creative sources of our life.

Here then is an array of five classes, each suffering from unemployment. On the one hand, we have the modern administrators and the modern artisans living in towns, worshipping science, seeking an enhanced standard of living, and insisting on the freedom of the individual. On the other hand, we have the old-world artisan, the cultivator following traditional methods, and the upholders of the old learning, living mainly in villages, following the practices of religion, living a simple, even bare, life and finding security in the joint family. They belong to two worlds, two ways of life with conflicting ideas and attitudes. If we can imagine India as made up on one or other of these two patterns of life, it is possible to have one standard of life all over the country. The resources of the country by way of employment can be spread evenly subject to such differences as the pattern permits. The people relatively to each other will be well employed, though compared with the nationals of another country, they may be under-employed. In some of the countries of Europe where one pattern of life is stamped on them by their Dictators, the lack of unemployment is relative to the population of the country itself and not to that of another country.

But such a simple solution is not feasible. Truth, like men, has two sides. It is the union of opposites that supports life. The problem in India cannot be solved by ignoring the conflict between the new and old ways of life, that leads to stagnation and unemployment.

As elsewhere, so in India, we have sought to apply palliatives to our problems of unemployment. Attempts are being made to reduce the numbers seeking higher education. But one feels that this is hardly wise, when there are so many problems awaiting the services of trained men. Attempts are made to divert educated men to fields where their education is not an asset. But one feels that educated men are not needed to become ryots and carpenters and weavers but to make ryots, carpenters and weavers better workers than they are. The unemployment of industrial workers is sought to be cured by better distribution of profits, by systems of insurance. These follow in the wake of the evil rather than prevent it. The meagre earnings of cultivators are sought to be raised by the introduction of better methods, by protective tariffs. The cultivator however finds it hard to fill his old body with a new mind, and tariffs sometimes cut both ways. Men with the old learning are still, in a dim way, prized by the masses to whom saints are more welcome than scientists. But their unemployment hardly receives attention among the part of the population who have taken to new ways. We are thus left with measures which relieve pain for a time or ignore parts of the evil. We mop up the floor, as well as we can, but leave the tap leaking. What we need is a radical diagnosis and a radical remedy.

For this purpose, let me try and give you a single picture of what a way of life means, We may represent life as having five axes–the economic, political, social, intellectual and spiritual. Each axis has two poles. The economic poles are capitalism and socialism. The political poles are democracy and dictatorship. The social poles are nationalism and internationalism. The intellectual poles are science and religion. The spiritual poles are force and non-violence. Life winds its way between these poles. A way of life or a world-order is a particular way of balancing these opposites. On such balance life depends for its harmony of structure and stability of motion. Life is an organism. All its axes are at basis interdependent. Any ill adjusted axis mars both the harmony and stability of the whole of life and has effects along all its axes. The radical cause of economic unemployment, as of other forms of life’s malaise, is to be found in the quality of the way of life. So too its radical remedy.

I suggest that in India we did seek and for some time maintain a way of life which was both harmonious and stable. Our way of life was based on a synthesis of opposites along each axis of life. We accepted both Capitalism and Socialism, but applied them to groups rather than the nation. The merchant classes were capitalist. So too the professional classes. The labouring classes were socialistic. Their ways of economic life needed the joint family, the joint village, in each of which the relations were socialistic. We had a dictatorship of principles, rather than of men; a democracy of growth, rather than of action. We had nationalism as our garb but internationalism and humanism as our mind. We followed science in our material life, but religion governed the spirit of our life. Non-violence was master, but force was its servant.

In such a way of life, there was a balanced provision for activity and growth. But times change, and the stability that was suited to one time is not suited to another. The world is at a new level. The isolation of India is at an end. Our neighbours in the world are living differently. We need a new balance but, I suggest, not a new principle for such balance. It is here that we need creative minds. The creative minds who can re-mould India need to be of the spirit and body of India. They need to have their roots deep down into the history of India. Yet they need to be men with vision enough to see all knowledge, all life, all energy as of the one reality. India is not a stranger to such large vision. The radical cure for unemployment, whether in India or elsewhere, is a new harmony and stability of life. In seeking such a life, India can help both itself and the world.

1 By Courtesy of the All-India Radio.