KARMA OF ECONOMICS OR KARMANOMICS !

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KARMA OF ECONOMICS or KARMANOMICS!

Karma- three types

Theory of Karma is basic to all Indian religions which share the idea of Dharma too- Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism. At one level it simply means that what we sow, we reap: as they say in Hindi, 'jo hai karta, wohi bharta'. So we create our own destiny. And karma here includes thoughts, words and actions.

Birth is due to Karma. It is Karma which accounts for all the differences  we observe in the world. That one is born in a particular place, time, society and culture, religion and language, and to particular parents, is no accident. 

Karma is classified into three types. Over many births- indeed countless births- we have accumulated lot of karma, good and bad. They are like the mountain. This is called "Sanchita" karma.

 The good and the bad do not cancel each other out, but have to be faced separately!  No one can exhaust all of it in one or even in a few births. So, God  kindly assigns a small portion of both the good and the bad ones  to each birth, such that it can be borne in a lifetime. So, we have a mix of pleasure and pain, joys and sorrows, highs and lows. As the celluloid poet Rajendra Krishan wrote: " Wah re Malik, sukh aur dukh ki khub banayi  jodi". What we bring in each lifetime, what we work out in each lifetime, what causes each birth is termed "Prarabdha". It is likened to a released arrow- once released, its direction cannot be changed!

But in the course of life, in the very process of living, we are performing and creating more karma! The situations we face are due to karma,but how we face and meet them, how we react to them determine our future karma!  When we return violence for violence, we are creating karma! That is why the great Buddha said: hatred ceases only by love, not by hatred! This is the eternal law! So the karma we are creating now is called "Aagaami".

So the eternal wheel of karma runs! And there is no respite from  the cycles of birth and death, till the  stock of karma is exhausted.

Karmanomics!

A little thought will show that the same principle applies to economics! Each country, and  geographic region within each is endowed with some natural features, which can be taken as both its strengths and weaknesses or limitations. An island, a mountainous region, a country with large arid or desert regions- each faces a sort of limitation. But over millennia, people have learned to live with and overcome all sorts of limitations. And some converted the limitations into opportunities - as when England, a small island became a naval power and created the largest world empire, or when Japan, another group of volcanic islands became a world economic power. Compared to these, the US is nothing but a big joke!  As an economic power, It is a product of two world wars and the Cold War.

Perhaps, the greatest example of a people creating history overcoming their natural limitations is ancient Greece.Greece was not one nation in the modern sense of the term- it was a group of islands and cities  on the coast spread out over a vast area- there was never a big kingdom or empire for long, as in the case of Rome. As a modern scholar writes in a recent book:

the ancient Greeks spanning two thousand years from about 1600 BC to AD 400. They lived in thousands of different villages, towns, and cities, from Spain to India, from the freezing river Don in the northern corner of the Black Sea to remote upland tributaries of the Nile. They were culturally elastic, for they  often freely intermarried with other people; they had no sense of an ethnic inequality that was biologically determined, since the concept of distinct "races" had not been invented. They tolerated and even imported foreign gods. What united them was never geopolitics,either. With the arguable exception of the short-lived  Macedonian Empire in the later fourth century BC, there never was a recognizable state run by independent Greek speakers, centered in and including what we now know as Greece, until after the Greek War of Independence in the early nineteenth century. What the ancient Greeks shared was their polysyllabic and flexible language, which still survives today, in similar form, despite centuries of serial occupations of Greek-speaking regions by Romans, Ottomans, Venetians, and others. The stamina of this language, by the mid-eighth century BC, was underpinned by the universal Greek familiarity with certain poems composed in it, especially those of Homer and Hesiod. The major gods celebrated in these poems were taken by the ancient Greeks wherever they settled, and worshipped in sanctuaries with sacrifices.

  Edith Hall,  Introducing the Ancient Greeks (preface) . The Bodley Head, London, 2015. 

So, nations create their karma in the ways they organise their economy, though initially it might be a "given".

Live within means, and exchange sensibly

Most countries of the world lived within their means, with all given limitations but used trade and exchange to buy their essentials with  their surpluses. But when greed overcame strict need, and countries started trading for profit, all trouble arose.  Countries could reap profits in the short term, but over long periods, this is bound to result in disaster.

Japan is an example of a country without much of natural endowments by way of minerals, yet Japan advanced industrially by importing its requirements and developing its technology. But since the domestic market was not adequate to sustain these operations for long, they had to seek foreign markets for exports. Fortunately, the development of their consumer electronic  industry resulted in some innovations like the 2-in 1 radio-tape recorder, or the CD and they enjoyed a virtual monopoly for a time. But further technology has rendered them obsolete. The oil-price shock of the 70s gave them the chance to develop  the 'fuel-efficient' automobile and again they enjoyed a lead. But here too other nations have caught up. But the cost of such prosperity has been very high: high incomes have pushed up the cost of living, and even rented accommodation is unaffordable for many Japanese youngsters, who have to delay their marriages because accommodation is not available! And what can Japan do with all their current income, which they cannot invest at home? So, their industries seek to locate outside Japan. Korea, Vietnam and others are more or less similarly placed- with rather small domestic populations (ie limited local markets) and their industries can be sustained only by exports!  China is huge, but modern technology is such that it cannot employ all the available labour if it is to meet only its domestic requirements, and  China too survives by exports. But now,both Japan and China are slowing down.The lesson is, most economic advantages derived out of international trade conducted for the sake of mere profit are transitory. The only basis and true justification for enduring international trade is genuine need. We have to obtain what we lack by exchanging what we have or can make in excess of our own requirements. All else will end up hurting some one, including ourselves. And it certainly damages the environment.

When a country alters its basic economic structure, it is creating a future which is unpredictable. The US was a huge agricultural economy till about the first decade of the 20th Century. The two world wars changed its complexion; it became an industrial economy; the Cold War propelled it further into a  military power. Just one piece of statistics is revealing: In 1870, 70-80% of the population was employed in agriculture. In 2008, less than 2% of the people were directly employed in agriculture! But due to fast changing developments  in technology , employment in industry is falling! Look at these figures:

(Two largest sources of employment in the US are wholesale and retail trade).

For a contrast , look at India:

By Tracy Hunter (Own Work) CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons via wikimedia commons.
 But if you look at the figures of contribution to GDP, this is what it is:

Source: www,slideshare.net/ammardalvi

The percentage of population employed in agriculture is not even mentioned in the case of US, in the statistics provided by the Bureau of Labour Statistics! It is because, it employs less than 2%, even though agricultural produce is a major US export! American agriculture is almost totally mechanised. And the farms are huge in size- the  mean size is about 400 acres. Contrast this with India, where 53% of the people depend on agriculture for employment, and most of them are small and marginal. What would happen here if our agriculture too is mechanised, as many modernisers want!

Countries are different

To go merely by the figures of contribution to GDP is totally misleading, when we have to deal with the big issue of employment, in a country with a seething population of 120 crores, and still growing. 

A  random selection of 10 countries on the basis of GDP-PPP
By Aeroid (Own work) CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons via wikimediacommons.

Economic comparisons between different countries  are not sensible.Each country is differently situated and does not lend to easy or meaningful comparison. The US employs less than 2% of the population in agriculture, compared to 53% in India. Does that mean the US is more efficient or better? Most Indians have a feeling that industry is superior to agriculture, just as they feel engineering is better than studying humanities or social sciences. This is a form of popular superstition, as agriculture too is an industry!

 But what is the logic adopted? Indian education is job-oriented and the prospect of immediate employment and good remuneration prompts the selection of the subject. For ten years, there was a mad rush for IT,but in the last two years the market has cooled, and in many colleges seats have remained unfilled. Lakhs of teachers' posts remained unfilled in the country and if that is taken up in earnest, humanities and social sciences will get immediate boost, because most teachers require those skills, not engineering. How the economy shapes depends on how  and how well it is managed, not only on what it is to begin with.

Our solutions to problems create more problems!

The way we tackle a problem often creates more serious problems in the future. The govt planned for the orderly growth of Bangalore in the 40s and 50s through the creation of statutory bodies. They formed new layouts, with necessary   infrastructure, water supply, sewage disposal etc. before sites were allotted. But in the late 70s, due to political greed, the system broke down. Layouts were formed in a hurry, even roads were not provided, and there was no official water supply, but sites were allotted and people were forced to take up construction. Private lay outs also proliferated, which did not get official water supply. Bore wells became the main source of water.  The whole water table has gone down, and in many areas the bore wells do not yield water or the water is polluted.  The problem is compounded by allowing high rise buildings everywhere. This is the case in almost all urban areas in India. We have only managed to intensify the problem. This is just one example. 

Both these pictures from MailOnline India.
5 March, 2013.
This is the state of India's Capital!

The urbanised, English educated Indian has his scale of values. He would rank the services, industries and agriculture as his order of importance. Today, both in his opinion and in the view of the general public, IT sector occupies the top position, always except the higher ranks of the bureaucracy. They consider the literate urban worker to be superior to the farm hand, just as they rate an English educated person as superior to one merely knowing the native languages. However, this is based on a narrow view. Writing in 1776, Adam Smith compared the urban industrial worker and the farm hand and the found the latter superior:

....branches of country labour require much more skill and experience than the greater part of mechanick trades. The man who works upon brass and iron, works with instruments and upon materials of which the temper is always the same, or very nearly the same. But the man who ploughs the ground with a team of horses or oxen works with instruments of which the health, strength, and temper are very different  upon different occasions. The condition of the materials which he works upon too is as variable as that of the instruments he works with, and both require to be managed  with much judgment and discretion. The common ploughman, though generally regarded as the pattern of stupidity and ignorance, is seldom defective in this judgment and discretion. He is less accustomed, indeed, to social intercourse than the mechanick who lives in a town. His voice and language are more uncouth and more difficult to be understood  by those who are not used to them. His understanding, however, being used to consider a greater variety of objects, is generally much superior to that of the other, whose whole attention from morning till night is commonly occupied in performing one or two very simple operations. How much the lower ranks of people in the country are really superior to those of the town, is well known to every man whom either business or curiosity has led to converse with both. In  China and Indostan  accordingly  both the rank and wages of the country labourer are said to be superior to those of the greater part of the artificers and manufacturers. They would probably be so every where, if corporation laws and the corporation spirit did not prevent it.

The Wealth of Nations, Book I,x.

The Ploughman! from: https://endlesslightandlove.files.wordpress.com

We only have to think of the modern 'techie' , instead of the old mechanick that Smith spoke of in his day! How limited is his bundle of knowledge, confined to standard packages on a standardised system of standardised equipment, procedures, products and practices! Yet the urban culture considers him to be superior! Smith says here that this superiority is due not to merit but urban manipulation (corporation laws and spirit!).  And it is revealing to know that in Smith's day- in the 18th century- the agricultural worker in India (Indostan) was ranked superior to the town worker! Yet, in the 21st century, the agriculturist is led to commit suicide by the atrocious policies of the urban dominated, urban oriented politician and bureaucracy.

Indian ploughing-as it used to be! Now, it is getting mechanised!
Picture credit: www.thevillage.website.



The above view of Smith was no isolated thought. Ten years earlier, in 1766, he had said:

There are some inconveniences, however, arsing from a commercial spirit. The first we shall mention is that it confines the views of man. Where the division of labour is brought to perfection, every man has only a simple operation to perform. To this his whole attention is confined, and few ideas pass in his mind but what have an immediate connection with it. When the mind is employed about a variety of objects it is some how expanded and enlarged, and on this account a country artist is generally acknowledged to have a range of thoughts much above a city one."

(Lectures on Jurisprudence, 328)

Nor was this an unusual view. It was shared  by the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers. Adam Ferguson wrote in his 'History of Civil Society' :

Many mechanical arts, indeed require no capacity; they succeed best under a total suppression of sentiment and reason; and ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition.

Prof.Adam Ferguson, 1723-1816  Wikimedia commons.

Adam Ferguson also said:

Manufactures accordingly prosper most where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may, without any great effort of imagination, be considered as an engine, the parts of which are men.

Well, did this inspire Charlie Chaplin?

This is indeed very well said. 'Educated' Indians share many superstitions. One is that English  education somehow makes one more intelligent.  Another is that industry is superior to agriculture. A third is that GDP really measures economic well being. A fourth is that  countries can be compared on the basis of their GDP.And perhaps, the top superstition is that our economic problems can be solved by economists, or politicians  or bureaucrats, or by a combination of all of them, even with the addition of scientists. Every modern country if full of all these categories of idlers, and yet no country is free from economic problems. It is Karmanomics which prevails!