Key Metrics

Understanding: THE WORLD THEN and NOW

Per Capita GDP (in 1990 US $)

Swadeshi in Trade Policies is a call for Protectionism, a declaration of inability to innovate and face competition. A call arising out of the mistaken belief that life was great in the past when it is thought that every village was self-sufficient and people lived in perfect harmony with Nature and with their neighbours. A lack of understanding that, as you will never have enough time or resources or skills to make everything you need for yourself, even if you are prepared to make do with less than the best, you will be compelled to choose what to do without and live a life lacking in most of what are today seen as necessities.

Work-life balance, Quality of Life, and the even more litany of such phrases, that all sound nice, but are not really that important for your sense of achievement and happiness. Your ability to execute your task in the best way you can and, get a sense of satisfaction and joy from doing so, and also from the recognition and appreciation of your colleagues, Bosses and Customers. All leading to appreciation of your friends and pride of your family, is a better measure of your happiness. This calls for prioritizing your job and executing it with a sense of purpose and commitment, then just logging in the hours. Your work should be what you enjoy doing, not just drudgery.

It is important that you will also need to spend time with your family, but always remember that it is not the quantity of time but the quality of time that you spend with them, and the memories of that time, that counts and are valued. (See- Austerity)

To believe that living in such constrained circumstances is the road to happiness is wrong. To keep pointing out that Gandhi Ji, lived such a life and to quote him endlessly on the prosperity to be attained out of the self-sufficiency of a village is also, wrong. All that Gandhi Ji really pressed for was for the power of local decision making to be given to the Gram Sabha.

G.D.Birla was supposed to have said that ‘to keep Gandhi Ji living his seemingly simple life cost tens of thousands of unseen rupees!’ Clearly Gandhi Ji lived an austere life, but it was others who spent the time and money to allow him to live like that and accord him the Time to lead the Country in its struggle for Freedom.

Gandhi Ji was seen as a great soul with such compassion and understanding that brought the Nation together to follow him – but his view of economics was more idealistic than realistic.

The obvious corollary to such a belief in self-sufficiency is that though exports are deemed good, imports are deemed bad.

Though how one expects to have one, without the other, is difficult to understand. For if the Country you seek to export to, cannot sell to you what it makes, then obviously they will not have your currency to use to buy from you what you seek to sell to them. So, a NO imports regime is effectively a NO exports regime too.

In fact, such beliefs in self-sufficiency are very fallacious and all positions derived there from are erroneous. What is self-sufficiency and how small is the unit of measure? Is it a Country, a State, a District, a Tehsil, a Village, a family or only an individual? Are we to meet all our needs only with what we each can make or grow for ourselves? Is such an option really geared to best meet our needs with the best of choices? Comparison between the North and South Koreas, or the erstwhile East and West Germanys or the other erstwhile Communist Bloc Countries with other market economy countries, clearly show the advantages of an open market-based economy. We need to think Global; trade what we do best for what others across the world do best, so that we can all get the best of the possible.

An understanding of history and a grasp of how it would have been in pre-history tells us that trade and specialization were evident and effective even in ‘Stone Age’ times and even earlier and ofcourse, even more so in the years from then to now.

“If prosperity is exchange and specialization – more like the multiplication of labour than the division of labour – then when and how did that habit begin.” – Matt Ridley

As Matt Ridley writes in ‘The Rational Optimist’ – The 5000-year-old ‘Iceman’ ‘Otzi’, found in the Italian Alps some years ago was wearing clothing and was equipped with weapons and tools which very obviously could not all have been made by him, as the raw materials for many of them came from disparate sources long distances away from each other. Actually, evidence of long-distance trading of the right type of stone for weapons and knives, of shells, of red -ochre and other pigments for decoration and body painting, was widespread even from tens of thousands of years before the time of the Iceman.

There is no known human tribe, however isolated, that does not trade. It is curious that in all the apes it is the females who go out from their own group into other groups for mating (in the monkeys, it is the male who leaves).

Thus, it is the females, who retain more trusting relationships with their erstwhile groups and thus are more inclined to make the first overtures to others. Trust starts with relatives and only then gets extended to strangers. Hence, in many cultures it was the women who traded, who were taught to calculate and account from an early age. Men were more involved in raids, wars, explorations or long trade journeys. It is so in many cultures even today (Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and many others).

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