Impersonal Wealth and Spiritual Regeneration of Social Capital |
By Ananta
Kumar Giri
The Problem
The Social responsibility of
business has been primarily thought of in the needy people support given by
business people and the affluent to the needy people directly or to various
charitable organizations which work for the poor. The affluent and the leader
was of business usually write cheque for the cause which they consider
worthwhile and for them this writing of a cheque is an adequate demonstration of
their commitment and enough for the amelioration of suffering and eradication of
poverty. When after all the money dumped in this way into various welfare
activities, nothing much difference takes places in the lives of the poor, the
affluent benefactors develop a disdain towards the poor holding them responsible
for their present predicament. They become anti-poor and anti-welfare as is the
case with the advanced industrial societies in Europe and North America an
attitude and social condition which has become globalize in the last two
decades. This is also leading to the erection of walls of need to create
relationship of trust between the affluent and the poor and to realize that the
root of the problem has been proceeding with just giving money to the poor or
writing a cheque as a mode of embodiment of one’s social responsibility. If the
affluent and the business leaders were part of activities in which they had
shared time and labour with the poor, then they would have been able to
establish embodied relationship and solidarity with the poor and some concrete
steps could have been taken to overcome the distance between the rich and the
poor. But this has not happened either in the realm of the welfare state or with
civil society. Both the state institutions and civil society organizations have
proceeded with giving and collecting money as a primary mode of demonstrating
their commitment and they have not created a collective and generative grounds
where the poor and the rich can take part in activities such as building houses,
constructing roads, digging ponds, cultivating orchards, and various other
productive activities which create common goods. Such embodied sharing of time
and labour could also have replenished the declining social capital in these
societies and generated new social capital.
In this context, there is a
need to think of new modes of embodiment of responsibility on the part of the
affluent and the poor. In this new mode of engagement, responsibility is
characterized by mutual responsibility and self-responsibility. Both the
affluent and the poor are responsible to each other for their enrichment,
overcoming of life incapacitating obstacles, amelioration of suffering,
realization of happiness, and the creation of a good society. Anthony Giddens
provides us such a mode of engagement in his agenda of "Positive welfare" in
which welfare would be directed to fostering the auto telic self. The auto telic
self is one with an inner confidence which comes from self-respect and one where
a sense of ontological security, originating in basic trust, allows for the
positive appreciation of social difference. It refers to a person able to
translate potential threats into rewarding challenges someone who is able to
turn entropy into a consistent flow of experience."
Positive welfare is not
confined to improving the life of the poor or the underprivileged alone: it also
considers its task to create opportunities for self-enrichment for the affluent
as well. Instead of being obsessed with distributive equality between the rich
and the poor, now there is a need to strive for generative equality between
them, an equality which emerges out of mutual collaboration between the affluent
and the poor in building collective foundations of a good life and in overcoming
"collective bads" Equalization here is a primarily understood in terms of
equalization of a quest for a meaningful life and relationship. But for
participating in this mutual collaboration, the participants have to overcome
their superiority and inferiority complex, and have to develop a new
relationship to wealth. If the rich do not learn to relate to their wealth in an
impersonal and non-possessive way and utilize it as a trust for the common good,
then their ability to participate in this desired mutual collaboration would be
limited. But schemes of generative well-being and equality in Giddens scheme of
things do not have any scheme for generating an attitude of and relationship of
non-possession vis-a vis use of wealth among the participants. We find such a
striving in the socio spiritual movement of Swadyaya in contemporary India. A
distinctive aspect of the vision and experiments of Swadhyaya is generation of
impersonal wealth or apourasheya laxmi in the many socio economic experiments or
prayogas in which the rich and the poor work together with the devotional
sharing of time and labour and the wealth which arises out of such projects
belongs to none but God. The generation of impersonal wealth enables the
participants to use and relate to wealth in anon-possessive and non-proprietary
way and one of the primary objectives of this research project is to bring this
vision experiment of impersonal wealth into dialogue with contemporary schemes
of reconstruction such as Giddens positive welfare and Putnam's trust and social
capital.
Swadhyaya
Swadhyaya is a socio spiritual
initiative in self development and social transformation in a contemporary India
which is active in many villages in the state of Gujarat and Maharashtra and in
the last twenty years has the spread to other parts of India as well as also to
other countries in Europe and North America, Africa and the Middle East. In
Swadhyaya both the rich and the poor are encourages to participate in asset of
activities which is meant to bring "man close to man." Overcoming of distance is
considered, the most time, a sharing which creates divine relationship among
them. Bhaktipheri is the foundational prayoga or experiment of Swadhyaya where
the participants are encouraged to go to other villages with their "time,
ticket, and tiffin" and spend time ranging from one to three days.
In Swadhyaya, the bhaktipheris
have not degenerated into picnics, nor have they been confined to burden
relieving tours because of their spiritual foundation. Continued meetings
between those who have knowledge and wealth and those who do not have become the
starting point of a critical reflection on the existing life and building
collective foundation of welfare and well-being. This begins with a series of
experiments to generate wealth in the community in order to provide support to
the needy. Among the farmers, this initiative is called Yogeswara Krishi o
Lord's farming. The Swadhyayees of a village take a piece of land on lease and
cultivate it. They cultivate it thorough their own labour. But their conception
of labour is am ore enriched one than that of voluntarism as there still
continues to be a lot of paternalism in the theory and practice of voluntary
labour. Swadhyayees consider their work in community farming as an instance of
shramabhakti, devotion of labour. They consider work as worship and themselves
not as volunteers but as pujaris, as worshippers. Whatever is the produce from
collective farming is considered as apoureshaya laxmi or impersonal wealth by
the Swadhyaees. Portion of this wealth stays at the village level of e providing
support to the needy, the remainder goes to a higher level of coordination to
create a safety net for the needy with am much broader canvas. Similar is also
the case in case of the community fishing boat among the fishermen which is
called matsyagandha. This is manned buy the sharma bhakt of the fishermen in the
community.
Swaadhyaya applies a similar
approach to creating institutions of collective well-being in case of different
communities. Among the diamond cutters it has an experiment called Hira Mandir
or the temple of Diamond which works through the same principle of generating
impersonal wealth through shrambhakti. Among the businessmen it has an
experiment called Parivara Stores. The doctors of a locality come together and
run a hospital through the same principle of bhakti.
While the above are community
or group specific programmes, there are also many programmes which bring
different communities together. One is the brukhamandir prayoga or the
experiment of the tree temple. In the tree temple, people from surrounding
villages and towns, from different social and professional backgrounds farmers,
fishermen, and doctors come and take care of the community garden. They worship
plants and trees in this garden as gods. Shri Darshana is another experiment in
agriculture which works at a supra-village level where villagers from
surrounding twenty or more villages come and work together. All these
experiments provide Swadhyayees opportunities to work selflessly for the
generation of impersonal wealth and the creation of the common good. Swaadhyaya
argues that as individuals work on their own firms and professions and generate
profit for themselves, there must be also such platform of creativity for the
common good.
For its welfare activities,
Swaadhyaya does not accept either any grant from the State or any donation from
the rich. Shrambhakti or devotional labour, where time and labour are not sold
through the media of money and market, is the source of impersonal wealth here.
The vision and generation of impersonal wealth has a spiritual foundation in
Swaadhyaya. God is a partner in one's time and labour. Hence the wealth
generated does not solely belong to the actor, God has a share in these wealth
too. this share of God must be taken out for doing God's work which means
working for creating better conditions of material and spiritual life for God's
children. Swaadhyaya believes in the dictum of Manu Samhita, namely that when
one is one is 18, one should keep 8th part of one's income for one's use and one
part ought to be taken out as God's share for development in God's work and when
one is 81, 8th part of one's income must be utilized for God's work, and one
part for one's own use. Pandurang Shastri Athavale, the leader of Swaadhyaya,
has a commentary on ShriSutam, a series of prayers offered to Goddess Laxmi, the
Goddess of wealth, in which he develops a spiritual approach to wealth. This
spiritual approach to wealth where one is required to be related to wealth in
anon-possessive, non-proprietary, and impersonal way, one has a potential to
overcome the limitations of private capital in the creation of a good society, a
tasks which has remained unfinished in the agenda of modernity. Marxian
socialism and abolition of private property was a step in this direction but it
did not succeed. A spiritual relationship with wealth accompanied by a project
of radial democracy in society where social institutions are governed by
Rawlsian principles of justice and Habermasian spirit of moral argumentation may
provide us a way out of the continued problem of rapacious private capital as a
source of obstacle to realization of full human potential and many distortions
and exploitations in society.
Trust and social capital are
two important constitutions of the discourse of social and economic
reconstruction at present. They also point to new ways of manifesting social
responsibility on the part of business communities and political leaders. Both
these can be enriched by a dialogue with the vision and experiments of
Swaadhyaya, namely the experiments of Bhaktipheri and different prayogas of
generation of impersonal wealth.
The contemporary discourse of
social capital points to a relational view of economy and society. For James S.
Coleman, “Unlike other forms of capital, social inheres in the structure of
relations between actors and among actors.” Voluntaru cooperation and trust are
important elements of social capital. For Robert D. Putnam, “social networks
allow trust to become transitive and spread.. “ Furthermore, “Most forms of
social capital .are more resources’ that is, resource whose supply increases
rather than decreases through use and which become depleted if not a public
good, unlike conventional capital, which is ordinarily a private good.”
Social capital is neither a
static concept nor a state of existence; it is an aspect of creative production
and generation in society. As Putnam argues; “Social capital, unlike other forms
of capital, must often be produced as a by-product of other social activities.”
But this generation of social capital is related to values that participants
have. As Norman Uphoff argues: “Social capital arises from the human activity to
think and act generously and phenomena associated with social capital.” But the
link between social capital and values, especially spiritual values, has not
received much attention in the contemporary discourse and ethnography of the
vision and experiment of Swaadhyaya can make this link much clearer.
In the contemporary discourse,
social capital is primarily thought of in rational terms; rationality, social
rationality, is the foundation of social capital. Coleman himself tells us that
introduction of the concept of social capital into social theory is “part of a
theoretical strategy that involves the paradigm of rational action. But
rationality alone is not enough in tacking the problem of individualism,
atomism, and the tendency to free ride in contemporary societies and a dialogue
with Swaadhyaya can help us to understand the significance of spirituality,
namely practical spirituality, in the generation and renewal of social capital.
The limits of contemporary
discourse and its need for a spiritual supplement and trasmulation become clear
when we deal with the issue of trust. There is an integral link between trust
and social capital. But as Ronald Dore quite rightly argues,” trust as a
condition for high quality of life is not what most of the academic writing
about trust is about. It is mostly about economic efficiency; how more trust can
make your organization more efficient and make bigger profits; how, according to
Fukuyama, different cultural tradition and institutions set-ups, generating
different trust levels, affect the competitiveness of nations. Trust is now
primarily seen from the vantage point of rational choice strategy but Dore
clearly articulates the challenge before us in this field thus: “I would rather
wish public policy were framed by people who believe that the density of trust
relationships is a public good worth maintaining in its own right, than by
people who think that maintaining trust relationships might be a useful way of
solving social conflicts or enhancing economic efficiency.” But in Swaadhyaya
trust is a value itself, a value which is generated and strengthened in networks
of divine relationships and different activities of embodied sharing and labour
such as a vision can transform the contemporary articulation of trust as an
adjunct to rational calculation and profit maximization. Source: Gandhi Marg, Vol.-24, No. 2, July-September, 2002 |