By Madhusree Chatterjee, IANS,
New Delhi : Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy of Hind Swaraj can be best understood while trying to find solutions to problems that confront the Indian market, says veteran columnist and Mumbai-based activist-author Rajni Bakshi.
Bakshi’s book “Bapu Kuti”, which explores the lives of 12 people rooted in Gandhian principles who gave up lucrative jobs to discover practical ways of political and social transformation, inspired film director Ashutosh Gowariker to make the hit Shah Rukh Khan starrer, “Swades”.
“In trying to find new solutions, you suddenly take recourse to the same Gandhian solutions that the Father of the Nation recommended in the early decades of the last century – self-sufficiency, freedom and swaraj – almost unconsciously,” Bakshi told IANS in a free-wheeling interview in the capital.
“It is more powerful than reading Gandhi.”
Bakshi’s new book, “Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: For a Market Culture Beyond Greed and Fear”, which she says “is a tribute to the spirit of Hind Swaraj”, was released at the India Habitat Centre in the capital last week.
It is a narrative about people forging solutions to the problems of unbridled markets and demonstrating that a more mindful market culture is possible.
The narrative takes the reader from the ancient Greek Agora, the Indian choupal and the native American gift culture to the present day Wall Street – to show that a free market can serve society rather than govern it.
“My book encourages people to rethink their assumption that the market is an overarching institution and goes back to the drawing board in trying to redefine how the market should work in the society we live in,” Bakshi said.
What is a market?
“The most obvious answer that comes to mind is the Sensex. But it is just a part of a larger mindset called the free market. So, what the stories in my book do is to distinguish the ancient bazaars from the modern markets that operate on the freedom to exchange, freedom of opportunities and the freedom to define purpose in ways to link commerce with the rest of life.”
According to Bakshi, the free market concept emerged in the 18th century on the idea that “social and political dimensions should be kept separate from the economic dimension”.
“But what I have tried to do is to re-embed the market mechanism in the social, ethical and environmental consciousness. I have tried to probe what is it about the market that is free and free for whom?”
The writer said she recently visited Mahila Seva Bazaar, a Sunday market for women near Ajmere Gate in the capital.
“This market is under pressure from the government to relocate despite the fact that we work in a market economy. But the freedom of opportunities is not readily available, it’s an ongoing tussle,” she averred.
Bakshi feels that in a free market, “we need freedom of conversation between the buyer and seller through which prices can be determined to free it from controls like government whips”.
“Bazaars are all about haggling. Unless we begin the conversation, we cannot learn about services that the market has to offer.”
Arbitrary controls are steering the market in a particular way, Bakshi says.
“In a lot of situations, the government acts in an arbitrary manner while setting in motion a project and it results in displacement. The price for development is always paid by the poorest section of society,” she said.
Bakshi said she was “on the fringes” of the Narmada movement, and added: “Survival and displacement were for the people at the bottom of the ladder. We are living in an economic market system that’s not paying the bill.”
The writer feels the “market is a human construct”.
“We can make it and shape it in any way. It is a photosynthesis of opportunities, possibilities, freedom and responsibility,” she said.
The writer, a Homi Bhabha Fellow, is planning to write on “what it will take to have more economic democracy in the country”.
Bakshi’s earlier books include the “The Long Haul: The Bombay Textile Workers Strike”; “The Dispute over Swami Vivekananda’s Legacy”, “Bapu Kuti: Journeys in Rediscovery of Gandhi” and “An Economics for Well-Being”.
(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at [email protected])