Gandhian Approach to Development: Implications for the Post-COVID World

John S. Moolakkattu
Additional contact information
John S. Moolakkattu: School of International Relations & Politics, Mahatma Gandhi University

A chapter in Social Entrepreneurship and Gandhian Thoughts in the Post-COVID World, 2023, pp 67-83 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Many wonder how Gandhi would have responded to rural poverty, pandemics, and climate change. This is because conventional understandings of human organization, with their increased focus on resilience without questioning the capitalist order, have failed to instill confidence in achieving sustainability. Human greed, instead of focusing on basic needs, lies behind this predicament. This chapter draws on ideas of degrowth, solidarity economy, and, above all, the Gandhian approach to development, suggesting how villages can produce most of the goods they need and insulate themselves from corporate exploitation. In such a village-based democratic order built on self-reliance and basic needs satisfaction, health will attain a community orientation rather than an individual orientation, and production will be ecologically intensive. Gandhi was oblivious to modern environmental challenges. However, his village-based development model created the groundwork for a sustainable way of life, and its environmental implications were spelled out more explicitly by his committed economist, J. C. Kumarappa. Gandhi seems to suggest that humans can improve the quality of life even when the standard of living decreases in material terms, and calls for humility, recognizing the limits to human material and technological progress.

Keywords: Gandhian economics; Climate change; Civilization; Poverty; Health; Kumarappa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-981-99-4008-0_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789819940080

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-99-4008-0_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in India Studies in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().