Gandhi, Marx And India : An Alternative Path Of Progress

This book is an attempt to present an alternative path of progress for the alternative path of progress for the country. India has witnessed a disastrous failure. The author brings out not only the deeping of economic crisis in sharp focus but also, the increasing non-development syndrome in terms of rising joblessness and concomitant violence and brutality at an ever increasing pace in the country. It has been argued that following the present policy of development, India will be far away from achieving the dream of Gandhi, that independent India would "contain intelligent human beings. They will not live in dirt and darkness as animals. Men and women will be free and able to hold their own against any one in the world. There will be neither plague nor cholera nor small pox; no one will be idle, no one will wallow in luxury." The author argues for the Gandhian path of progress which is not far removed from Marx and is modified in view of lessons drawn from history, particularly, after the death of Gandhi including the collapse of the Socialist state of USSR. This path of progress envisages a self-reliant growth of the economy with full employment, petty producers' dominance and social justice based mainly on available resources in the country and a form of government which is a decentralised democracy in the true sense of the term. Since neither imperialism nor its lackeys will permit this transformation, an issue based struggle for real democracy, social and self-reliance is the only alternative. In such a struggle, education of masses on ideological issues and rise in their consciousness will assume a historical importance which it never assumed in any revolutionary struggle ever before. As this movement gets going, catches gradually the imagination of masses and subsequently gathers on the course chartered by the masses, it hs also a strong possibility of achieving a federal unity of fully autonomous regions including even Pakistan, Bangladesh et.,-the only lasting solution to the strife-torn Indian sub-continent.About the AuthorDr. Pradhan H. Prasad, an economist of international repute, after retiring as Director of A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna-800 001, is now Emeritus Professor (for life) and has been awarded National Fellowship for two years (August 17, 1992 to August 16, 1994). He is an academician with a varied and wide experience, of engaging himself in discussions, seminars and exchange of views in universities and other academic in committees and commissions of Government of Bihar and Govrnment of India, remaining as members of board of Directors/Governors in many academic and financial institutions and publishing couple of hundred articles in journals (in India and abroad) national dailies and weeklies. His first book, Growth with Full Employment, was published by Allied publisher in 1970, the other, Lopsided Growth, was brought out by Oxford University Press in 1989 and yet another is The Determinants and Consequences of Internal Migration in India, also by Oxford University Press where Dr. Prasad is a co-author....