WHERE THERE ARE NO SERVANTS NOR MASTERS

A famous Hindi proverb says "Uttam Kheti Madhyam Ban Nikrishta Chakari Bheekha Nidhan" meaning that best is working on one's own land, the middle course is being self-employed, the worst is being somebody else's wage servant and of course, the last refuge remains being non-productive and depending on alms from the society.

Ivan Illich, in his recent bock, "Shadow work" analyses the European History of wage labour and writes that till the 17th century, "the dependence on wage labour was the recognition that the worker did not have a home where he could contribute within the household." He says that between 17th and 19th century, instead of being a proof of destitution, wages came to be perceived as a proof of usefulness, the natural source of livelihood for the population. An unprecedented economic division of the sexes, economic conception of family, antagonism between domestic and public spheres made wage work into a necessary adjunct to life.... The bourgeois wat on subsistance (self employed productive activities-ed.) could enlist mass support only when the plebeian rabble, turned into a clean living working class made up of economically distinct men and women. As a member of this class, he found him. self in a conspiracy with his employer-both equally concerned with economic expansion and suppression of subsistance. Yet, this fundamental collusion between capital and labour in war on subsistence was mystified by the ritual of class struggle."

Thus we find in India, as well as in Europe, the self-subsisting occupations were the rule which the industrial wage earning civilization usurped. It created the classes the master and the servant- much more definitedly than ever before. The more sophisticated the machine of production, the more centralized their coordination and more large-sized and capital-intensive their economy, the greater is the need of a bigger master-servant gulf, and in the process the more helpless becomes the individual.

Could science and technology which has been the arbiter of.. and abettor in the above process, itself be made to bring about an economy where the liberty of the individual as a self-employed economic unit, related to each other in balanced inter-dependence and having a symbiotic relationship with Nature's bounties could be preserved. Progressively, free people are being sucked into the wage earner economy. The economics of size is obliterating "the small But beautiful." Could Science restore this beauty? With the newer knowledge of physical and social sciences, this imperative need must be possible to be fulfilled.

Of all the countries, India still has the largest number of people forming 60% population who are nobody's servants nor anybody's masters. These need to be enhanced not only amongst the chosen few, but amongst all. We should, therefore, make an asset of our self- employed occupations by supporting, improving and enhancing them through scientific means.

The observance of 15th of April as the day for the self-reliant, self-employed people by the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA), Ahmedabad is, therefore, to be greatly welcomed, and should be taken up on world-wide basis, as the dignity of man depends on it. The concept, however, will get clearer and the path leading to it brighter as we proceed towards it from various directions.

Devendra Kumar