Ameeri Rekha
Poverty, unemployment,
corruption, economic depression, price rise, population explosion and
increasing crime are great challenges before India and most countries of the
world. Most of these existed in India when it got freedom from the British
rule. People believed that they would soon be free from these problems too, but
67 years later, we are still grappling with them and seem to be losing the
fight. Despite so many movements and struggles in the name of getting rid of
these problems by different well-meaning people, we are heading nowhere. The
frustration among people is mounting leading to frequent and violent outbursts.
It is against this
backdrop Proutist Bloc, India demands ‘Ameeri Rekha’ i.e. a ceiling on the
accumulation of physical wealth by an individual, as suggested by the first
fundamental principle of PROUT: No
individual should be allowed to accumulate any physical wealth without the
clear permission or approval of the collective body.
While the imposition of
a ceiling on the accumulation of wealth may seem dictatorial to many, it can be
justified on the following basis:
a) The right to property is not natural: Unlike the right to
live, think and speak, the right to property is not a natural right. Nobody is
born or dies with any physical wealth. Everything – air, water, land, light,
sun, moon and, even our body and mind –is a gift from nature; we have done
nothing to earn them. Nobody, therefore, can claim the ownership of anything; we
have only the usufructuary rights i.e. the right to use.
Except a few western and
European countries, the native cultures of Asia, Africa, America and Australia
consider god the master and owner of the universe. The right to property came
into existence around the end of the 18th century when England and
some other European countries witnessed the historical Industrial Revolution.
Scrambling for more and more profits, the capitalists exploited everything
aggressively – land, water, forests, minerals, flora and fauna, and even their fellow
human beings. Their dominance in the
social and political life of the times made the right to property so sacred.
b) Physical wealth is
limited: The
earth has plenty yet limited resources. Ideally they should be used for more
than 7 billion human beings and countless other beings. But if they are
concentrated in the hands of a few people, the rest of humanity will have to
live a hellish life. A little data below shows that this has already happened:
One
the one hand
·
Only 1% of the world’s population owns 46% of the world’s wealth.
·
The wealth of 3 richest persons of the world is equal to that of
48 countries put together.
·
The richest 85 people own more than the collective wealth of 3.5
billion people i.e. half of the world’s population.
·
In America, only 400 people possess more than half of Americans’
wealth. In fact, just 3% Americans hold 95% of privately held land in America. Similarly
3% Britons own 75% of privately held land in Britain.
On
the other hand
·
One third of the world’s poor live in India. 42% Indians earn less
than 75 rupees a day.
·
About 50% of Indian children are underweight and malnourished.
·
According to WHO, every year 98,000 people in India die from diarrhea as they have no access to
clean drinking water .
·
About 35,000 children die from hunger and related diseases
everyday around the world.
This
leads to a clear conclusion that the present socio-economic system ,which
allows for unrestricted accumulation of wealth, is utterly unwarranted, and
therefore Ameeri Rekha is completely justified. Ameeri Rekha will have the
following effects:
Removal of Poverty: when there is a limit to
which a person can accumulate, the excess will flow to others, leading
naturally to the removal of poverty. Besides, PBI proposes the following
measures for the removal of poverty and healthy growth:
·
The minimum and maximum income of a person must be fixed.
·
The minimum income must be high enough to purchase basic
requirements i.e. food, clothes, shelter, education and medical care.
·
More talented, hardworking and honest people should be given more
salary and incentives to a certain limit. The maximum must not be more than 10
times the minimum.
·
The gap between the two must be gradually reduced, but not
completely done away with. Complete equality, like extreme inequality, is
unnatural and discourages the meritorious and the hard working, causing the
fall in the quality and quantity of production. The communist economies like
Russia are the best example of this impractical approach.
Removal of Corruption: Man needs money to
fulfill his present needs and the future or emergency needs. If he continues to
accumulate money even after earning enough for both the needs, it means he has
fallen prey to a mental disease, in which he is drawing pleasure out of sheer
accumulation.. Accumulating money has become a number game for him – from 1
million to 10 millions to 100 millions and so on – the diseases continues.
If I told you that a
friend of mine is fond of caps. He has a good collection of caps; he has caps
piled up everywhere in the drawing room,
on the sofa, on the table; in the bedroom -- on the bed, in the bed, under the bed; in the
bathroom, in the toilet, in the kitchen, on the roof, in the courtyard, in the
backyard and now he is planning to buy one more flat to store more of his caps,
you wouldn’t hesitate much in declaring him mad. In sharp contrast to this, the
people who are equally and madly engaged in accumulating money are respected
and seen as role models in our society. But what is the difference between
collecting caps and hoarding the wealth that you won’t use? Just think -- if
hoarding grains, fruit, vegetables, oil etc. beyond a certain limit is
unethical and illegal, why should hoarding of the ‘means’ to acquire these commodities be
just and legal?
Money can fulfill your
‘need’, not your ‘greed’. The corruption is caused by the people who are
suffering from the mental ailment called avarice or geed. The people –-
government officials, politicians or businessmen –- who need money to maintain
their social status and luxurious lifestyle commit scams; it is they who give
or take bribes. The corruption caused by common person under some compulsion
can be easily done away with, but the corruption bred by towering greed can be
checked only when there is a ceiling on wealth.
A question can arise
here: how can the income or expenditure of a person be watch and controlled? It
is, of course, a difficult task, but in this age of sophisticated technology,
it is not impossible. Can’t it be regulated like our phone’s talk time and
internet data?
Cure for Economic Depression: The world is passing
through a severe economic depression. The shopkeepers are worried about falling
numbers of footfalls. Markets are crammed with goods and services but there are
no buyers. For example, newly constructed houses are not selling although
millions of people are forced to sleep under the open sky. In a country like
America the number of vacant homes (18.6 million) is more than the homeless
people(3.5 million).
The depression occurs
when a large portion of available money is concentrated in a few hands and the
greater part of the population is partially or fully deprived of ‘purchasing
power’. In this situation when the goods produced in the factories don’t get sold,
the capitalists cut down the production
and lay off or retrench their employees declining the purchasing power of the people further.
The solution is ‘keep
the money rolling’; let it not lie unused in a few pockets. Like a pool of
stagnant water, stagnant money too gives rise to the diseases like economic
depression, unemployment, poverty, crime etc. To make our economy function
smoothly, we must ensure that money reaches each and every member of society so
that they have sufficient purchasing power to buy the goods and services
needed for a good life. And the first
step in this direction is Ameeri Rekha.
Solution to Unemployment: According to Global Employment Trends Report 2012 of the International
Labour Organisation, the world needs 400 million(40 crore) jobs in the next
decade. India alone needs 44
million (4 crores & 40 lacs) additional jobs between 2015 and 2020 at an
annual rate of a little less than 9 million(90 lacs).
Do we have these jobs ? The answer is ‘no’. Can
these jobs be generated? The answer is ‘yes’. With so many industries ,
schools, colleges, hospitals, roads, railway tracks, bridges, canals etc.
waiting to be built all over the country and a large army of skilled and
unskilled people desperately willing to be employed, it is possible to tackle
the problem of unemployment. But the
government does not have sufficient money to invest in these projects and
thereby create employment. So, through FDI and PPP, it invites investment from
big capitalists, who have zillions at their disposal. They do invest but with
an intention to earn more and more out of less and less. And since employment
generation is not their goal, they withdraw the moment they sense any danger to
their profits or investment leaving everybody else in the lurch.
Moreover, the people with money want to make more money quickly and easily, so they tend to invest in speculation instead of productive activities. John Eatwell, one of the leading specialists in
finance at Cambridge University, estimates that, in 1970, about 90% of
international capital was used for trade and long-term investment-more or less
productive things- and 10% for speculation. By 1990, those figures had
reversed: 90% for speculation and 10% for trade and long-term investment.
The
solution is Ameeri Rekha. Let nobody accumulate so much wealth that they hijack
the entire economy. Let nobody posssess such vast sums of money that the entire
development process is subject to their whims and desires. Once this is done,
there will be socialization of wealth and there will enough money for
production and development leading to more and more employment opportunities.
Decline in crime rate: Besides the
psychological causes, the lack or the excess of money is a chief cause of crime
in our society. While the people without sufficient money for their basic
necessities get into crime under compulsion, the people who possess excess of
wealth get entangled in crimes as they have all the time and resources to allow
their baser instincts to go wild.
Today, if you are good
at studies and lucky enough to grab one of the few available jobs; or if you
have lots of money for starting a business and
have the ability to survive with big sharks of the business world, you
can hope to make a living for yourself. But the question arises: what is the
option for those who can’t do so? Don’t they need food, clothes, shelter,
education and medication? Isn’t it natural for them to adopt unlawful means to
earn a living ? So it would not be wrong to say that a limit on the
accumulation of wealth i.e. Ameeri Rekha and a guarantee of the fulfillment of
basic necessities will put an end to the economic disparity responsible for
increasing crime.
It is simplistic to say
that Ameeri Rekha alone will solve every problem we are facing today. In fact,
we will have to bring about many other radical changes in our socio-economic
setup, but Ameeri Rekha i.e. the principle of social control over limited
physical wealth will set the ball rolling.
