Development As Swaraj - Towards A Sustainable And Equitable Future by Sumanas Koulagi

 

Book Review: Development as Swaraj: Towards a Sustainable and Equitable Future by Sumanas Koulagi

Sumanas Koulagi’s Development as Swaraj: Towards a Sustainable and Equitable Future arrives at a time when “development” has become one of the most unquestioned words in public life. It is used to justify highways and factories, consumption and urbanisation, technological acceleration and market expansion. Yet, behind its promise of progress lie widening inequalities, ecological exhaustion, alienated labour, rural distress, democratic centralisation, and a deep moral confusion about what human prosperity actually means. Koulagi’s book enters precisely at this point of rupture. It asks a simple but radical question: what if the future of development lies not in more growth, more consumption, and more centralisation, but in swaraj?

The significance of this book lies in its refusal to treat swaraj as a nostalgic political slogan. Koulagi recovers it as a living civilisational, ethical, economic, and ecological principle. Drawing from M.K. Gandhi and J.C. Kumarappa, he presents swaraj not merely as “self-rule” in the political sense, but as self-restraint, self-mastery, decentralised power, local self-sufficiency, non-violence, dignity of labour, ecological responsibility, and the reorganisation of society around the good of all. In this sense, the book is not simply about Gandhian thought; it is about the possibility of building an alternative moral political economy for our time.

At the heart of Koulagi’s argument is a critique of the dominant development paradigm. Modern development, especially in its capitalist and consumerist forms, often defines prosperity through accumulation, productivity, efficiency, and high consumption. Human beings are treated primarily as producers, consumers, or beneficiaries of policy. Nature becomes a resource. Communities become markets. Work becomes a means to income alone. Politics becomes centralised decision-making. Economy is separated from morality. Koulagi challenges this separation. He argues that any meaningful vision of development must reconnect material life with moral purpose.

This is where the idea of swaraj becomes powerful. For Koulagi, swaraj is not an abstract ideal but a framework that can answer three interlinked questions: What should be? What is? What can be done? The normative, interpretive, and pragmatic dimensions of the book allow it to move beyond both pure theory and mere activism. It first asks what kind of life is desirable; then examines the actual condition of society and economy; and finally explores how a different order may be cultivated through practice.

The book’s theoretical foundation rests on Gandhi’s civilisational critique of modernity and Kumarappa’s economic thought. Gandhi’s swaraj was never only about replacing foreign rulers with Indian rulers. It was about inner freedom, restraint of desire, decentralised communities, non-violent relations, and the moral discipline necessary for a free society. Kumarappa extended this vision into economics by arguing for an economy of permanence — one that respects nature’s limits, sustains village life, honours labour, and resists exploitative industrialism. Koulagi brings these strands together to argue that the economy cannot be understood apart from ethics, society, politics, and ecology.

One of the book’s most important contributions is its redefinition of prosperity. Prosperity is not merely abundance of goods; it is peace. This peace is not passive. It emerges from harmonious relations — between self and other, individual and community, production and consumption, work and creativity, human beings and nature. Such a vision shifts the emphasis from wants to needs, from competition to cooperation, from efficiency to self-sufficiency, from accumulation to restraint, and from domination to non-violence.

Koulagi’s treatment of labour is especially striking. In the modern economy, labour is often reduced to productivity and wages. In the swaraj framework, work becomes a site of dignity, creativity, obligation, and self-realisation. Human beings need creative expression, but they also carry obligations toward the community. Too much drudgery crushes the individual; limitless self-expression without shared responsibility transfers drudgery onto others. A swaraj-oriented society must therefore balance individual creativity with collective obligation. This gives the book a moral subtlety that is often missing in contemporary debates on sustainability and livelihood.

The most compelling part of the book is its movement from theory to practice through the example of khadi. Khadi is not treated merely as cloth, costume, or national symbol. It is examined as a complete social and economic process involving production, consumption, labour, dignity, decentralisation, self-reliance, and ecological limits. Gandhi’s charkha challenged the colonial economy by interrupting the cycle in which raw materials left India, were processed in Britain, and returned as finished goods. Khadi, in that sense, was not just a textile but a political economy in miniature.

Koulagi shows, however, that khadi too has suffered distortion. What began as a symbol and practice of self-rule has often been bureaucratised, centralised, and reduced to a state-managed sector. The official khadi economy, as described in the reviews, is marked by inefficiency, hierarchy, regulation, corruption, wage discontent, and lack of autonomy for producers. In such a setting, khadi risks becoming symbolic rather than transformative. It may retain the aesthetic of swaraj while losing its spirit.

This is why the Janapada Khadi experiment in Melukote becomes central to the book. Koulagi does not present it as a flawless utopia. Rather, he studies it as a working prototype of the Swaraj Development Paradigm. The Janapada model seeks to restore the links between producer, consumer, community, and environment. It gives priority to workers and local community over profit maximisation. It values flexible working time, shared ownership, collective wage decisions, self-help groups, environmental education, and a narrower gap between the highest and lowest earners. It attempts to make khadi not only an industry but a social order.

The strength of this example is that it prevents the book from remaining a purely philosophical reflection. The reader sees swaraj not as a slogan but as a difficult practice. It requires institutions, discipline, cooperative ownership, moral education, local markets, and new forms of knowledge. It requires rethinking technology, not rejecting it blindly. It requires a “field-to-lab-to-field” approach in which science serves non-violent and plural social purposes rather than merely industrial scale. It also requires alternative media, education, and community-building to make visible the lives of producers who are otherwise hidden behind finished products.

At the same time, the book’s honesty lies in its willingness to acknowledge faultlines.  Older people may find dignity and income through khadi, while younger workers may face social costs in marriage and status. These tensions make the book more credible. Koulagi does not romanticise swaraj; he tests it against reality.

This is also where the book raises a profound challenge for Gandhian and sustainability discourse. It is not enough to invoke simplicity, village life, khadi, or decentralisation. Alternative models must be judged by whether they actually transform relations of power.  Do workers participate in decisions? Is income dignified and stable? Are markets reliable without becoming exploitative? Is ecological restraint shared fairly, or does it become another burden on the poor? A true swaraj model cannot merely be small-scale; it must be just.

One of the major insights of the book is its critique of efficiency. Modern economics often treats efficiency as an unquestioned good. Koulagi’s argument complicates this. Efficiency can easily become a language of control: fewer people, faster production, lower costs, greater standardisation, and higher output. But this may produce alienation, unemployment, ecological harm, and social domination. Self-sufficiency, by contrast, may appear inefficient by industrial standards, but it can generate community resilience, meaningful work, local accountability, and reduced ecological damage. The book therefore invites us to rethink what counts as “efficient” when the goal is not profit alone but peace, dignity, and sustainability.

The reviews also highlight the book’s relevance beyond khadi. Its deeper concern is with the future of development itself. Climate change, inequality, democratic deficits, and extractive economies are not separate crises. They emerge from a worldview that separates the self from others, economy from morality, rights from obligations, and consumption from consequence. Swaraj challenges each of these separations. It insists that the self is constituted through relations; that rights and duties are not enemies; that politics must be participatory; that economy must serve life; and that human beings cannot flourish by destroying the ecological conditions of flourishing.

This makes the book especially valuable for students of development, sustainability, social entrepreneurship, public policy, Gandhian studies, rural livelihoods, and ecological economics. In a world filled with fashionable vocabularies — sustainability, circularity, resilience, social impact, localisation, degrowth, regenerative economy — Koulagi’s work offers an Indian framework that is both ethically grounded and practically tested. It does not merely borrow from global alternatives; it contributes to them.

Yet the book also appears to leave certain questions open. How can swaraj-based models secure stable working capital without dependence on the state or exploitative markets? How can they scale without losing decentralisation? How can local production remain viable in a globalised economy of cheap industrial goods? What institutional forms can support swaraj without bureaucratising it? These questions do not weaken the book; rather, they point to the next stage of inquiry.

The most important achievement of Development as Swaraj is that it restores seriousness to a word often reduced to sentiment. Swaraj is not nostalgia. It is not merely village romanticism. It is not anti-modern withdrawal. It is a demanding framework for reorganising life around restraint, responsibility, decentralised power, non-violence, self-sufficiency, and human-nature harmony. It asks us to reconsider whether development without self-rule is actually development at all.

Koulagi’s book is therefore both diagnosis and invitation. It diagnoses the failures of growth-centric development: alienation, inequality, ecological damage, and centralised control. But it also invites us to imagine another path — one where production is closer to consumption, labour is dignified, communities participate in decisions, technology serves life, and prosperity is measured not by accumulation but by peace.

In the end, Development as Swaraj is a timely and necessary intervention. It speaks to India, but not only to India. It speaks to anyone searching for alternatives to the exhaustion of modern development. Its great strength is that it does not merely critique the present; it retrieves a framework from Gandhi and Kumarappa, tests it through khadi, acknowledges its contradictions, and still insists that another future is possible. That future will not be built by policy alone, nor by markets alone, nor by moral preaching alone. It will require disciplined communities, ethical institutions, participatory politics, ecological humility, and a renewed understanding of the self in relation to others.

For a world trapped between ecological crisis and economic aspiration, Koulagi’s proposition is both simple and profound: development must become swaraj, or it will remain another name for dependence.

CSR as Mandatory Trusteeship is an Oxymoron by Prof Satish Y Deodhar

Corporate social responsibility or CSR as we know it today, has always been a part of Indian culture and history.  Traditionally, business communities have always supported construction of dharmashalas, panjrapols, ghats, and pathshalas.  In one of the earliest printed books in India published in 1863, the author Govid Madgaokar makes a mention of annachhatras patronized by the rich in the nineteenth century Mumbai.  In modern day equivalents, these can be termed as holiday inns, animal-health clinics, river-fronts, primary schools, and charity dining halls.  Today, of course, from food to fundamental research, the spectrum of CSR activities is very wide.  This includes provision of mid-day meals through Akshay Patra foundation to patronizing fundamental research since the early years of independence through institutions such as Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).

Why would businesses undertake such CSR activities?  It turns out that society understands that free market fails to deliver right quantity and quality of merit goods such as education, health, and environmental sustainability.  For example, social benefit of educating poor young girls is much higher than the private benefit that accrues to those girls.  Economist and evangelical supporter of free enterprise, late Milton Friedman had said that a corporate executive’s responsibility is to make as much money as possible, provided he confirms to the basic rules of law and ethical system.  The qualification he makes about ethical system is important, for profits are inextricably linked to communities and environment without which a firm cannot operate effectively.  Though it is not obvious, CSR efforts help a firm improve the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) of profit, people and planet.  Two centuries prior to Friedman, father of modern economics, Adam Smith had also echoed this social responsibility aspect of business in his treatise, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  And, in the Indian subcontinent, it was father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi who invoked the notion of Voluntary Trusteeship through individual philanthropy.  Industrialist G.D. Birla, for example, was always very liberal in donating money to Gandhi if any of his projects were held back due to want of money.

Of course, CSR is not the main activity of corporates and there is no denying that one of the very raison d'être for the existence of a government is to provide merit goods.  After India’s independence, the statist model advocated by the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, characterized social responsibility as an overarching state-driven endeavor.  However, following the Soviet model, state started dictating terms in each and every sphere of economic life.  This came at a heavy price – gross neglect of provision of merit goods.  Experience of seven decades since independence and the low levels of human development indices show a glaring state failure on this front.  Perhaps the abject failure on the part of government has now forced it to co-opt private sector in CSR activities through the new Companies Act of 2013.  In quite a few countries such as Australia, Denmark, France, Holland, Norway, and Sweden, while CSR reporting is mandatory, CSR spending remains a voluntary act.  India is the only country in the world, where both reporting and spending on CSR is mandatory for a certain section of the firms.  The Gandhian principle of voluntary trusteeship has been trapped in the legal net, reformulating it in what I call as the Mandatory Trusteeship!

It is true that government has the coercive power to impose mandatory trusteeship and corporates cannot wish it away.  However, the perception of various stakeholders in the economy can be gauged from a spectrum of opinions – Arguing from the left of the centre, the opinion would be that the government has abdicated its own responsibility.  Instead of asking firms to spend two per cent on CSR activities, government could have raised corporate tax by two per cent, prioritized the socially beneficial activities, and spent the tax collection in its own right.  On the other hand, arguing from the right of the centre, forcing a mandatory spending of two per cent of profits on CSR amounts to increasing corporate tax-rate by two per cent.  Already a 34.6 per cent corporate tax-rate in India is higher than the global average of just about 24 per cent.  Mandatory two per cent spending on CSR makes Indian corporates less competitive globally.  Moreover, arguing from a centrist perspective, it seems absurd to force CSR spending on corporates.  CSR is viewed as an inspirational activity which comes voluntarily from within.  Therefore, voluntary CSR mandated by law, a sort of mandatory trusteeship, is an oxymoron.

The new CSR norms apply to firms with a net profit of Rs. 5 crore and more, and/or a net worth of Rs. 500 crore and more, and/or a turnover of Rs. 1000 crore and more.  These firms must spend two per cent of their average net profits made during three immediately preceding financial years.  For this, firms have to form CSR Committees and their boards must mandatorily report the CSR activities.  Moreover, the spending has to be on about dozen eligible activities as per the law, which includes spending on items such as healthcare, education, poverty eradication, gender equity, as also contribution to Prime Minister's National Relief Fund.  The spending cannot be related to the firms’ own business activities.  These norms and processes are indicative of potentially inordinate administrative burden imposed by the act, both on the government and the firms.  In fact, studies have shown that the potential mandatory CSR spending was expected to be much more than Rs. 25,000 crore a year.  However, the actual spending has turned out to be only about Rs.5,000 crore.  Moreover, a survey conducted in December 2015 showed that among top 84 firms by market capitalization, only 38 per cent of them had spent two per cent of profits on CSR.   Furthermore, if we are to go by the experience of many decades of License Raj, the coercive policies of the government may create perverse and obfuscating reactions from stakeholders.  This may happen at all three stages – implementation, monitoring, and punitive actions.

The eligible list of CSR activities as laid down in CSR norms seems broad but not broader enough.  Almost all the eligible activities prescribed by the CSR norms come under the category of philanthropy through donations or running CSR foundations.  However, there are two other channels of CSR activities that do not get covered under the norms.  First,when firms improve their operational efficiency, say by developing smart-building solutions that contribute to reduced energy consumption, and/or they convert their food waste into biogas, and/or they ensure that mercury from the used CFL bulbs and tube-lights is recycled using a special crusher; these activities improve the triple bottom line of profits, people and planet.  Second, transformational business models by firms such as say drip irrigation initiative may also contribute to triple bottom line.  Selling drip irrigation system may increase firm’s profit, increase farmers’ land productivity and income, improve resource sustainability by lowering salinity ingress, and, importantly, conserve water for the society.  In its own interest firm may give loans to and buy-back produce from farmers for this initiative to succeed.  Such activities do not fall under the CSR activities specified under the companies act.  Now, to fulfill the straight-jacketed mandatory requirements, firms may anchor their CSR efforts away from such activities.  Clearly there will be a qualitative anchoring away from efforts, which in fact, improve the triple bottom line of profits, people, and planet.

The two per cent mandatory norm may create another kind of anchoring effect, this time a quantitative anchoring effect, which also may adversely affect CSR initiatives.  Experimental studies (including one at IIMA) suggest that quantitative anchoring effect may lower CSR spending by firms that are already voluntarily spending more than two per cent or were planning to spend more than two per cent.  Once a legal yardstick of two per cent is created, firms may reassess their CSR activities and anchor their spendings down to match the bare minimum new legal yardstick.

All in all, therefore, government may want to do a rethink on the mandatory trusteeship.  A reconsideration of Friedman, Smith, and Gandhi’s ideas of rules of ethics, moral sentiments, and voluntary trusteeship could be a step towards saving the firms’ CSR from getting trapped in the legal net.

Courtesy: http://profsatishdeodhar.blogspot.com/2017/01/csr-as-mandatory-trusteeship-is-oxymoron.html

---------
*Updated : 2026