Aparigraha the Humane Solution

Author(s): Kamla Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

Page 21

CONSUMERISM-ANTI-HUMAN GOAL
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system is the urgency of consumer needs which have to be aroused at all costs. Maximisation of wants leads to maximisation of goods by production: the spiral has to go on undisturbed. Production then is not for real needs, but for created needs and wants, since the goal lies only in production and more and more production. This made economics completely divorced from its normative aspect. Yet, this is an aspect with which it should be primarily concerned, for as Alfred Marshall has said, economics is a science of human welfare and 'an economist like every one else must concern himself with the ultimate aims of man'. Modern economics, however does not distinguish between necessary and unnecessary and important and unimportant goods; the legitimacy of desires is not in its purview; it ignores the difference between essentials like food and basic needs, and inessentials such as a good automobile and a plush house. Moreover, ignoring this difference was justified on the grounds that production generates employment for the people. Thus production and employment became the key factors in the economics of 'affluence' and 'development', where variety rather than quantity became the aim of dogmatic economics. The irony is that production is defended not because it satisfies wants, but because it satisfies created wants. The urgency of production has completely replaced the urgency of wants or the number of people to be satisfied by production, and 'one man's consumption becomes his neighbour's wish'. This demonstration effect or keeping up with the Joneses becomes central to people's lives, trapping them in a vicious circle. Massive publicity, high-tech advertising and salesmanship are the methods used by such producers to sustain themselves, but none of these ways of sales promotion have any relation with independently determined primary desires.
So much can be said on the culture of advertising and its overall impact on economic and psychological side of the needs, and on how the cost of advertising affects the price of an essential consumer good. What is the rationale of a brand of salt or atta to be advertised on hi-fi electronic media? To what level of human intelligence do these advertisements cater? Are they merely pieces of amusements/ entertainment or do they create true awareness? Many more questions may crop up in our minds.