Kesarimalji Surana Abhinandan Granth

Author(s): Nathmal Tatia, Dev Kothari
Publisher: Kesarimalji Surana Abhinandan Granth Prakashan Samiti

Page 1283

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Karmayogi Śri Kesarimalji Surāņā Abhinandana Grantha : Seventh Part
Seventy five percent of the people are not bothered about fundamental rights or freedom of speech. All they aspire for is two square meals a day, a roof above their heads and elementary education for their children. The march of the nation is problematic. The problem of poverty is deep-rooted in the under-developed world. To be very clear, one-half of the world area and population produces one-tenth of the world output. On the contrary, the developed world with one-fourth of the world area and one-fifth of its population produces three-fifths of the world output. This glaring difference between the two worlds is not because of inherent weaknesses but because of lack of social uplifthment. Moreover, forty-eight percent of the population lives below the poverty line. It is a traditional feature with cumulative degenrating effects. Is not this absolute poverty a living reality of the masses? Hence social transformation is a must in the present context.
APPROACH Priorities, standards and goals should be determined after taking into consideration, the social and economic costs and benefits within the framework of social, economic and political values. Keeping this in view, social planning should be considered under four heads :
1. As a compliment of and a corrective to economic development; 2. As an integrated planning of the different social service sectors; 3. In order to fulfil specific social targets or to uplift specific backward sections. 4. And as overall societal planning for social change and reconstruction.
Of the above four heads, overall societal planning is the most ambitious but of least possible category. Any way this aspect is high sounding and idealistic but less in concrete policies and programmes.
Tolstoy, an international thinker, is of the view that in one sense, 'property is the root of all evil and all suffering and it implies danger of conflict between those who have too much property and those who have least.' The acquisitive type of society is fraught with mass revolution one day, sooner or later.
Cooperation is a cardinal principle which imparts new ideas, new outlook and enlightened behaviour based on higher values of life and that results into health and vitality of the society. In ancient times, Greece, two thousand years ago, observed this principle, a man who takes no interest in public affairs, he has no business at all. Why not in India as in ancient Greece ? In domocracy every segment of the population should be deeply involved in the process of change and growth.
MEASURES The evolution of society through successive stages of human civilisation brought out changing norms of societal behaviour and culture as well as moulded the possessive instincts of material needs and comforts keeping pace with time and change. A society, whose objective is growth with social justice, has a more fundamental problem of drawing reasonable balance between haves' and 'have-nots.' For, every one has social aspirations which cannot be denied.
There are very many glimpses of philanthrophy, such as that of Jamna Lal Bajaj private enterprise which had introduced welfare measures even in 1950. In this land of religion, there are hundreds and thousands of charitable trusts, spread over the whole of India to bestow help