Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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faculty at his university do the same, engaging head, heart, and hands. This simple act helped India cast off its colonial oppressors. Gandhians today continue to espouse the ideals and realities of self-control, moving toward self-sufficiency and self-respect.
Each of us needs to ask the question: How much is enough? How much food? How much entertainment? How large a car? How large a house? From a Gandhian perspective, we might surprise ourselves with the realization that true happiness comes with ingenuity and restraint, not through unbridled consumption. By gaining control of our senses we can regain mastery of ourselves, attaining self-rule.
Transportation :
We live today in a world of three-car families in the United States. Thousands of new cars pour onto the roads of India each week, the new mark of middle class status. The rapidity of change in the developing world staggers the imagination, with innovations in many instances following some basic Gandhian precepts, at least at first glance. For instance, India has engineered and put into production the world's least expensive car, at one tenth the price of an average American sedan. Cell phone technology has put mobile communication within the reach of nearly all India's population without the need to construct a network of costly telephone lines. The internet and inexpensive public access to computers has allowed India to leap into a position of leadership in the area of information technology. Perhaps Gandhi would have embraced these changes. But., in 1910, before the era of the mass produced automobile emerged in the developed world, Gandhi warned even about the shortfalls and pitfalls of the railroad.
Henry David Thoreau extolled the punctuality and progress and support of commerce offered by the "iron steed" (Walden, 101-111). In contrast, the railroad roiled Gandhi. In regard to allocation of resources, Gandhi makes an apt comment on the nature of the railroad. Although common wisdom states that England united India through its railroads and hence improved the general situation in the subcontinent, Gandhi suggests that a better use of public funds would have been to improve irrigation systems, allowing local areas to flourish. He suggests that railways facilitate the spread of disease and that "Good travels at a snail's pace-it can have little to do with the railways" (Parel, 47). In his critique of railroads, Gandhi calls into question the very premises of progress and speed. He writes: "Honest physicians will tell you that, where means of artificial locomotion have increased, the health of the people has suffered.... I cannot recall a single good point in connection with machinery" (110). Although we hesitate to think in categories of either-or and recognize that both irrigation and transportation result in positive outcomes, daily life through improved access to water would have been a good use of imperial resources. Today, alongside the railways, both
