Critically examine Gandhi’s criticism of machinery
:- Gandhi is keen to limit and not eradicate machinery. His views on machinery and modern
industry are derived from the influence that John Ruskin (1819-1900)1 had on him. He
supports mechanisation, which would help the individual and not encroach upon individuality.
He clarifies about the misconceptions to his opposition to machines. Gandhi supports those machines that are necessary to satisfy the basic human needs. He also feels that industries should be socially owned by which he means welfare of society.He wants limited industrialisation to satisfy limited wants such as food production, shelter, health care and basic education. He also points out the impersonal and monotonous life that industrialisation entails. But he is ready to accept it if it helps satisfy the basic human requirements and if it is socially controlled. He is aware of the enormous differences among countries and points out that the choice of technique depends on circumstances. Countries like India with abundant labour and large-scale unemployment and underemployment should restrict the use of machinery.
Gandhi’s antagonism to the use of machinery and industrialisation set him apart not only
from earlier Indian thinkers like Ranade and Gokhale but also among some of his
contemporaries like Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhi rejects mechanised industrialisation on moral
and economic grounds. He considers machines as sins of modern civilisation. He dislikes the
migration of people from villages to cities in search of jobs, low wages and poor working
conditions of workers and unemployment. He laments about the under-utilisation of available
labour in view of the seasonal nature of agriculture which depends heavily on monsoons. He
points out that machines displace human or animal labour, instead of merely supplementing
it or increasing its efficiency. Unlike human labour there are no physical limits to the growth
and expansion of machines. Gandhi’s case against machines is “because they deprive men
of their employment and render them jobless. I oppose them not because they are machines
but because they create unemployment…. If one machine does the work of a hundred men,
Then where are we to employ those hundred men”?
Gandhi points out that the aggregate demand for labour is given and that
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