The Four People's Principles

Today our country India is facing massive problems---75% of our people are living in horrible poverty, with high unemployment, skyrocketing prices, massive problems of healthcare, malnutrition, education, housing etc. 48 farmers have been committing suicide on an average every day, and 47% of our children are malnourished, a figure which is over 10% higher than in countries of sub-Saharan Africa e.g. Ethiopia and Somalia.

Our national aim must be to abolish these evils and make our country highly prosperous for all our citizens.

To address the nation’s problems, Four People’s Principles (following Sun Yat Sen’s Three People’s Principles) are being submitted, which in my opinion should be our guiding principles for solving India’s problems. These are:

1. Science 2.Democracy 3. Livelihood, and 4. Unity of the People

1.Science

When our country was on the scientific path it prospered.  With the aid of science we had built mighty civilizations thousands of years ago when most people in Europe (except in Greece and Rome) were living in forests. We had made outstanding scientific discoveries e.g. the decimal system in mathematics, plastic surgery in medicine, etc. We had solved the problem of town planning 5000 years ago in the Indus Valley Civilization, with covered drains, sewage system, etc (something which is lacking even today in most cities in India). However, we subsequently took to the unscientific path of superstitions and empty rituals, which has led us to disaster.

The way out for our nation is to go back again to the scientific path shown by our great ancestors – the path of Aryabhatta and Brahmagupta, Sushrut and Charak, Ramanujan and Raman, Panini and Patanjali.

I am not going into detail about our great scientific achievements (for details see ‘Sanskrit as a Language of Science on the website kgfindia.com). I have only referred to it to prove that there is nothing inherently inferior in us.

However, today there is no doubt that we are far behind the Western countries in science and technology, and that is the real cause of our poverty and other social evils.

We must therefore spread science on a massive scale to every nook and corner of our country. And by science I do not mean physics, chemistry and biology alone. I mean the entire scientific outlook. We must spread rational and logical thinking among our masses and make them give up backwardness and superstitions. The entire mindset of our masses, who are presently steeped in casteism, communalism and superstitions must be changed, and made scientific.

 Also, by science I do not mean the natural sciences alone, I also include the social sciences. Today a worldwide recession is going on, and this can only be solved by scientific understanding and scientific solutions of our economic problems.

2. Democracy

Some people say that democracy is not good for India. I totally disagree. The problem in India is not that there is too much democracy but too little. We need more democracy, not less, and that means educating the masses, raising their cultural level, and involving them actively in the task of national reconstruction.

It may be mentioned that democracy and science go hand in hand. Scientific growth requires certain supportive values viz. freedom to think, to criticize, and to dissent, tolerance, plurality, and free flow of information. These precisely are the values of a democratic society

3.Livelihood

The third great people’s principle is livelihood for the masses.

Today 75% people in India are poor, and there is massive unemployment, malnutrition, lack of healthcare, housing, good education, etc. and exorbitant price rise

What we have noticed in the last 25 years or so is that the rich have become richer, and the divide between rich and poor has greatly increased. The economic growth in India has benefited only a handful of people. Unless this trend is stopped it will be disastrous for the country.

As the great French thinker Rousseau wrote:

“It is obviously contrary to the law of nature for a handful of people to gorge themselves on superfluities while the starving multitudes lack the necessities of life.”  (Rousseau: Discourse on the Origins of Inequality)

We must, using our creativity, find out ways of raising the standard of living of the masses. Ultimately, that is what matters. Whether the system we adopt is called capitalism or socialism or communism or any other ism, the real test is whether the standard of living of the masses is going up under that system or not. Surely a system in which a quarter million farmers commit suicide in the last 15 years and vast masses live in abject poverty and suffer from chronic unemployment, malnutrition, and lack of healthcare and good educaion is totally unacceptable.

Before the Industrial Revolution, which began in Western Europe in the 18th Century, there was feudalism everywhere, and in the feudal system the methods of production (the bullock in India and the horse in Europe) were so primitive that very little wealth was generated, and so only a handful of people could be rich while the rest had to be poor. When the cake is small obviously few people can eat it.

In contrast, modern industry is so powerful and so big that enough wealth can be generated to meet the basic needs of everyone. This being so, now no one need be poor. Therefore it is our duty to ensure that no one today remains poor, unemployed, sick, hungry, illiterate or homeless.

4.Unity of the people

India is a country of great diversity having a large number of castes, languages, religions, ethnic groups, etc., because it is broadly a country of immigrants (see the article  ‘What is India’ on my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in and on the website kgfindia.com). So the only policy which will work here is secularism and giving equal respect to all communities, races, languages, castes, etc. This was the policy of the great Mughal Emperor Akbar, who gave equal respect to all communities and sects. It is this policy which was continued by Pt. Nehru and his colleagues who created our secular Constitution.

 It is our duty to preserve our unity despite all our diversity, and despite the efforts of some people who try to divide us

  All patriotic, modern minded people are called upon to make these Four People's Principles a reality, so that India emerges as a modern, powerful, highly industrialized and prosperous country, in which all our people get a decent life and a high standard of living.