S Gurumurthy upholds Indian values as ‘post-mordern’

Noted economist S Gurumurthy upholds Indian values as ‘post-mordern’

T’PURAM: The Indian model of life – with the individual linked to collectives like family, community and neighbourhood groups – is the post-modern way forward for humankind, noted economist and Swadeshi Jagran Manch leader S Gurumurthy has said.

The ‘de-legitimisation’ of collective bodies like families and communities have resulted in the creation of a dependant state in the West, Gurumurthy said during his keynote address at the closing ceremony of the silver jubilee function of Bharatheeya Vichara Kendra.

The ‘follow the west as the best’ thinking has lost its value, he said.

Gurumurthy said that the heightened individualism of the western world has reached non-sustainable levels. He picked Sweden, the country which has the highest human development index in the world, to drive home his point.

Sweden is a country where 46 percent of parliamentarians are women, where 50 percent of entrepreneurs are women.

‘But this is a place where over two-thirds of children do not know the name of their father and where none knows the name of their grandfather,’ Gurumurthy said, quoting an international study. He described the western model of development as ‘perverted’.

‘In the west, family functions like the care of elders have been nationalised and government functions like the providing drinking water have been privatised,’ he said.

There is an economic rationale behind the need for a family. Without families, there will be no savings. More than two-thirds of the world’s savings, Gurumurthy said, are in Asian countries with family-based systems.

‘And one country borrows more than two-thirds of the world’s savings. America,’ he said. In the next 15 years, Gurumurthy said there will be 25 million criminals in America, more than the police force of all Western nations put together.

Gurumurthy said that the rise of Indian as a world power is the ‘re-rise of a great civilisation’. He said that by 2025 the world would be dominated by only three powers – America, China and India.

But according to Gurumurthy, Indian women have not allowed western consumerism to penetrate the country. ‘They hum the ad jingles but do not buy the products they promote,’ he said.

India’s low risk capital too is because women force the household to make only safe investments, Gurumurthy said.

Only 2.5 percent of Indian household budget is pumped into the stock market.