Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel: Grassroots Entrepreneurship and State-led Development

Barun S Mitra: Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel: Grassroots Entrepreneurship and State-led Development
Summary: Leading India’s struggle for independence from Britain, MK Gandhi had adopted the spinning wheel into an instrument for national reawakening. Gandhi saw it as an instrument for cultivating self-reliance, dignity of labour, and a shared national experience and enterprise. His critics saw the spinning wheel as an indication of Gandhi's rejection of modernity, science and industrialisation.
Over the past seventy years, independent India has defied the predictions of many within and outside the country by preserving its democratic institutions. At the same time she has belied the expectations of many who hoped to see a rapidly developing India making its presence felt on the world’s economic stage. Could this dichotomy between democracy and development reflect the misunderstanding of the true significance of the spinning wheel? Is the spirit of the spinning wheel underlying the wide prevalence of grassroots entrepreneurship in India? Has the rise of the Indian state after Independence, modelled on western notion of the nation-state, come to dominate the economic space, and suppress the inherent spirit of enterprise in society? Could Gandhi’s spinning wheel spin the yarn that would weave democracy and development, economic growth and environmental quality into a common fabric in the 21st century?