GANDHIAN MARXISM WITH ETHICS AND VALUES OF SUSTAINABILITY COEXISTING WITH CAPITALISM: LAL SALAM TO GOVERNANCE OF DAYAKAR REDDY

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GANDHIAN MARXISM WITH ETHICS AND VALUES OF SUSTAINABILITY COEXISTING WITH

CAPITALISM: LAL SALAM TO GOVERNANCE OF DAYAKAR REDDY

Presentation by Dr. K. Prabhakar & P. Srilatha

International Conference on Entrepreneurship and New

Venture Creation;IIM(B)

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Gandhian Marxism

• While Marx advocated class annihilation & class struggle , Gandhiji advocated Satyagraha & Non-violence

• Can we combine these two philosophies and have a governance model that will be fulfilling to all the people ?

• It is possible to have political experiment of coexistence of philosophies of Marx and Gandhiji, breathing with ethics and values and with sustainable physical environment?

• The present case study voices the answer as “YES “

Appears like an oxymoron



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At present the very human existence is in question – in any part of the world with common

problems and issues …

Global warming , Water scarcity , caste politics , inequalities based on religions, distrust among

people and within families…

The present case study will demonstrate how simple living people travelled through rough

patches and achieved great success by overcoming the world’s common challenges in

their small space…


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Red Salute – Lal Salam

• Best Music of Communism 3 - YouTube.flv

• This is the song sung by communists world over and made greatest impact on humanity.

• While Marx philosophy lead to two worlds – Communist and Non-Communist. Gandhiji worked on an alternative philosophy based on non violence.

• Gandhi- The Philosophy of Nonviolence - YouTube.mp4



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Struggle Begins



Hyderabad Allwyn Ltd

• HAL was incorporated in 1942 engaged in the manufacture of refrigerators and compressors, watches, steel furniture, bus bodies and LPG Cylinders with 360 acres of land, profitable until 1990s.

• Privatization policies, with sudden onset of competition made the organization un competitive with competent workmen.

• It had 11,300 workers on rolls during 1993.


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HAL - Continued Losses

• Continued losses made Government to handover the organization to Voltas-Tata Enterprise, with assets being sold for through away prices. (Rs1.12 paise per square yard while market price was Rs8,000).

• At that point of time Voltas was also not profitable and cannot be called competent to run businesses that are unrelated to it. Government’s role - ?

• By 2000 most of the workers lost their jobs and Voltas wound up its operations selling all assets at 1,00,000 times the price at which it got the assets. Voltas never disclosed the profits made out of selling assets of HAL.

Voltas is an ethical organization!



Private Profit at Public Cost

• The workers were given meager Rs.50,000 to Rs.75,000 compensation.

• Judiciary redress was lost at the courts.

• Trickle down economics (Chomsky,1993) and crony capitalism are the order of the day and continued even today. The sicker the unit the healthier the owner grew (P.Sainath).

International Conference on Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation;IIM(B)

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Alternatives for Dayakar Reddy • Join the extreme left forces and participate in different

struggles for people cause, which make him and his comrades as heroes, to live as revolutionaries paving way for change.

• Reskill himself and try to work in a private organization.

• Not to leave the philosophy that helped him to achieve his present status as leader and continue to serve people by co existing with capitalism at the same time sharing prosperity with help of local self government of his village that is created by his team.

• He chose the third alternative.



1990s

• Dayakar Reddy foresaw the issues of livelihood of people. He with the help of his mentor Satyanarayana convinced workmen to construct houses at Pragathinagar. Thus Pragathinagar was born.

• The village was co created by his team forming small groups to undertake construction.

• The teams were empowered to take decisions and no corruption and inefficiency is tolerated.



Project Housing- Avoiding Construction Sharks

• Examinations of contractors quotes indicated that they have huge profit margins and the teams decided to give contracts to masons and other small enterprises to the tune of 500 and helped by civil engineering professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University. With innovative financial acumen they obtained cement at cheapest price, fabricated the bricks at the site and sourced the wood from North Eastern Part of India.



Transparency-Project Completion

The project was completed on time and the houses were handed over to the workmen in December, 1993.

• The estimated cost was Rs200/- and it is completed for Rs185/-. The surplus is given back to the workers, while other builders in neighborhood demanding higher prices citing escalation of costs. Five million rupees is distributed to the workmen.



Birth of Local Governance

• Away from Hydrabad the residents have difficulty in obtaining vegetables and groceries. They formed a cooperative with volunteers running with ethics, values and not to exploit the customers.

• Panchayat was formed with Dayakar Reddy as the President.



Need for Study

• There are no similar models available.

• Kuthambakkam Village by Elango Ramaswamy; A rural experiment.

• Relegan Siddhi; environmental concern, honesty, integrity with strong religious underpinnings.



Objectives of Study

• Measuring Happiness Index of people and attitude towards local self governance.

• Financial Analysis of Pragathinagar Panchayat from 2002-2010.

• Evolution of leadership style of Dayakar Reddy.• Process of execution of different projects that

transcend beyond the implicit motives, explicit motives and perceived abilities of the people who execute the projects.

• Replicability, scalability, thoughts and questions for future.



Research Methodology

• Quantitative Research

• Oxford Happiness Questionnaire ( Hills and Argyle, 2002) was used to measure happiness of people.

• Dialogical analysis: It is a way of analyzing human communication that entails interaction of different perspectives.



Questions asked during focus group

interviews of dialogic analysis • What does each one of them think about themselves, the others,

their leader, about people and what the other thinks of them?• What do the given utterances and actions imply about the given

activity or participants?• Why was a given communicative act performed - why they say

like that? What was the alternative that the utterance was trying to dispel what has been said by others?

• People found to borrowing words, phrases and ideas from other people, and accordingly, in the present dialogical analysis it has been observed who is doing the talking? Specifically, which voices and echoes are evident in the given utterance? The words used in Telugu and their translations are given to preserve the meaning and context in which they are spoken.



Definition of Happiness

• Happiness is an emotional state that is characterized by feeling of enjoyment, pleasure and satisfaction.

• Hedonism reflects the view that wellbeing consists of pleasure or happiness.

• Eudaimonism conveying the belief that wellbing consists of fulfilling or realizing one’s true nature.

• Eudaimonism is considered for present study.



Happiness Index and Satisfaction with Local Governance

• The overall happiness index of the people of Pragathinagar is 3.62 and Argyle and Peter Hills (2002) considered 4 is the ideal measure of happiness indicating 90.5% happiness.

• The overall satisfaction with respect to different dimensions of local governance is 3.97 on a Likert Scale indicating high satisfaction with the local governance model.



Financial Status

• The question is do we need to be corrupt to be rich? Or will ethics and values entail richness?

• A Marxist led panchayat board will have heavy wage bill, as they are dominated by worker interests. True or myth?

• Financial statements audited by government from 2002-2010 are examined and can be downloaded from the site

http://pragathinagar.com/






Highlights

• 100% Tax Collections till date.

• Surplus of 1.8 crores.

• Salary bill is only 6.54%.

• 71.29% of expenditure is on creation of capital assets.

• Happiness, satisfaction, ethics, values and pollution free environmental living is also followed by financial success.



Volitional Trait, Transparency and Selfless Leadership

• What makes them to sacrifice when others found that there is no need for it?

• Why do individuals like some goals that they voluntarily set?

• Which mechanisms help a person or a group of persons to strive for goals for which they apparently have limited capabilities for the tasks they were assigned?

• What leadership dimensions help the process of achieving these goals which could not be achieved in India?



Analogy

• An analogy may be borrowed from American civil war, the losers of war from southern states grew deeply religious[1]; in the absence of religion and inability fully focus on Marxist thoughts in public; it may be hypothesized that residents found hope in creating local self governance that is started with emphasis on morals such as not consuming alcohol, smoking, making environment greener and accepting collective simplicity. [1] http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/cwsouth.htm

• Will people of India unhappy about the present conditions of corruption and corporate frauds will revert back to simplistic living?

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/cwsouth.htm

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/cwsouth.htm



How it happened?



Model Governance and Tipping Point

• A small group of people driven by Marxist values of non exploitation of workers and mentored by Satyanarayana towards path of Gandhian values of satyamevajeyathe and non violence, truth, selfless work and simplistic living provided the needed stickiness factor to reach the tipping point of sustainability of the model.



The Power of Context

• Leadership of Dayakar Reddy• Eight hundred families with education and

training rendered suddenly jobless due to government policy and unwillingness of private sector to hire them, wanting prove themselves. Survey indicated that the number of people who can be strongly influenced by the panchayt board members is 137 which is nearest to the Dunbar number of 140.

• In addition 400 members of village development committee helps to take decisions provides strong democratic roots of the institution.

Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen

Mavens

Mavens are the people who have strong compulsion to help others to make correct decisions, even at their own cost. Sudhir Reddy, Chandrasekar Reddy, Somireddy and Chowdary and their team who executed housing project, with standing the pressure of networking with 500 different kinds of are the mavens.

Connectors

Connectors are those individuals who have ties in different realms and act as conduits between them, helping to engender connections, relationships, and cross fertilization that otherwise might not have ever occurred. Dayakar Reddy, Sriramulu past Sarpench of the village, Prabhakar were the connectors who influenced the process.

Salesmen

Salesmen are people whose unusual charisma allows them to be extremely persuasive in inducing other’s buying decisions and behaviors. Paraná Kumar and Veeraiya fall into this category of persons.



Values and practices at Pragathi Nagar



Public Utilities

• 1.85 Lakhs gallons of water from Manjeera is obtained after laying pipelines for 2.5 kms.

• Water drains are laid to take care of storm water.

• Sewage treatment plant is constructed to clean 2.5 million liters of water everyday.

• People’s Hospital that pays only 33% of wages and the doctors and staff are happy to work here than in any private hospital that provides targets for tests and cuts for referrals.



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Majili-The Break in Journey



Personal characteristics of Dayakar Reddy

• Dedication to the cause of people and being authentic • Honesty• Selflessness• Transparency• Conviction towards ideals• Performance orientation• Zero tolerance towards non performance and dishonesty • No personality cult • Environmental sensitivity• Future orientation by taking into consideration present

needs in the light of environmental safety and sharing of prosperity and creation of capital assets.



Struggle Continues…



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Dilemmas of Dayakar Reddy and his Team

• Continue his struggle to ensure the unique status of Pragathi Nagar by

resisting all efforts by the State Government to take over. This requires

more energy to be devoted to struggle, court cases and in direct

confrontation with government. Instead of confrontation, if he chooses to

work on a urban research plan what kind of plan you will suggest?

• Go with the government and try the new kind of governance to be

replicated at different parts of Hyderabad.

• Stop all activities and make the second generations of leaders to take

charge and be a mentor.

• Each of the decision paths has advantages and disadvantages.

What are your suggestions? Do you have other alternatives?



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We heart fully acknowledge and dedicate this Research Paper to

Mr. Dayakar Reddy and his Team for their support and time

Mr. Satyanarayana garu for his direction and guidance

Mr. Deenadayalan who has unearthed this live story and shared the success of Pragathi nagar thru NHRD magazine



Thank you !

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GANDHIAN MARXISM WITH ETHICS AND VALUES OF SUSTAINABILITY COEXISTING WITH CAPITALISM: LAL SALAM TO GOVERNANCE OF DAYAKAR REDDY

Economy & Finance

time voltas

assets of hal

alternative philosophy

marx philosophy lead

hal continued losses

ethical organization

aprivate organization

competent workmen