Dedicating the Bharat Ratna award conferred on him to his mother,
Sachin Tendulkar said: “This is for her. I realise what kind of
sacrifices millions of mothers in India make for their children. This is
for all of them.” Tendulkar’s prose restates the ancient Indian
tradition which accords to mother and father, in that order, status
equal to God’s. “Revere your mother and father as God,” mandates
Taitriya Upanishad. Bhishma Pitamaha says in Mahabharata, “The father
equals ten teachers. But the mother equals ten fathers or perhaps the
whole world in importance.”
All ancient traditions of the world
revere mothers. But what about the modern society? Does it recognise or
accept reverence for mothers? Or, for others? Doubtful. Paul Woodruff,
professor of philosophy and dean at Texas University at Austin, says in
his book Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue (2001) that reverence is
missing in modern societies and actually the American society
celebrates irreverence. But, modern economic theories and thinkers
attribute high economic growth to the irreverent modernity, slow growth
to tradition and counsel the slow-growing nations aspiring to develop
fast to discard their traditions (Measures for the Economic Development
of Under Developed Countries 1951; UN Department of Social and Economic
Affairs). This view, a by-product of the anthropological evolution of
modern West, became the foundation of modern economics based on
individualism, and led to a clash between individualism-centric West and
family-centric Rest. The clash mirrored as the micro and macroeconomic
differences between the two.
Reverence for parents is the core
value of traditional family system. Before analysing the impact of this
core value or its absence on micro and macroeconomics, it is necessary
to know how does the West-centric modernity value reverence for parents.
It will not mind a grown-up revering parents by choice. But if it is
urged as a collective norm not to be deviated from, modernity will
accuse the society of oppressing and infringing individual rights.
Reverence is twined with family and tradition, which depends on
relations and duty. It minimises rights. Modernity rests on contracts
and rights. It underplays duty. Modernity driven by paradigm of
individualism, individual rights, gender rights, elders’ rights, child
rights and of even lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual rights has no
recognised sense of duty to the near and dear. Families and
relations—that rest on sustainable marriages — are shattered by the
paradigm of modernity. In the US, some 55 per cent of the first, 67 per
cent of the second and 74 per cent of third marriages end in divorce.
Over 40 per cent of the babies are born to unmarried women, half of them
teenagers. And some 60 per cent of men and women are avoiding marriage.
The dysfunctional traditional families and its consequence,
contract-based socioeconomic order, have orphaned and condemned elders,
infirm and unemployed as state-dependents. This is the output of
unbridled individualism and its offshoot, modernity. Yet, many educated
Indians think that modernity means just Western dress, English language
and urban living.
How do the relation-built, duty-based
traditional economies and the rights-centric, duty-free modern economies
differ? Take just two areas — savings and social security. See how the
microeconomic behaviour affects the macro economy. The family-based Asia
accounts for three quarters of global savings. But the individualist US
borrows almost the equal amount from the world. Why? American families
have virtually lost their propensity to save. The families’ share was
four-fifths of total US savings in the 1960s and, by the third quarter
of 2006, it became minus — yes minus — one fifth, implying that the US
families spent 20 per cent more than their current income. The erosion
in family values which undermined family responsibilities and dented the
propensity to save, has made the Americans profligate. Some 11 crore US
families use 120 credit and debit cards. Their total borrowings exceed
$12 trillion against the current US GDP of $16 trillion. Since 1970, US
foreign debt has risen by 160 times, its national debt by 40 times, but
its GDP only by 16 times. As the families disintegrated, the care of
parents, elders, infirm and unemployed fell on the State which has
virtually nationalised families through social security schemes. The
present value of the future social security burden of the US is
estimated at over $100 trillions — more than six times the present US
GDP. This is seen as dynamiting the US economy. As far back as in 1980s,
the US National Bureau of Economic Research had warned that if the
government took over traditional family duties through State-organised
social security, “serious erosion of family values” was inevitable. (The
American Economy in Transition by Martin S Fieldstein p341) The
warning, unheeded then, has now come true. This is as much the outcome
of modern individualism as of the economics of theories founded on it.
In
contrast, most Asian families save and save a lot. Because of high
savings, social security to the aged, infirm and unemployed is provided
by Asian families, not by governments. Alan Greenspan, the former US
Federal Reserve chairman, made fun of the Asian nations saying that they
save a lot due to insecurity about future, because their governments do
not provide social security, while the confident Americans need not and
do not save, because the US government provides social safety net. This
was before the 2008 meltdown. Greenspan may not dare repeat his words
now because, as The New York Times says, half the US families receive
state aid. In contrast, Asia’s family saving has privatised social
security as families’ moral responsibility. A Brookings Institution
economist Barry Bobsworth described the Asian savings as
“dynastic”—belonging to future generations, not just the personal
savings of the saver. The traditional reverence for parents and elders
and the consequent duty and relation-based family life have made savings
dynastic, moderated consumption and funded family-provided social
security. Forty years after being warned, the US is now desperate that
social security be privatised. But that would need recreating
traditional families that the current economic theories cannot. The
lesson? “Matru Devo Bhava” and “Pitru Devo Bhava” — revering mother and
father as Gods — and like social norms build a stable macroeconomic
model founded on dynastic savings and moderate consumption and keep
social security privatised. Clearly, traditional reverence for parents
and elders at the micro level and macroeconomics of dynastic savings and
family provided social security are interrelated. When will the Indian
socioeconomic discourse internalise this profound truth? Will
Tendulkar’s prose inspire the young Indians off the field to think of
the larger socioeconomic implications of his reverence for all mothers?
