Abstract
This paper explores the evolution of Indian welfare philosophy from Gandhi's nonviolent resistance to contemporary governance. It traces how the sacrifices of Indian revolutionaries fostered Sarvodaya and Antyodaya ideals, examining the philosophical underpinnings of these concepts in Advaita and dualistic traditions. The analysis connects Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya's Integral Humanism and Bharatiya monistic thought with post-independence welfare policies. Central to this exploration is Gandhi's Talisman a moral compass directing state efforts toward uplifting the most marginalized citizens. The paper argues that this philosophical tradition has shaped India's distinctive approach to development, emphasizing spiritual and material advancement of its most vulnerable populations as a cornerstone of national progress.
Introduction
The movie "Gandhi," directed by Richard Attenborough, features a scene where British police use batons on protesters, who fall down one after another in a coordinated manner. The nonviolent efforts of Indian revolutionaries weakened British rule through their sacrifices. Their dedication paved the way for Sarvodaya and Antyodaya ideals to emerge.
Advaita suggests that dualism is essential in welfare and Udhyam practices. Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya's Integral Humanism encourages intellectual and policy discussions. Bharatiya thought highlights the belief that Brahman embodies the ultimate reality, blending self and external existence. Monism, influenced by Zeitgeist, reflects this unified approach. Further home, it can be argued rather safely that the Gandhian notion of strengthening the weakest link in the chain of oppressed hoi polloi became the order of the day and one of the significant strivings of the post 47 state’s efforts to usher in equity-based equilibrium in the nation that Bharat is. One is reminded by the Gandhian Talisman that, “I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man /woman whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him /her?” Thus, the strain of thought emphasises upon how the most downtrodden and challenged lot of the nation can be set aloft on the pathway to growth, development and spiritual and tangible progression as part a Statal effort to ameliorate the most fallen amongst all in the lot of the Bharatiya citizenry.
John Rawls and Sarvodaya: A Deliberation
One is also reminded of the notion of Political Theory as propagated by the American thinker in 1971 , that is, John Rawls in his academic work, the Theory of Justice. He too refers to the theme of strengthening the weakest chink in the national and civilizational armour in the context of entrepreneurship, welfare and collective uplift which has been amply reiterated and reemphasised by New Delhi administration.
John Rawls contends in his Preface to his seminal classic, Theory of Justice that, “By contrast, in a property-owning democracy the aim is to carry out the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation over time among citizens as free and equal persons. Thus, basic institutions must from the outset put in the hands of citizens generally, and not only of a few, the productive means to be fully cooperating members of a society. The emphasis falls on the steady dispersal over time of the ownership of capital and resources by the laws of inheritance and bequest, on fair equality of opportunity secured by provisions for education and training, and the like, as well as on institutions that support the fair value of the political liberties. To see the full force of the difference principle it should be taken in the context of property-owning democracy (or of a liberal socialist regime) and not a welfare state: it is a principle of reciprocity, or mutuality, for society seen as a fair system of cooperation among free and equal citizens from one generation to the next.”. John Rawls was no communist thinker and Political Theorist but a guard rail against discrimination for the uplift of inclusivity and equity based development and the attendant authoritative allocation of values beca,e the order of the day since the ushering of his ‘ strengthening of the weakest chain in the larger network of chains” theory as part of the political and developmental narrative of the larger international system which is not necessarily an argument for the American Dream.
It was John Truslow Adams, the ace American Political theorist who coined the term “American Dream” and the related conceptualisation. He defined the American dream with an unmatched clarity and the deterministic steadfastness. He argued, “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. [...] It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position”. The tenets of the American Dream originate from the Declaration of Independence, which states that :all men are created equal”, and have an inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
One cannot leave out the perception and the historical legacy of Martin Luther King, an avowed disciple of Mahatma Gandhi though in a foreign and a western and Occidental context. Martin Luther King contended that, “We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.” The question of race as in United States of America was akin to the case study of caste based exclusion and discrimination in Bharatvarsha where in the vocational efficiency was the traditional argument drape in the nom de plume of exclusionary practices in the Bharatiya society and its this menace which was illiberal and discriminatory in nature that the entire twin edifices of Gandhi and King were substantially premised upon with clarity and mythlike ease.
Another Snippet of Conceptualisation
A Press Information Bureau release informs us pithily that, “Gandhiji’s principles of liberty, dignity and equality were not limited by space and time, they have universal applicability and timeless value. He preached peace, non- violence, tolerance and harmony, and in the process, miraculously inspired India’s great struggle for freedom and gave new impetus to civil rights movements all over the world, he added.” The same release further elaborates and contends that, “The designing and implementing programs and policies for development should be done by keeping the vision articulated by Mahatma Gandhi for an India free from poverty, discrimination and social evils in mind. He said that Gandhi Ji was an ardent believer in the principle of self-reliance and added that he constantly spoke about “Swadeshi”. He yearned to build self-sufficient ‘Adarsh Villages’ and he said that the soul of India rested in its villages. It is time we honour his wishes & go back to our villages.” The all pervasive and larger than life conceptualisation of Gandhi was premised upon the tenet of, “ The Village Republic”. Its through this spiritual yet pragmatic strain of conceptualisation that the initial Indian frame of growth and progression was premised upon which achieved a later day support from the “Temples of Modern India” tenet of Prime Minister Nehru. The idea was that as the sea of a civilization is constructed by a pot-by-pot drenching of the sea thus in the same manner the umpteen villages in the Bharatiya civilization would lead towards the conglomeration and assimilation of the construct of a “Nation which is also a civilization”.
The official portal of the Indian Government informs us pithily that, “ Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana (DAY) with an aim to uplift the urban poor folks by enhancing sustainable livelihood opportunities through skill development. Keeping in view the objective of Make in India, Skill Development is essential for socio economic betterment. Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana was launched under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA). Government of India has provisioned Rs.500 crore for the scheme.” The theme of Antyodaya finds its ample reflection in the scheme which is the official nomenclature as NULM and NRLM The Governmental portal informs us that, “The scheme is integration of the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) and National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM). National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) is renamed as Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana-(DAY-NULM) and in Hindi as - Rashtriya Shahri Aajeevika Mission. Under the scheme urban areas extends the coverage to all the 4041 statutory cities and towns, there by covering almost the entire urban population. Currently, all the urban poverty alleviating programmes covered only 790 towns and cities.”
Adopted in Union Budget 2017-18, Mission Antyodaya is a convergence and accountability framework aiming to bring optimum use and management of resources allocated by 26 Ministries / Department of the Government of India under various programmes for the development of rural areas. It is envisaged as state-led initiative with Gram Panchayats as focal points of convergence efforts.
Annual survey in Gram Panchayats across the country is an important aspect of Mission Antyodaya framework. It is carried out coterminous with the People’s Plan Campaign (PPC) of Ministry of Panchayat Raj and its’ purpose is to lend support to the process of participatory planning for Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP). In the Union Budget 2017-18, Mission Antyodaya is a convergence and accountability framework aiming to bring optimum use and management of resources allocated by 26 Ministries / Department of the Government of India under various programmes for the development of rural areas. It is envisaged as state-led initiative with Gram Panchayats as focal points of convergence efforts.” Annual survey in Gram Panchayats across the country is an important aspect of Mission Antyodaya framework. It is carried out in coterminous with the People’s Plan Campaign (PPC) of Ministry of Panchayat Raj and its purpose is to lend support to the process of participatory planning for Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP).”
The spiritual take of Gandhi on the theme and conceptualisation of Anyodaya and the notion of strengthening the weakest chink in the national armour finds an ample manifestation in the Antyodaya planning initiative in order to ameliorate the concerns and objectives of grassroots progression and related growth patterns. The author argues that, “The Antyodaya programme was launched in the mid-70s in Rajasthan by the state government to assist the poorest families and lift them out of their state of abject poverty. As the name connotes, Antyodaya was the bottom man's programme. Most of the governmental programmes were being implemented in Rajasthan when Antyodaya was introduced. These included the Small Farmers' Development Agency (SFDA), the Marginal Farmers and Agricultural Labourers' (MFAL), tribal sub-plan, drought prone area and desert development programmes, and special animal husbandry programmes focussing on the 21 million rural population. A study of these various programmes had revealed the following deficiencies: The SFDA and MFAL programmes had an uneven coverage. Six out of 26 districts had these projects, covering only one-third of the marginal and small farmers.” The manner in which farmers protested against the Delhi denomination raises a few pertinent posers. The manner in which the modernisation of the infrastructure has become a mundane contention with the Government of the day, are the rural and turbaned segments which form the backbone of the country’s economy being relegated to the growth and developmental roller coaster ride. Antyodaya is well aware of the agriculture strife in Deccan and Maharashtra where in the famines, paucity of rain and even the other extremity of floods and natural disasters force some amongst the agriculturists specially the smaller land owning farmers and labourers to end their lives militating against the exigency of poverty, development and in the want of a secure livelihood despite toiling endlessly in the rural hinterland and the urban concrete jungles of the contemporary context. It is exactly this nationwide morass of welfare and scarcity to the most hardworking segment that the notion and practice of Antyodaya aims to wrench free from.
It has been found that others felt discriminated against, and poor groups like artisans, non-agricultural labourers, and self-employed persons were excluded from schemes. The target groups were too large and resources were limited, benefiting only the upper crust while the poorest did not gain from these schemes. The conceptualisation of a planned and preordained “Rise” happens to be the credo of the New Delhi dispensation of development and growth progression where-in disenfranchised and disadvantaged groups amongst the national population have been targeted so that the benefits of the Governmental support and succour percolates down to the most needy and downtrodden lot of the Bhartiya citizenry.
The authors further argue in their study that, “of the 50 families interviewed, 29 were allotted land, 15 sanctioned credit for self-employment, and 6 were given pension. Land, an attractive benefit, was chosen because either the beneficiaries were small landholders or agricultural labourers and desired land of their own. The use of land seems to have varied between the less and more developed parts of the district. Altogether, 6 of the 29 land beneficiaries did not get actual possession of the land. Of the rest, 15 were cultivating it and obtaining returns of 1 to 2.5 quintals of maize per year, one found the land unfit for cultivation, and 7 had started improvements on it. On the whole, those who also got credit for land improvement managed to make more productive use of the land.” Thus, as India is grounded and subsists and actually thrives in the channels of the rural India as defined evocating beautifully in the Gandhian lingo and spiritual parlance, the elements of efficient land utilisation along with the provision of food security become the cornerstone of Bharat’s development and progression in the light of the avowed objective of “ Viksit Bharat”.
It would be an incorrect enunciation to attach a political and ideological meaning and a saffron colour to the meaning, definition and functioning of Antyodaya as an effective grassroots tool and instrumentality to the culmination of the the objective of good and efficient Governance. The Financial Express informs us that, “literally, ‘Antyodaya’ means the “rise of the last person” and it was one of the concepts emphasised by Upadhyay, who was also one of the founding leaders of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh the forerunner of the BJP. “The measurement of economic plans and economic growth cannot be done with those who have risen above on the economic ladder but of those who are at the bottom,” Upadhyay is quoted as saying on BJP’s official website.” Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya too believed in the nomenclature and the grandiose terminology of “The Rise” or the “Comprehensive Uplift of the National Upsurge”. Under the able and imaginative leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which is assiduously rooted in the grim reality of the grime of the past Regimes, the nation has charted out a growth trajectory for itself, where in, the indegenious and self-reliant idiom of Gandhi gets ample and expansive manifestation and reflection in the planned and domestic growth schemata of the New Delhi denomination.
It can be reiterated that, “The philosophy of ‘Antyodaya’ is not something new coined by Upadhyay for it existed as an integral part of broader concepts like ‘Sarvodaya’ or, “the rise of all”. However, Upadhyaya stressed on ‘Antyodaya’ to rid the nation of extreme poverty. It also formed a part of Upadhya’s core philosophy of “Integral Humanism”– that viewed the man distinctly from the popular ones propagated in his time by capitalism and communism.” The philosophy of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya informs us about the ubiquitous “Middle Path” where in neither a too much inclusion of radicalisation and anti state communism should be the order of the day nor is the astute adherence of crass capitalism and merciless mercantilism is the accepted and permissible order of the day. The doyen of Integral Humanism propounds a sage and deft practicality where in he proposes a “balance” and an “equilibrium” which bodes well for a national civilization akin to Bharat in the making keeping in view the grandiose but practicable objective of developed India” or, “Viksit Bharat”.
The Perspective De Internationale
The foreign Policy and the Diplomatic idiom of PM Narendra Modi too takes an essential leaf out of the tome on Antyodaya where in the Indian “Central” too prepares to take a lead in the Global South in all imaginable and existing tenets of Human security. The manner in which Bharat strives to edge ahead as a “Vishwabandhu” and how the aggressive, proactive but humanly unthreatening and harmless but potent intent of Public Diplomacy takes over the reins of Global polity and political economy is a development which is very novae in nature, content and objectives and the grandiloquent vision of being a world leader. A Bharat has been home to the exploitation and suppression at the hands of the British Colonial rule, the larger idiom of “Sarvodaya” and “Vasudhev Kutumbkam” have left an indelible mark upon the domestic and external policies of the nation- civilization.
The theme of South South cooperation and the rebellious intent of the BRICS, as an international Organization, too, point towards the same multipolar direction where in the “weakest of the nations and communities” of the ilk of Africa, Latin America and South Asia including the conflict zones harbouring the war torn minion countries, have attained the front-seat of the deliberation and dialectic bus of global development and human security goals and objectives.
Human security is the order of the day in the larger international system. In a world lined by war and aggressive politics, the peace and the developmental concerns are hampered and largely obstructed. The paper highlights the negotiation ethics of G-20 as a platform of Diplomacy where in the concerns of the South or the developmental needs of the developing nations assume a prominent global concern instead of merely paying lip service to the decisions and monopoly of the First world and the developed comity of nations. The global commons of food security, climate change action, gender empowerment, poverty eradication and conflict resolution are the pertinent requirements of a besieged international system with a third world tilt, where-in, the hiatus between the on the rise developing world and the First Worlders can be emphatically brought out.
One can highlight and indomitably bring to relief, the fact, that, after Indonesia, New Delhi now assumes the Presidency of the group of G-20. India assumes a global responsibility as global regulator and a Third world leader, is playing the key role in conflict resolution and other developmental and human security concerns in the developing and the underdeveloped world.
A regime formation becomes the order of the day, where-in, myriad nations and their establishments strive to coalesce into a Global whole. India’s Presidency of the G 20 group of nations is a step in the right direction. India has been knocking for long at the gates of the great power status where-in Indian leadership of a new reformed Global south can benchmark the arrival of a new power and the novae Global south which does not believe in mere protestations against the North and the first world but aims to work as equal partners with the richness and the expediency of a smart group of nations like never before. The key lies in the strengthening and resuscitation of the weakest link in the growth and developmental chain so that an able and stodgy firmament can be spawned in the larger line of global welfare marked by peace, stability in economies and the sturdiness and the longevity of the global value chains.
Endnotes
1. Rawals, J. (1972). A Theory of Justice, Medford, NY, United States.
2. John Rawls, “A Theory of Justice,” Harvard University Press: Harvard, 1971, Page no. 2-10
3. John Truslow Adams, “ The Epic of America, “ Simon Publishers, United States of America, 2001
4. The American Archives, The American Declaration of Independence, URL: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript (Online: Web), Accessed on 1 March, 2025
5. National Public Radio, “ I have a Dream Speech,” Transcript at: https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety (Online: Web), Accessed on 10 March, 2025
6. Vice President’s Secretariat, URL:
https://pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=1553221#:~:text=necessities%20of%20life.-,Antyodaya%20or%20the%20uplifting%20of%20the%20poorest%2C%20most%20deprived%20groups,Deen%20Dayal%20Upadhyay. (Online: Web), Accessed on 1 March, 2025
7. Ibid
8. Government of India, “Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana,” https://www.india.gov.in/spotlight/deen-dayal-antyodaya-yojana (Online: Web), Accessed on 10 March, 2025
9. Ibid
10. Mission Anyodaya, URL: https://missionantyodaya.nic.in/aboutUs.html (Online: Web), Accessed on 10 March, 2025
11. Ibid
12. Inderjit Khanna and Ashok Subramaniam, “Lessons from Antyodaya in the sphere of Integrated Rural Development,” Vol 7, No 3, July September, 1982
13. Ibid 1
14. Financial Express Online, “What is Antyodaya?” The Financial Express, April 24, 2017
15. Ibid
