Mahatma Gandhi expressed life moral teachings in his writings and speeches. Life moral teachings presented here are drawn from Gandhi’s writings and speeches. Perhaps in our time there will be even greater opportunities to put them to good use. They are:
1) Our aim is the establishment of the kingdom of Righteousness on earth.
2) Peace has its victories more glorious than those of war.
3) Real disarmament cannot come unless the nations of the world cease to exploit one another.
4) No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can, give it as much of your care and attention as you would give to the thing you regard as most important.
5) Nonviolence, in the very nature of things, is of no assistance in the defense of ill-gotten gains and immoral acts.
6) Nonviolence is never a method of coercion, it is one of conversion.
7) Nonviolent struggle is impossible without capital in the form of character.
8)Gandhi’s Talisman – Recall the face of the poorest and the most helpless man whom you may have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?
9) Religions are different roads converging on the same point.
10) Religion which takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.
11) Rights that do not flow directly from duty well performed are not worth having.
12) Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.
13) No human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption.
14) Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.
15) Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid. The valiant in spirit glories in fighting alone.
16) Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak.
17) That line of action is alone justice which does not harm either party to a dispute.
18) The acquisition of the spirit of nonresistance changes one’s outlook upon life. It puts different values upon things and upsets previous calculations. And when it is set in motion, its effect can overtake the whole world. It is the greatest force because it is the highest expression of the soul.
19) The best politics is right action.
20) The danger is greatest when victory seems nearest.
21) The fabled godly Elephant King was saved only when he thought he was at his last gasp.
22) The first principle of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.
23) The fullest life is impossible without an immovable belief in a Living Law in obedience to which the whole universe moves.
24) The highest moral law is that we should unremittingly work for the good of mankind.
25) The movement of noncooperation, if it may be considered a revolution, is not an armed revolt; it is an evolutionary revolution, it is a bloodless revolution. The movement is a revolution of thought, or spirit.
26) The problem is a world problem. No nation can find its own salvation by breaking away from others. We must all be saved or we must all perish together.
27) There is a power now slumbering within us, which if awakened would do to evil what light does to darkness.
28) The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress.
29) To believe that what has not occurred in history will not occur at all is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.
30) To benefit by others’ killing and delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religious and nonviolent is sheer self-deception.
31) True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for us and fearlessly following it.
32) Truth never damages a cause that is just.
33) Violence is suicide.
34) We are all children of one and the same God and, therefore, absolutely equal.
35) We hug the chains that bind us.
36) We leave things to Fate after exhausting all the remedies.
37) We may attack measures and systems. We may not, we must not, attack people. Imperfect ourselves, we must be tender toward others and slow to impute their motives.
38) We may not be God but we are of God — even as a little drop of water is of the ocean.
39) We must combat the wrong by ceasing to assist the wrongdoer, directly or indirectly.
40) Western democracy as it functions today is diluted Nazism or fascism. At best it is merely a cloak to hide the Nazi and fascist tendencies of imperialism.
41) What is possible for one is possible for all.
42) When we disobey a law, it is not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience.
43) Where Love is, there God is also.
44) Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.
45) Conscience is a good guide for individual conduct, imposition of that conduct upon others would be an insufferable interference with their freedom of conscience.
46) Whomsoever you follow, howsoever great he might be, see to it that you follow the spirit of the master and not imitate him mechanically.
47. You should be pioneers in presenting a living faith to the world and not the dry bones of a traditional faith which the world will not grasp.
48) A Government that is evil has no room for good men and women except in its prisons.
49) All faiths constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect.
50) All fear is a want of faith.
51) All other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
52) A nonviolent resister cannot wait or delay action till perfect conditions are forthcoming.
53) A nonviolent revolution is not a program for the seizure of power. It is a program for the transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer of power.
54) A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
55) By our actions we mean to show that physical force is nothing compared (to) moral force.
56) Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil.
57) Civil disobedience without constructive programs is bound to fail.
58) Cooperation with good is as much a duty as noncooperation with evil.
59) Do not undertake anything beyond your capacity, and at the same time do not harbor the wish to do less than you can. One who takes up tasks beyond his powers is proud and attached. On the other hand, one who does less than he can is a thief.
60) Do not worry about what others are doing. Each of us should turn the searchlight inward and purify our own hearts as much as possible.
61) Each step upward makes me feel stronger and fit for the next step.
62) Every one of my failures has been a steppingstone.
63) Every right carries with it a corresponding duty.
64) Everything is done openly and aboveboard, for truth hates secrecy.
65) Evil can only be sustained by violence.
66) Exploitation is the essence of violence.
67) Faith does not admit of telling. It has to be lived and then it becomes self-propagating.
68) Faith is nothing but a living, wide-awake consciousness of God within.
69) Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.
70) For a nonviolent person the whole world is one family. He will thus fear none, nor will others fear him.
71) Freedom won through bloodshed or fraud is no freedom.
72) Given the opportunity, every human being has the same possibility for spiritual growth. God is conscience.
74) God reveals Himself daily to every human being but we shut our ears to “the still small voice.”
75) Good government is no substitute for self-government.
76) He who is ever brooding over results often loses nerve in the performance of duty.
77) I am a Christian and a Hindu and a Moslem and a Jew.
78) I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes.
79) I believe in the essential unity of man and, for that matter, all that lives. Therefore, I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him; and, if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent.
80) I believe that no government can exist for a single moment without the cooperation of the people, willing or forced, and if people suddenly withdraw their cooperation in every detail, the government will come to a standstill.
81) I can retain neither respect nor affection for a government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immorality.
82. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to me, “unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind.”
83. If a father does an injustice, it is the duty of his children to leave the parental roof. If the headmaster of a school conducts his institution on an immoral basis, the pupils must leave the school. If the chairman of a corporation is corrupt, the members thereof must wash their hands clean of his corruption by withdrawing from it; even so, if a Government does a grave injustice, the subjects must withdraw cooperation wholly or partially, sufficiently to wean the ruler from his wickedness.
84. If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
85. I hate privilege and monopoly. Whatever cannot be shared with the masses is taboo to me.
86. Individuals or nations, who would practice nonviolence, must be prepared to sacrifice [everything] except honor.
87) In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
88) In nonviolent resistance, success is possible even if there is only one nonviolent resister of the proper stamp.
89) In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that how He should allow such to go on ?(Written in September 1939 at the start of World War II).
90) Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause.
91) It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves by humiliation of their fellow beings.
92) It is a million times better to appear untrue before the world than to be untrue to ourselves.
93) It is not nonviolence if we love merely those who love us. It is nonviolence only when we love those who hate us.
94) It is sinful to buy and use articles made by sweated labor.
95) I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.
96) A civilization is to be judged by its treatment of minorities.
97) Love is the law of life.
98) Love never claims it ever gives.
99) Nothing enduring can be built on violence.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.