Opinion Arguing for a better world

Under her guidance and with the inspirational leadership of Sudhir Ghosh (“Gandhi’s messenger”),Lakshmi launched on the revolutionary project to get 50,000 urban Hindu refugees from the North West Frontier Province huddled around Delhi’s Purana Qila to rehabilitate themselves by learning to become masons,carpenters and handymen and build the new township of Faridabad with their own hands. He was to write about this later in his book,City of Hope. The experiment was a grand success,and with Albert Mayer’s Etawah Project,an experiment in improved rural living,was to become the basis for the community development movement and national extension service that was at the core of the country’s first five year plan.

Under the continuing influence of Kamaladevi,Lakshmi commenced his life’s mission of decentralised,participative development through the promotion of the country’s handicrafts and handlooms. He was among those who built the Cottage Industries Emporium that restored pride in and marketability to India’s wonderful crafts and,later,the Handicrafts and Handlooms Export Corporation,the All-India Crafts Council and much else that reinvigorated the variegated crafts culture of India. He was also instrumental in resuscitating the crafts of the Northeast as a vehicle of cultural revival and employment generation.

He was a staunch Gandhian and believed that “small is beautiful”. He worked closely with the Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi and was a pillar of the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development founded by Jayaprakash Narayan,both institutions that felt the heat of the Emergency and were all but destroyed by a subsequent witch-hunt through the Kudal Commission. Lakshmi was indefatigable in defending these institutions through that inquisition and the whole episode pained him deeply. Earlier,during the great Bihar famine in 1966-67 he was instrumental in setting up Super Bazar in Delhi as a means of eliminating the middleman and holding the price line with regard to a range of daily household needs and basic articles of consumption. This worked well for some time but gradually faded away.

Like millions,he supported the Janata government and played a notable part in pioneering a resurrected panchayati raj with decentralised district planning under Ramkrishana Hegde in Karnataka. He became a member of the Planning Commission and pursued these ideas from that vantage point. But the failure of the panchayati experiment to progress beyond a point led to another book,Grass Without Roots,in 1985.

Lakshmi was next drawn to issues of equity and the environment associated with large dams and was critical of the Narmada project. His views found expression in a book called Dams and Drinking Water: Explaining the Narmada Judgement. After this came membership of the IUCN-World Bank-sponsored World Commission on Dams,of which he was vice chairman. The Magsaysay Award for Public Service followed in 1989.

Lakshmi Jain worked tirelessly till the end. He exemplified Gandhi’s maxim: “be the change you want to see”. He spent some of his later life in Bangalore but never retired,being actively engaged with ideas,NGOs,institutions and countless friends.

At a personal level,I fondly recall our deep and lasting bonds of friendship. He always spoke in the plural when addressing another’s problems. It was he who published Beyond the Famine,my account of Bihar’s ordeal and the lessons from it,through Super Bazar in 1967. When I stood for election in 1977 as an independent candidate from Kerala supported by the Combined Opposition,Lakshmi and his wife,Devaki,spontaneously took on the task,with some others,to raise funds for my campaign. And later,when with the residual amount,the Media Foundation was established to support press freedom and independence,he helped endow the Chameli Devi Jain award for outstanding women in the media,in memory of his mother and the Gandhian values she espoused.

Lakshmi Jain will not be forgotten.His works and ideals will endure.

The writer is a former editor of ‘The Indian Express’