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The West has made progress because
they made rational decisions based on cold reasoning. And this
has had far-reaching consequences. Studying the various models
of development, we learn that as far as the economy and general
development of a nation is concerned, rational programmes
increase production, distribution and exchange. When work gets
methodical and systematic, it leads to further progress and
prosperity.
In the second
paper, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,
Singh analyses the relation between cultural values and economic
growth in view of the incompatible theories of Karl Marx and Max
Weber. The author later suggests that Marx’s material
dialectics does not satisfactorily explain the rise of
capitalism in the West. Weber, on the other hand, showed us that
it was rather Protestant values that served as a launch pad for
capitalism. Weber drew from Calvinist Protestantism’s doctrine
of predestination, which, according to the author, promotes
ascetic life based on rational thinking. This gives rise to
disciplined workers that are well suited to feed the
Capitalistic system. It also explains why capitalism did not
make the kind of immediate impact in India because we rely more
on emotional values rather than rational thinking.
In Effectiveness
of Bureaucracy, Singh tells us that though most of us loathe
it, bureaucracy is an indispensable part of modern industrial
society. For Weber, bureaucracy is a human machine for
performing the assigned duties. It is more effective than all
other forms of organisation. Do we have a solution to this
lethargic bureaucratic machinery? Singh suggests that we could
learn a lesson or two in work management from the popular Guru
ka Langar or the free food offered to pilgrims in gurdwaras.
The way the volunteers work in these langars is amazing;
it is akin to assembly line of a modern automobile factory. The
sheer dedication of the volunteers and their determination to
give their best stands in sharp contrast to our dingy government
offices where the workers have neither enthusiasm nor the
motivation to put in their best effort. How wonderful it would
be if we could somehow make our office workers as motivated as
gurdwara volunteers.
The paper, Inequality
of Educational Opportunity, deals with education. As higher
education is becoming more and more expensive, the poor and even
the middle classes are finding exceedingly difficult to give
good education to their children, this is a far cry from the
dream of our founding fathers who had envisaged a fully literate
India.
The book also
contains a few field-studies as well that can be useful to
university teachers and graduates.
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WE
don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time; it is wise to learn
from others’ experiences and mistakes. This is the message Jaspal
Singh, founder head of the Department of sociology and former Dean
of the Faculty of Social Sciences in Guru Nanak Dev University,
suggests in his latest book Rationalisation of Social Life, a
collection of papers that have been published during his long
career.
