Good Society

DECEMBER 24 Good Society A good society is the cherished ideal of every human soul. But a consensus has yet to emerge on what constitutes a good society. This is undoubtedly one of the most complex questions facing us today. It would be no exaggeration to say that three major initiatives, designed in their separate ways to offer a solution, have been utter failures. A hundred years ago it was generally assumed that the setting up of a national government would provide the answer. It was felt that it was foreign rule which was responsible for the rot that had set in society, and that indigenous rule alone could set matters right. We did finally succeed in establishing a national government in 1947, but it failed to yield the desired result — a good society. Similarly, the initiative which led up to home rule, i.e. the non-violent movement started seventy five years ago by Mahatma Gandhi, did not usher in any utopian ideal. It had come to be assumed that once the principle of nonviolence become the mainstay of Indian politics, it would automatically be put into practice in society. But this transference of a principle from the political to the social sphere did not take place. We may have been successful in launching a political movement based on non-violence, but we were to find that it took more than earnest enunciation of the principle of non-violence to build a good society. The third initiative, carried out after independence, was the attempt to bring about a good society by legislation. There are now scores of laws aimed at social reform, each social evil having several specially framed laws to itself. But this multitude of laws has done little to bring a good society into existence. As I see it, our basic shortcoming is to think purely in terms of system. This has caused us to devote all our attention to overall social reform, at the expense of the more worthwhile reform of individuals. Over a period of a hundred years, all the major movements launched in our country have been system-based, rather than individual-based. The individual is the primary unit of society. If individuals are reformed, society follows suit. And if individuals degenerate, society too goes into a decline. That is why our best efforts should centre around the individual, who is, after all, the