National Prosperity
Prosperity is a relative term. Really speaking, if every Indian family with an income of less than a thousand rupees begins to earn nearly two thousand rupees, other conditions remaining the same, minimum national prosperity will have been attianed. Of course, we may take it that a million Indian families will have a purchasing power above five thousand rupees a month. The emphasis should be not on equality of income for all but on the permissible minimum income of ninety-eight percent families.
It is extremly misleading to confuse national prosperity with a coutry’s favourbale trade balance or with the investment in various industries and lines of business to the extent of thousands of millions of rupees by a few thousand individuals. We should take a distributive view of national income and national prosperity. Let us clear this up a little further.
If a country with an economic structure where one thousand families each earn ten crores a year or more, but the remaining nearly two crore families earn hardly twenty tousand rupees each in annual, the national prosperity of this country will be far less than that of another country with equal population where no family earns more than rupees one lakh a year but no family earns less than fifty thousand.in the latter country there are no fabulously rich people, no millionares but also no families with less than an income of fifty thousand rupes a year. when we speak of India we should mean more than seven hundred million Indians.
Exports and imports, a swelling favourable balance of trade, investments and bank-balances, are not an index or a balance sheet of national prsperity. Till th beginning of the Second World War, English exports were noticeably greater than what they are today. And yet Englnd has greater national prosperity today then it ever had. Because the income of average Englishmen, working as field and factory labourers, clerks, policemen, petty shopkeepers and shop assistants, domestiv workers and other low-paid workers, has gone up. Their purchasing power has appreciably increased. Socialist thought has powerfully influenced the motives and minds of the English masses and a new England has developed.
Another implication of the idea of national prosperity is the prosperity of the government .This would result in more extended and better social services and welfare activities which have an advantage for the whole society but which are above the means of the richest individuals. This national prosperity does not imply excessive wealth possessed by every family. It means possessing as much walth as is needed to enable everyone to live in comfort and decency and having a sense of economic security.
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