Small Is Beautiful: a Review of E. F. Schumacher's Vision

Economics if people mattered is an eye opening book, it has changed my views about economics and sustainability. Subtitle of this book is more directive than a title. This is one of the best books that ever I read. Schumacher, a British economist, and philosopher introduced Gandhian and Buddhist thought in economics which are contradictory to the modern economics. This book is based on economics dealing with the relevance of natural resources and human behavior, he deeply talks about human values of development. Schumacher states that Continuous exploitation of nature for the economic growth and disruptive development bring the change in attitude of man to see toward nature. Schumacher also mentions that large organization only works on profit-driven motive, how it takes off our work of satisfaction it creates an environment where money is valuable rather than nature for employees and raises the gap between the rich and poor people.

In this book, he focuses on four main topics are The modern World, Resources, The Third World, Organisation and Ownership. In the modern world, he started with the opinion that modern man thinks that he removed the problem of production with the help of industrial production and technology but the main disadvantage of this solution is that it disrupt the relationship of man with nature, and which is harmful to every living being. If we tried to solve one problem by technology it creates ten problems more like unemployment and poverty. I agree with the Schumacher perspective that technology makes work easy but on which cost. To creating a market for the product first we influence the people by advertising, its create demand for unnecessary products then we produced those unnecessary products. He states that we forgot to be happy in what we have. It means that modern man always demands more and more needless things by the influence of advertising.

Now we shift from individual to the country, every country wants try to protect them by creating more and more nuclear weapons and explosives, that's means we forget we are living on the same planet. That type of attitude for peace and permanence makes continuous exploitation of nature. To know the economic and uneconomic things and to conclude exploitation in terms of overall consumptions we need the help of economics that's why he explains. Buddhist economics is the philosophical thing which states that when we see others are consuming more than us we feel anxious and we try to consume more than others without purpose. This mechanization man loses his freedom and forgot their creativity, skills, ideas, and not able to think critically. In the question of size, Schumacher explains that man acquires more than need he gives an example of the overpopulated are difficult to manage but in the village, there is no need for management. We need smallness in the action and the largeness in the thoughts. In the second part, he explains about the resources one of the great resources is education one side this education makes modern man deal with the science and helps to improve literacy rate but on the other side, it's destroying the ability of man to think critically, to creates his own values and ideas. civil man creates lots of things but he fails to understand the nature.

One of the most important sources is Land which carries living organism in the top surface and we are destroying them by acquiring land without any achievement. In the technology with human face, he again explains about the ecological balance and key resources for the present economy. In the third world, he explains about development and socio economic problems of development. British rulers impose their developing strategy on the other countries by creating opportunities and living life happily. But the intermediate technology pushing them downward. Development does not mean constructing the biggest infrastructure and creating services, real development start with the understanding between people. In the last author explain about the organization and ownership. The production, profit and capital oriented model of development has emerged as the most despairful fade to human history. The ultimate goal of human society should be to move toward an economy of the complexity, Economics is just not about to earning and movement of money. The morale of the economics should tend to equality and utility of happiness as the system goes larger it becomes more complex and vulnerable.

I agree to the Schumacher that smaller ideas may easily be forgotten, but when i comes to universal then it is difficult to forget that ideas. Smaller ideas are more attainable and practical easy to adopt. The real mean of development does not mean to goods, GNP and GDP. The real mean economics is the searching for opportunities that can be brought together with solutions of social and economic problems, abuse of nature and humanity. I agree that rich country has a high rate of consumption but it means not individuals in that countries are happy. Just like an large business risk-taking capacity will be high investment also high but in small business, the risk-bearing capacity is very very less. How we just consuming very quickly Schumacher deploy told about humanity. Population rate of the poor people is higher than the richer people The gap between poor and rich countries increasing daily if rich countries make constancy if consumption rate then it will be the solution Rich countries always tried to exploit the natural resources of poor countries but by”. Before modernization we focus on creating ideas after modernization we focus on studying ideas and for this we create that type of education system which affects creativity, skills of man. We transfer our values but we forgot to create our own values.