In our own lifetime we see several thinkers, politicians, teachers teaming with new ideas, different approaches, more and more initiative with a mind to foresee future prospects and human needs. Mahatma Gandhi experimented with newer and more practical ideas as and when the issues appeared before him and gave vent to those thoughts, lectured often and put them in black and white. While a few of them were thought of and sought to be practiced by some people and institutions – whole-heartedly or half-heartedly, they not only met with success but at times with failures too. Central and State governments that had succeeded him in time did the same with mixed results. But importantly many thoughts of his on major issues like national defence, basic education, industrial development and village self-sufficiency etc. didn’t find favour with decision-makers and policy framers from time to time. In a way it is not necessary also that every idea of his may be suitable to all people at all times. But the difference between him and other thinkers is that he not only preached what he believed to be correct in the context but also tried to practice what he preached. His thought and action reflected honesty in its conceptualisation and commercialisation. The ideal thing is that a thinking society and the powers-that-be should make a thorough analysis of such Gandhian thoughts and ideas and select the best ones suitable at a particular point of time. Nehruvian thoughts and approaches also had a similar fate. In his case he was not only a thinker but also a practitioner of some of his own ideas and thoughts owing to his position as the first Prime Minister of this country from 1947 to 1964 till his death. He was considered to be the architect of modern India and the Socialist Republic of India with major steel units, multipurpose irrigation dams/projects, agrarian reforms etc. His monumental oversight was in the arena of mass literacy campaign facilitating a check on galloping population growth. A simple and unlettered mass leader K. Kamaraj from deep South knew its necessity and enabled the mass education for about a decade in the state of Tamil Nadu. The literate Tamil Nadu and its balanced growth of population owe to the direct contribution of this great leader. The legacy left by him had been literally followed by successive Chief Ministers not only in Tamil Nadu but in other states as well.
The biggest brains that influenced humanity to their ways of thinking and life were Gautam Buddha, Mahavir, Jesus Christ, Mohammad Nabi and Guru Nanak. The whole world or different parts of the world follow their teachings with faith and prayer for more than two millenniums in majority of the cases and they only know for how many more millenniums they would continue to do so till the Great Deluge or the Holocaust one keeps talking about. Humanity survived and sustained on longevity albeit many wars were fought by their practitioners all along. Love and peace were the cardinal principles taught by them but some of the fundamentalists from among their followers take extreme positions in politics, economics and religion of late abetting crime, hatred, terrorism in their respective areas of influence.
Marxism in political economy had its sway for quite sometime in the 20th century. Its core thoughts and principles were followed in some parts of the globe with varied and mixed results of course. Of late it is practiced in limited number of countries in modified versions based on practical wisdom and contemporary contingencies. Pure communism as attempted in USSR is no more in existence. With a few reforms in approach and content, socialism with limited scope for individual enterprise and flexible international trade practices enabling mass employment of working class in mass production of exportable and consumable goods at comparatively cheap costs is prevalent in some countries like Russia and East European nations, Middle and South America and China.
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