In the vast landscape of Indian economic thought, few thinkers have attempted to bridge the spiritual and the material as boldly as Professor Jamshed Khaikusroo Mehta. Born in 1901 in Rajnandgaon, Mehta rose to become one of India’s most original economic philosophers, blending rigorous analytical thinking with deep spiritual inquiry. His work challenges the very foundations of Western economics, proposing that true human fulfillment lies not in the endless pursuit of wants but in their transcendence. For anyone interested in alternative economic visions-particularly those rooted in Gandhian principles-Mehta’s ideas remain strikingly relevant.
Table of Contents
- Economics as a spiritual and humanistic quest
- Wantlessness: the ultimate end of economics
- How to achieve wantlessness
- Diagnosing India’s economic problems
- Village-centered development
- The economics of non-violence
- Fasting as an economic concept
- Critique of state planning and material welfare
- Spiritual foundations for economic planning
Economics as a spiritual and humanistic quest
Unlike most economists who treat their discipline as a purely technical science concerned with markets and resource allocation, J.K. Mehta approached economics from a profoundly philosophical standpoint. He viewed the economist’s role not merely as analyzing production and consumption patterns but as studying humanity itself and its relationship with the universe.
Mehta believed that economists must philosophize and treat the philosophy of economics as their ultimate pursuit. His economic thinking was deeply influenced by Indian spiritual traditions, the Bhagavad Gita, and Gandhian philosophy-despite being Zoroastrian by birth. In his 1962 book A Philosophical Interpretation of Economics, he argued that economics cannot remain morally neutral. While Lionel Robbins famously claimed that economics is neutral between ends, Mehta disagreed fundamentally. For him, human beings inherently seek maximum welfare, and economics must acknowledge this moral dimension.
The economist, in Mehta’s vision, has a duty that extends beyond analyzing data. The ultimate purpose of economic inquiry should be to bring people together through philosophical understanding-to help humanity recognize deeper truths about itself. This humanistic approach placed Mehta outside the mainstream of academic economics, but it gave his work an enduring ethical depth.
Wantlessness: the ultimate end of economics
Mehta’s most distinctive contribution to economic thought is his theory of wantlessness. While Western economics assumes that human wants are unlimited and that economic progress means satisfying more of them, Mehta proposed the exact opposite: the true goal of economic life is to reach a state where wants themselves cease to exist.
This may sound counterintuitive, but Mehta’s logic is carefully constructed. He distinguished between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure comes from satisfying a want, but this satisfaction is temporary. Once a want is satisfied, new wants emerge-for luxuries that soon become necessities, for comforts that quickly feel inadequate. This creates what Mehta called a state of perpetual disequilibrium, an endless cycle of desire and temporary relief.
Happiness, by contrast, is not merely the removal of pain but a state in which pain does not exist at all. Maximum happiness occurs when pain is reduced to zero-when one has transcended the tormenting pressure of wants entirely. Mehta defined economics itself as the science that studies human behavior as an effort to minimize pain in the long run and reach the state of happiness through freedom from wants.
How to achieve wantlessness
Mehta was careful to clarify that wantlessness does not mean abstaining from eating, drinking, or earning income. The key lies in motivation: one should act with a selfless motive, earning not for personal accumulation but for the service of others whom one’s conscience wishes to help. This attitude secures not only individual happiness but contributes to social welfare.
According to Mehta, the individual striving for wantlessness must discipline bodily existence while understanding the temporary nature of satisfaction derived from multiplying wants beyond basic necessities. When we satisfy a want, he observed, we only quiet it temporarily. But when we order a want to quit-replacing lower desires with higher, nobler aspirations-we eliminate it entirely. One noble want, Mehta suggested, can kill several baser wants.
The practical implication is profound: a society oriented toward wantlessness would not need to generate ever-increasing quantities of goods, thereby avoiding resource scarcity and environmental degradation. In Mehta’s framework, there is no room for unsustainable resource use because there is no endless multiplication of wants driving consumption.
Diagnosing India’s economic problems
Despite his philosophical orientation, Mehta engaged seriously with the concrete economic challenges facing India. He accurately identified several fundamental problems: low output of produced goods, unequal distribution of national resources, dependence on foreign countries for machinery and manufactured goods, rising prices, and persistent unemployment.
Mehta advocated for a thorough revision of economic policies. He emphasized that planning must prioritize basic needs-food, clothing, and shelter-before pursuing industrial expansion. Agriculture, he argued, deserved significantly greater investment based on India’s own conditions and merits rather than imported models of development.
Village-centered development
Following Gandhi’s vision, Mehta appreciated an economic planning framework centered on villages. He believed that India’s development should emerge from its rural foundations rather than being imposed through rapid urbanization and heavy industrialization. This approach reflected his conviction that genuine development must align with a nation’s cultural and spiritual heritage rather than simply imitating Western industrial patterns.
Mehta called for careful utilization of resources, emphasizing that economic planning should not be guided solely by material metrics. The purpose of planning, he argued, is to ensure just redistribution of wealth and resources along with genuine equality-goals that require states to think with an eye on the ultimate end of human flourishing.
The economics of non-violence
Deeply influenced by Gandhi, Mehta developed what can be called an economics of non-violence. He believed that violent economic structures-systems based on exploitation, aggressive competition, and relentless industrial expansion-cause human unhappiness. As Mehta understood it, non-violence applies not only to physical actions but also to words and thoughts.
Non-violent economics, in his framework, means yielding to our environment rather than dominating it, freeing ourselves from the tyranny of wants, and embracing simple living. Mehta wrote that if we truly understood what non-violence meant, we would realize that happiness consists not in marching on the road to industrial development but in living a simple life.
Fasting as an economic concept
In one of his more unusual contributions, Mehta extended the concept of fasting to economic activity. Just as Gandhi used fasting to purify the soul, Mehta proposed that businesses could undertake a form of economic fasting. This would have two dimensions: a bodily fast, where a firm refrains from adding buildings, machinery, or excessive inventory; and a mental fast, where organizers think with piety rather than plotting to capture competitors’ markets or implementing efficiency improvements that cause unemployment.
This perspective reflects Mehta’s broader concern that economic growth as conventionally measured-population increase, wealth accumulation, per capita income-does not necessarily lead to moral progress. In fact, he suggested an inverse relationship between material growth and moral development. Development may bring material prosperity while leaving humanity morally impoverished.
Critique of state planning and material welfare
Mehta was sharply critical of how modern states approached economic planning. He lamented that rather than planning rationally for equitable wealth redistribution, states concentrated disproportionately on procuring armaments and spending vast sums on defense equipment. This represented a profound failure to focus on what truly matters for human welfare.
He particularly disapproved of measuring welfare and happiness through material consumption. The assumption that satisfying a larger number of wants leads to happiness contradicted, in his view, the wisdom of all world religions. Poverty, Mehta noted, is exalted in virtually every religious tradition, while a life of comfort and luxury is regarded as an obstacle to attaining ultimate spiritual ends.
Spiritual foundations for economic planning
Mehta called for a return to spiritual and ethical foundations in economic planning. The state, he believed, has a significant role in thinking and planning with the ultimate end in mind-not just material metrics but genuine human fulfillment. His concept of self-realization as ultimate happiness aligned closely with Gandhi’s spiritual approach, suggesting that economics divorced from ethics leads humanity astray.
In an era of environmental crisis and growing awareness of material consumption’s limits, Mehta’s insights anticipate contemporary discussions about sustainable development and degrowth. His vision resonates with current critiques of GDP as a measure of progress and with movements seeking to define well-being in terms beyond material accumulation.
What do you think? Can an economic system truly be built around the principle of reducing wants rather than satisfying them? And in a world facing resource depletion and climate change, might Mehta’s seemingly radical ideas actually offer practical guidance for sustainable living?
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