Sarvodaya, Compared With Utilitarianism

The four points of difference

1. The good of all against the good of the greatest number

Utilitarianism maximises a total, and a total can be increased while some people are made worse off.

Sarvodaya requires the good of all, so an arrangement that benefits ninety and harms ten has failed, whatever the arithmetic.

Gandhi's objection stated exactly. The formula of the greatest good of the greatest number means, in practice, that the interest of the greatest number may be secured at the cost of the rest, and he regarded the willingness to write off a minority as the doctrine's essential defect rather than an incidental one.

2. Means and ends

Utilitarianism is consequentialist: the means are justified by the end, and any means producing the best consequences is required.

Gandhi holds that means and ends are inseparable, and that there is the same connection between them as between the seed and the tree. A good end cannot be reached by bad means, so the doctrine that the end justifies the means is precisely what he rejects.

This is the deepest difference and it is structural. Utilitarianism is a theory about ends; Gandhi denies that ends can be assessed apart from means.

3. What the good is

Utilitarianism measures happiness, understood as pleasure or preference satisfaction.

Sarvodaya is not about satisfaction at all. Its measure is whether people are able to live a decent, self-respecting and self-reliant life, which includes work, dignity, self-control and the absence of dependence. A person who is comfortable and dependent has not achieved it, and a person who is poor and self-reliant may have.

4. Quantity against non-violence

Utilitarianism permits harming a few for the benefit of many, and the harm is a cost to be weighed.

Sarvodaya rests on ahimsa, so harm is not an item in a calculation at all. There is no quantity of benefit that makes injuring a person acceptable.

What Sarvodaya proposes in practice

An answer that gives the programme is stronger than one that stays with the principle.

Trusteeship. Wealth is held in trust for the community rather than owned absolutely, so the holder's title is conditional on use for the general good. Gandhi's answer both to unlimited private property and to expropriation.

Decentralisation and village self-sufficiency, which is Gram Swaraj at chapter 870.

Bread labour, the proposition that everybody should do some physical work.

Swadeshi, the preference for local production and local exchange.

The dignity of manual work, which in India is inseparable from the attack on caste, since the degradation of labour and the degradation of those who perform it are the same fact.

Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan movement, which asked landowners to give land voluntarily for redistribution, was the largest attempt to put Sarvodaya into practice, and its results, considerable in area donated and much less in land actually redistributed and cultivated, are a fair test of the method.

The criticisms of Sarvodaya

It is not a decision procedure. A government must sometimes choose between options, all of which harm somebody: a road, a dam, a hospital's location. Sarvodaya says the good of all, and does not say what to do when that is unavailable.

It has no way to compare. Utilitarianism at least offers a method. Antyodaya tells you to look at the poorest, which is a powerful corrective and not a way of choosing between two schemes both of which help the poorest differently.

Trusteeship depends on the goodwill of the wealthy. This is Ambedkar's objection in its economic form: a principle which asks those who hold to hold for others leaves them holding, and leaves the timing and extent of any concession to them.

Its economics are contested. Village self-sufficiency and the preference for handicraft are argued to condemn people to low productivity and to poverty, and this was the substance of Nehru's disagreement with Gandhi.

It is demanding to the point of impracticality, requiring a change in individual conduct that most people will not make.

The honest assessment

The comparison is not best answered by declaring a winner, and the strongest conclusion is this.

Sarvodaya identifies exactly the right defect. Chapter 660 showed that aggregation is where utilitarianism is weakest, and Antyodaya is a direct answer to it.

Utilitarianism has the method Sarvodaya lacks. A government needs a way to compare options, and cost benefit analysis is the only workable one.

The Indian Constitution, in effect, does what the comparison suggests. It permits schemes justified by their aggregate benefit and requires them to answer to a floor: the Directive Principles direct the State to secure an adequate means of livelihood for all, to raise nutrition and public health, and to promote with special care the interests of the weaker sections. That is aggregation working above a floor set by the position of the worst off, which is the practical reconciliation of the two doctrines.

A worked example

A State must choose between two irrigation schemes with the same budget.

Scheme A, a large dam, will irrigate a hundred thousand hectares belonging mostly to medium and large farmers, will raise agricultural output substantially, and will submerge eleven villages whose four thousand residents will be resettled with compensation.

Scheme B, several thousand small check dams and wells, will irrigate forty thousand hectares belonging mostly to small and marginal farmers, will raise output much less, and will displace nobody.

The utilitarian answer. A produces more output, benefits more land, and its cost, the displacement of four thousand people, is compensable. A wins on aggregate, and a careful utilitarian will insist that the compensation be real, which is a genuine contribution.

The Sarvodaya answer. Ask about the poorest. The four thousand displaced are among the poorest people affected by either scheme, and they will lose their land, their village and their occupation, none of which compensation restores. The small farmers who gain under B are also among the poorest. Antyodaya therefore points clearly to B, and it points there even though B produces less.

Where the comparison becomes interesting. Suppose the displaced four thousand are properly resettled with land of equal quality, with their village rebuilt, and with a share of the irrigation the dam produces. A utilitarian regards that as making A better still. A Sarvodaya answer can accept it too, because the objection was never to the aggregate but to the sacrifice, and if there is no sacrifice the objection falls away.

That last move is what a good answer ends with: Sarvodaya's demand is not that the total be ignored but that nobody be written off, and a scheme which meets that demand is not objectionable on Gandhian grounds merely because it is large.

Distinctions that carry marks

What this comparison is NOT

It is not a difference of emphasis. Gandhi's objection is to a specific structural feature, aggregation, and it is the feature chapter 660 identifies as the doctrine's weakest.

Sarvodaya is not a variety of utilitarianism with a bigger number. Changing "the greatest number" to "all" changes the logic completely, because a total can be maximised and a universal condition cannot be traded against.

It is not anti-modern by necessity. The trusteeship and Antyodaya principles are compatible with large-scale production if the burden is not concentrated on the powerless, as the worked example shows.

Gandhi is not saying consequences do not matter. He is saying that a consequence obtained by wrong means is not the consequence intended, which is a claim about consequences rather than an indifference to them.

Quick revision

1. Sarvodaya is sarva plus udaya, the rise of all. Gandhi coined it as the title of his 1908 Gujarati rendering of Ruskin's Unto This Last.
2. Ruskin's three lessons as Gandhi took them: the good of the individual is contained in the good of all; a lawyer's work has the same value as a barber's; and the life of labour is the life worth living.
3. Antyodaya, the rise of the last, is the operative decision rule: recall the face of the poorest and weakest person you have seen and ask whether the step will be of any use to them and restore control over their own life.
4. Four differences: the good of all against the greatest number; means and ends inseparable against the end justifying the means; a decent self-reliant life against satisfaction; and ahimsa excluding harm rather than weighing it.
5. The programme: trusteeship, decentralisation and Gram Swaraj, bread labour, swadeshi, the dignity of manual work, and Bhoodan as the largest attempt to apply it.
6. Criticisms: it is not a decision procedure; it cannot compare options; trusteeship depends on the goodwill of the wealthy, which is Ambedkar's objection; its economics are contested, which was Nehru's disagreement; and it is demanding to the point of impracticality.
7. The assessment: Sarvodaya identifies exactly the right defect and lacks a method; utilitarianism has the method and the defect; and the Indian Constitution's Directive Principles are aggregation working above a floor set by the position of the worst off.
8. The parallel to notice: Rawls's difference principle, reached from an entirely different direction.

Test yourself

1. What is Sarvodaya, and where does the term come from? It is Gandhi's social ideal, formed from sarva, all, and udaya, rise, meaning the welfare or uplift of all without exception. He coined it as the title of his 1908 Gujarati rendering of Ruskin's Unto This Last, from which he said he took three lessons: that the good of the individual is contained in the good of all; that a lawyer's work has the same value as a barber's, all having the same right to earn their livelihood from their work; and that the life of labour, of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman, is the life worth living.

2. State Gandhi's objection to the utilitarian formula. That the greatest good of the greatest number means, in practice, that the interest of the greatest number may be secured at the cost of the remainder, and that a doctrine willing to write off a minority is defective in its essential structure rather than in its application. The objection is precise and is directed at aggregation, which is the component that permits gains to some to offset losses to others and which supplies no threshold at which a burden becomes impermissible.

3. What is Antyodaya, and why is it more than a sentiment? It is the rise of the last, and Gandhi expressed it as a rule for decision: when in doubt, recall the face of the poorest and weakest person you have seen and ask whether the step contemplated will be of any use to them and will restore to them control over their own life and destiny. It is more than a sentiment because it is a decision rule and it is the exact inverse of aggregation: the calculus asks what the total is, and Antyodaya asks what has happened to the person at the bottom, so a scheme which raises the total while leaving the poorest where they were fails one test and passes the other.

4. Compare the two doctrines on means and ends. Utilitarianism is consequentialist: the rightness of an act depends entirely on its effects, so any means producing the best consequences is not merely permitted but required, and the end justifies the means. Gandhi holds that means and ends are inseparable, with the same connection between them as between the seed and the tree, so that a good end cannot be reached by bad means. This is the deepest of the differences and it is structural, since utilitarianism is a theory about ends while Gandhi denies that ends can be assessed apart from the means used to reach them.

5. What is the honest assessment of the comparison? That each supplies what the other lacks. Sarvodaya identifies precisely the defect that the criticism of utilitarianism establishes independently, namely that aggregation permits people to be written off, and Antyodaya answers it directly. Utilitarianism supplies the comparative method that Sarvodaya does not have, and a government choosing between options needs one. The Indian Constitution occupies the reconciliation: schemes may be justified by aggregate benefit, and the Directive Principles require an adequate means of livelihood for all, improved nutrition and public health, and special care for the weaker sections, which is aggregation operating above a floor set by the position of the worst off.