State and Government in Ancient India c24.18

c24.18

The ancient Indian state was not merely a tax-gathering corporation, interested only in preserving law and order. It is pleasing and surprising to find that the state in ancient India should have interested itself in a number of ministrant activities of the nation-building type, which are being undertaken by the modern governments only in relatively recent times. Private agencies, trade guilds and state departments worked side by side to promote national welfare without mutual jealousies. Mines were worked both by the state and private enterprise; guild banks and organisations often inspired greater confidence than the state treasuries. Private and guild concerns received subsidies, if they promoted national welfare. The state regarded itself as a trustee for the population as a whole, and usually contented itself by harmonising the conflicting interests of the different classes. It tried to keep the scale even between the capital and the labour, the employer and the employee, the producer and the consumer and the merchant and the purchaser by laying down suitable and stringent regulations for curbing the greed of the former and protecting the interests of the latter. Free India has embarked on the pattern of the mixed economy, as was the case with ancient India. We have however to see to it that the growing sphere of state socialism does not eliminate or cripple private and corporate enterprise. If the state runs the key industries and controls the rest, if it encourages the local bodies and city corporations also to enter the field of production and constructive nation-building activities, we shall have an economic structure, more or less similar to that in ancient India and likely to meet the needs of the time.