Who Was Fritz Schumacher? by Diana Schumacher E F Schumacher, the economist-philosopher, was born 100 years ago this year. The following article is edited from a longer paper written for the Schumacher Society in 2008. Ernst Friedrich (Fritz) Schumacher was an unlikely pioneer of the Green Movement. He was born in Bonn in 1911, studied at Oxford […]

Timeless Inspirator: Reliving Gandhi Edited by Raghunath Mashelkar Sakal Publications 2010 HB pp369 ISBN 978 93 80571 48 5   This is a book on Gandhi that looks much more to the future than to the past. It takes the form of 45 short essays by ‘superachievers’ (almost all Indian). The idea came from the editor who […]

George Paxton has persuaded me to share some thoughts on developing our Gandhi Foundation Trustees’ discussion on monetary reform. I am clearly no academic; merely an ordinary member of the public who has become increasingly angry over the financial mess that is causing so much misery and the injustice of handing on such toxic chaos […]

According to Lord Griffiths, the Conservative peer and Vice-Chairman of investment bank Goldman Sachs “we have to accept that inequality is a way of achieving greater opportunity and prosperity for all”. Has he hit on a clever, counter-intuitive truth ? No, he is just plain wrong. In their book The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and […]

Fukuoka, the Japanese author of One Straw Revolution which inspired many a person all over the world to convert to Natural Farming, is no more. He passed away at the age of 95 on the 16th August, 2008. I read this famous book, a third time, after a gap of 10-15 years, for writing this […]

Due to various banking crises the British media have been more than usually interested in recent months in directors’ and CEOs’ bonuses and salaries. These outrageously high incomes are not confined of course to bankers but are normal among large companies. The majority of employees of these businesses might receive around £20,000 per year while […]

The story of Adam and Eve teaches us about the nature of work: before the Fall, humanity existed in harmony with nature, and our work was to tend the Garden; afterwards our work became a burden and source of suffering, as we found ourselves struggling against nature. The Jewish psychoanalyst Erich Fromm describes the Fall […]