A moral economy

Daridranarayana. This is an image, a possibility with immense power. To think of the poor as God and, equally significantly, of God as poor is liberating. It liberates a society, a people and even an economy from the desire, need and expectation that all of us would one day be wealthy, even if unequally so.

It perhaps-only perhaps-frees religious congregations, organisations, sects and men and women who lead these from the anxiety to prosper materially. It frees all of us from the belief that things are the only true measure of human worth and their acquisition the only worthy purushartha, endeavour.

Daridranarayana's philosophical double is Satyanarayana, Truth as God. MK Gandhi, by creating an equivalence between God as poor/ poor as God and Truth as God, restored to the idea of God its original transformative and liberating potential. This very possibility turned economics and