Madhusudan_Das

176 Madhusudan Das:
written, my people will abhore me and give the verdict that Madhusudan
sold away himself to the English only for money'. But had the agreement
fruitified the course of the Tannery should have been a profitable one.
Secondly there is another side of the problem. We cannot consider Mr.
Das as an individual entity but we should judge him as a part of a system-
- a complex whole then prevailing in Orissa. The system formed out of an
interconnected relationship between society. Mr. Das, the enterprises and
the prevalent ideas and ideals. On 30.7.1924 Mr. Das wrote a letter to The
Samaj which was also supported by Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das on
2.8.1924 appealing to help the converted Joint Stock Company of the
Utkal Tannery, "I know there are men to spend away lakhs on litigation. I
know there are 30 Oriyas who can subscribe in 8 days only Rs.8,000/-
each...." etc. But nobody came forward. Had the shares been subscribed to
and the limited company came into reality again the course of
industrialisation in Orissa might have taken a different turn. Rather men
were there to oppose, because of personal reasons or because of the conflict
between the followers of the Congress and the Utkal Sammilani of which
Mr. Das was the foremost leader.
Why did he take up handicrafts like filigree and hide business ? It
was again his love for his country's art. craftmanship and poor artisans.
The popular feeling of any Indian, that why should raw hide be exported
and finished products be imported, worked in his mind. The Swadeshi
movement since 1905 in Bengal changed the outlook of the men there.
And as I have referred, in 1925 Dr. Pai became the spearhead of his people
in Manipal but Mr. Das was to meet a different end. His ideas and his
dreams and his sacrifices were not to be underrated as an individual, but
those were to be discounted, rectified and reoriented as a part of a system
that was in operation. He was even suspected as the head of a gang robbing
people of gold and silver so as to utilise as raw material in his Orissa
Artware enterprises.
The criteria of success of an enterprise are: (a) maximization of
profits, (b) rate of expansion, (c) actualisation of objectivities of the
entrepreneurs and (d) social and financial cost to all concerned in the
community. This is very pertinent to us. According to Belshaw:
In bringing facts to bear on this criterion, it is necessary to place
the activity of the entrepreneur in extremely wide and full cultural
and institutional framework, in order that credit and debit may
be assigned in the ledger" of social accounting. It is also necessary