Madhusudan_Das

178 Madhusudan Das:
social movements than with the economic regeneration of the country.
This was a subsidiary role he played in a circumscribed way nonetheless
as an entrepreneur. Had he made this role the primary and other roles
secondary, he would have changed the course of history of the State.
Roughly speaking from 1887 to 1921 virtually he was holding the destiny
of the land, he was looked upon as the sole leader. Stupendous economic
changes were taking place in India with the factory system in its feet with
cotton and jute mills in operation and even Iron and Steel production. 24
He was in Bengal - Calcutta, Serampore and other places he saw from
1866 to 1881 - where he saw his own Oriya labourers in pitiable condition.
In 1905 he started his Tannery whereas in 1907 Tata Iron & Steel Company
was started to exploit enormous iron mines in Orissa's Mayurbhanj whose
Maharaja was at his back and call by 1905. Along with the idea of Utkal
Sammilani in 1903, had he worked for a number of Joint Stock Concern
for setting up large scale industries, with the help of those patrons of the
Sammilani, economic regeneration would have become inevitable. There
would have been no paucity of funds and enthusiasm for the utilization
of the natural resources and development of human resources of Orissa. In
1868 Fakir Mohan Senapathy concieved of the P.M. Senapathy & Co..
printing press with a Rs.5/- share each for the purpose at developing
Oriya literature which became a reality at Balasore. 25 Secondly he focussed
his attention on producing goods not to be consumed by the mass--
artware, shoes from skins of reptiles, crocodiles and other queer animals
are not products to be consumed by the mass. But the need for economic
acceleration is to produce goods on a mass scale to meet the mass demand. 26
In 1905 he got a shuttle machine to his handloom sector but he could
have expanded the idea of starting cotton mills or jute mills or iron and
steel or some such industrial organizations like paper for utilizing the
raw materials of the State. What Mr. K.M.Panikar had said elsewhere may
be relevent here:.
...the desire to a return to a pure. Indian way of life based on
'Tapovans', village self-sufficiency and handicraft economics
based on the assumption that a life so ordered will be in the true
tradition of Spiritual India is itself meaningless as the life of new
India is already based on other principles... What India today
represents is the emergence of a new civilization and not merely
the continuation of the old one The inheritance from the West
is no less important in many fields. 27