The creation of a mass-produced, mass-consumption lifestyle, which defines "economic development", has always implied the loot, displacement, exploitation and murder of a periphery for the development of the centre. The intense social conflict produced by this resourcehungry, capital-intensive mode of development is visible in the militarisation of Bastar. But very few political thinkers have made these costs the centrepiece of their critique of capitalism. Rammanohar Lohia, like Mahatma Gandhi, was one who did so. Lohia's understanding of the centre-periphery relationship in the capitalist world system led him to struggle with the question of appropriate technology, one that accorded priority to equality over productivity, and encouraged decentralised governance and autonomous, connected villages.
