Gandhi and the Salt March

Organizations such as Occupy Wall Street figure to be harbingers of thousands of similar organizations in coming decades. The ones that will likely be successful will probably follow much of what Mahatma Gandhi did, beginning around 1915, which resulted in a massive change in government, in society and even in the people of India. Until recently, I had not realized that several dozen of my web-pages seem to clearly follow a Gandhi-esque approach. Superficially, they present descriptions of useful devices which are generally energy-related. But now I realize that those presentations generally are like what Gandhi might have promoted, which are SOLUTIONS and MOTIVATIONS for personal complications of individuals, where individuals might either find local materials and build their own device or they might buy a completed device from a friend or neighbor (LOCALLY).

Where, like in India in the 1920s, a very small number of very wealthy and powerful men now make nearly all the important decisions for each and every family and person. These men in America are essentially limited to the Members of the US Congress, the very top Executives of the world's few hundred giant mega-Conglomerate Corporations, and the Lobbyists in Washington which connect these two groups. No one else's opinion or concerns or ideas seem to count at all!

Around 1915 and later, Gandhi watched as the British government (many thousands of miles away) made absolute and universal decisions regarding the entire population of India, but Gandhi also noticed that Indian leaders seemed absolutely powerless to do anything about the situation.

In 1919, the British government passed the Rowlatt Acts, which imposed many restrictions on civil liberties. Gandhi got the Indian leaders to organize a series of nonviolent acts of resistance. Gandhi called these acts satyagraha, which is Sanskrit for "truth and firmness". There were nationwide work stoppages and many similar acts of protest.

One of those protests occurred in Amritsar, on April 13, 1919, in a public square, which also happened to be the day of a Hindu festival there. Thousands of unarmed protesters and pilgrims filled the square. With no warning whatever, British troops opened fire on those thousands of unarmed peaceful people, and nearly 400 innocent and peaceful Indian people were murdered that day.

Whatever the intention was of the British government or the British troops that day, the entire world quickly learned of the horrible massacre, and it provided the ideal backdrop for the many following protest movements (mostly organized by Gandhi) over following years. The British had made such a horrible blunder that day that their possible control of the future of India was then probably doomed. But rather than any military action against British people or troops, Gandhi was centrally effective in organizing many peaceful and nonviolent protests. Gandhi got most of the Indian people to participate in such things as massive boycotts of British goods (along the theme of the American Boston Tea Party of 160 years earlier), Withdrawing many tens of thousands of Indian children from British schools, having many thousands of Indian bureaucrats resign from government service, and much more.

After spending some years in British prison, Gandhi was released and he later organized a far more massive civil disobedience. Gandhi had noted that all Indian people needed salt to live, but the British government had passed laws where no Indian people were allowed to make their own salt. This benefitted British companies that made and sold salt, and also the government which imposed heavy taxes on salt.

Gandhi's response was to organize a two-hundred-mile march to the Arabian Sea, where many tens of thousands of Indians participated. Once at the Sea, Gandhi taught them all how to make salt by evaporating seawater (an extremely simple process). The British government sent tens of thousands of Indian people to jail, including Gandhi, over this clear (nonviolent) violation of the strict government laws regarding such things.

Even though Gandhi and thousands of others were put in prison, the people of India continued to refuse to pay the salt tax. This eliminated a large amount of cash flow for the British government of India. By 1931, the British conceded to Gandhi and released him from prison, where Gandhi then instructed the people of India to stop their non-compliance regarding taxes. But the point was well made to the British politicians regarding Gandhi and his amazingly loyal following.

The British government soon realized that it was outmatched by Gandhi and the many hundreds of millions of Indian people who were willing to do whatever Gandhi suggested. By 1935, the British Parliament approved the Government of India Act, which never went into effect but significant autonomy developed by April 1937. The British government seemed to be slow learners, and in 1942, Gandhi announced a "Quit India" movement which tried to encourage the British to withdraw from India or face even larger civil disobedience. Gandhi and many other were again put in prison, into 1944.

Unpleasant events followed in 1946, where riots broke out between Muslims and Hindus throughout India. But the end result of many of the things that Gandhi had organized finally managed to get the British to relinquish their control in 1947.

India continued to have its problems, mostly related to the many disagreements between its Hindu and Muslim populations, and the country later became three countries, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Gandhi was assassinated in January 1949, so his influence could no longer aid in finding resolutions, except in that people around the world studied every detail of Gandhi's life to try to learn his many secrets of social and political success, including Martin Luther King, Jr in the United States.

Currently, YOU regularly send money to a giant corporation which makes electricity to sell to you. You also send money to another giant corporation which provides you with the fuel to heat your house. You also might be extremely dependent on Government Welfare programs which send you money if you are unemployed, or elderly, or in need of food or of money to send children to school, or Disabled.

It turns out that an amazingly small number of (men) have incredible control over much of your daily life! Maybe the details are a little different from India in the 1920s, but the overall situation is much the same.

So now imagine that you use the information provided in these web-pages and build yourself a device which can provide all of your electricity. And another device which can heat your house without needing to buy any fossil fuels. And another system to provide wonderfully effective air conditioning for your house. And other devices to make and provide domestic hot water for you, and food refrigeration and freezing without needing to pay for electricity to run a refrigerator.

I recognize that there is a lot of CONVENIENCE in being able to have the existing furnaces and air conditioners and water heaters and refrigerators. As long as you have lots of available money to pay those bills, fine! Through the 1950s and into the 2000s, it was commonly true that MOST people earned enough paycheck money where these bills had become considered as necessary costs of living.

But the United States lived through the 1930s when that was not the case. Many millions of people were unemployed and desperately poor, and so they lived without heat or often even food. There is every indication that we are very near a precipice where we might again be in that situation. Politicians say that the Unemployment Rate is currently around 8.2%, but they very intentionally leave out the many millions of people who have given up trying to find a job, where many experts say that the more correct number is actually around 18% Unemployed. In the 1930s, the Unemployment Rate was around 25%, so we are frighteningly close to duplicating that era. Politicians aggressively insist on never referring to a Depression and instead calling our situation a "Recession", which is considered to be a less terrifying word.

Therefore, having made these devices FOR YOURSELF (at minimal cost) your family budget now has an extra $4,000 or more (every year) which you had traditionally always given to giant corporations to provide services which you consider to be required.

Note that you will be cozy warm in winter and wonderfully cooled in summer and with no realistic limits on your electricity usage, meaning the QUALITY of your life will NOT have suffered at all (except for having the weight of an extra $4,000 to carry around each year in your pocket!)

I recognize that there might be some people who LIKE to be sending a lot of money to Executives who receive $80,000,000 each year for their salary. Personally, I cannot imagine how many hours they actually spend each year regarding making hard decisions. If there IS some matter which they need to address, they simply assign underlings to do the research and the thinking and to send him a (brief) Report on what he needs to know. Does the Executive really DESERVE to be paid $80,000,000 each year for that??? I guess I could rationalize ONE million per year, even for extremely productive people such as a Steve Jobs.

But those Executives seem to consider all of this as though it is a Board Game like Monopoly, where there is only a single goal, to make more and more and more profits, both to satisfy Investors and to supposedly justify their own Salaries. AND because they are aware of what each other receive every year, and there is a male ego thing about receiving the most. We see the same in professional sports teams. Does ANYONE actually deserve to be given a $100 million contract to PLAY A GAME??? In a different Universe, they would be out in the Alley playing in a pick-up game of basketball or in a game of stickball or kicking a soccer ball around.

The Occupy Wall Street movement arose with this basic goal, but they have never developed any actual PLAN by which they might accomplish most of the lofty goals they aspire to. They seem to have PART of the idea, but they need a Gandhi to explain to them what they need to do next!

So now imagine that not just YOU builds and uses an HG 3a device to heat your home, using the cut lawn grass and dead leaves from your own property, but so do each of the 75,000,000 homeowners in the USA. Consider the consequences of THAT!

First, the 700 gallons of home heating oil that each home used to use is now not needed, nor is the 1000 Therms of natural gas, each winter. When these numbers are multiplied by 75,000,000 homes, it is a spectacular reduction in the usage of fossil fuels! (a) Nearly all IMPORTED oil and natural gas would no longer be needed. That would also improve our Trade Deficits with many countries. But it would be an enormous improvement in the Environment, as far less carbon dioxide will be added into the Earth's atmosphere. (b) Those 75 million families would each have an extra several thousand dollars available to spend, meaning that our Economy would have an extra $150 billion to $400 billion flowing around which did not have to get spent for Utilities!

(c) Now consider the impact on those giant Corporations. Instead of having a cash flow of hundreds of billions of dollars each year, their Corporate budgets might realistically be only one percent of that much. They would have to be a lot more aware of expenditures than is true today. Specifically, where they are now comfortable in giving billions of dollars to Lobbyists on K Street to be spread around to Congress Members, if THEIR Corporate cash flow drops to only 1% (because of such reduced demand for their natural gas and electricity, etc), doesn't that imply that Congress might no longer have all their Sugar Daddies financing their Political Campaigns and their luxury vacations and their summer homes? The concept here is that IF the effect of those unlimited-funds lobbyists were reduced or gone, maybe Congress would be forced to actually care about NORMAL PEOPLE? (Sort of the theme of Occupy Wall Street and their 99% emphasis?)

(d) And finally, those Corporate Executives that receive their $80 million annual salaries? If YOU (and your 75 million friends and neighbors) stopped buying electricity and natural gas and home heating oil, maybe those mega-Corporations would sort of DRY UP???

If a few hundred thousand Indian people had simply learned how to make their own salt, the political and social effects on the British government would have been so small that they could have ignored it. But Gandhi knew that if he TAUGHT hundreds of millions of Indian people WHY they should act in certain ways, the effect would be so enormous that no government or Corporation could stand up against the people.

I believe that THAT is a far more important reason for my web-pages than simply providing you some instructions to build something. Like the Indian people with Gandhi's influence, I feel that we American people might entirely repair enormous problems that our society has, including reducing the influence of a handful of Corporate Executives who are far too powerful and wealthy today, and including a government and Congress which needs to be taught some lessons regarding exactly WHERE the actual power is in America, in the people.

A Bigger Picture

In general, the common people have not had any capabilities of enabling or encouraging that central cadre of leaders to voluntarily give up things that they feel they earned and deserve.

For thousands of years, remote villages in China have had a popular saying, (paraphrased here) "The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away." The point was that as long as they would not do anything really bad, it would have been too inconvenient (and expensive) for the Emperor to amass an army and send it to a distant village which is being slightly annoying. Sot the circumstances were that most of remote China was essentially free to say or do or think pretty much anything they wished, which was as comfortable an environment as they could hope for, essentially autonomy. It would only be when someone got carried away and said or did something that concerned the Emperor that an army would come and devastate them.

That approach does not really work any more. With very mobile armies and easy and quick communications today, "the Emperor" would know nearly instantly when even the seeds of unrest might be spoken. In addition, communication by the Internet and by cel-phones has inter-threaded all our world's communities.

In any case, powerful businessmen and governmental leaders are essentially free to act however they wish. Consider Libya. For forty years, the people of Libya were badly treated by Gaddafi and his government. The people all KNEW what the problems were. But some fraction of the people still supported Gaddafi.

But realizing that there IS a problem, and being able to do something about it, are usually two VERY different things!

The leaders HAVE everything they have ever dreamed of, so they have absolutely no motivation to want to change anything, or give up anything.

Historically, this has resulted in either of two events. If the people believe that there are MANY people involved, then a Civil War has tended to develop. IF there are a small number of people who believe that there are a small number of people involved (which are often competitors for power or wealth), then they might try to create a coup de etat. In both cases, the structure of the government can be extremely disrupted, and there is a situation where there is no leadership at all.

We see this in both Libya and Egypt, where after the leaders were deposed, no one person is in complete enough control to impose a new leadership. There ARE exceptions to this. The (second) Revolution in Russia in 1917 had Lenin and friends, who imposed the Communist leadership. In 1959, Cuba had Castro take control.

Such transitions are generally somewhat unpleasant. If power gets transferred to one individual, as with Lenin or Castro or hundreds of others, not too much usually changes, as the new guys had usually spent their lives lusting over power and wealth and authority, and now that they have it, the well-being of the people is rarely a major concern to them. If there is a power-vacuum, as there currently is in Libya and Egypt (and somewhat in Iraq), then anyone with a loud voice argues for his own assumptions and desires, and reaching agreement on almost anything tends not to occur. Americans might notice that the above-described situation currently exists in the Congress of the United States, where each of two political parties has built massive bureaucracies and established great power and wealth, and both groups seem terrified that if they would ever make any negotiations or concessions with the other side, they might be giving up some power or authority. So they are very satisfied with doing nothing! It is rather an amazing choice, in a country where THE PEOPLE theoretically have the power. But the politicians have learned that Incumbant Members of Congress have enormous advantages regarding getting to be re-elected, and especially now that the Supreme Court has allowed rich and powerful businesses to give unlimited amounts of money, in total secrecy, to assist any Incumbant politician to make sure of being re-elected. The amazing result is a Congress which has shown that it is incapable of doing even very basic things, such as agreeing to finance the Government. They almost seem to consider it to be some sort of silly game where they take the entire country to the very brink of total devastation and destruction, because they claim to be maintaining some personal viewpoints.

Like in countless historical situations where a government and business leadership has become an Oligarchy, the United States is essentially there. Much of it has been voluntary, where we have permitted an amazingly small handful of mega-Corporations to buy up virtually any business that seems capable of earning profits, where all the power of business and industry is now in terrifying few hands. President Eisenhower told us to be concerned about the Military-Industrial Complex, but we built it anyway!

In any Oligarchy, the people who HAVE power and authority choose to exclusively act to preserve and maintain THEIR OWN power and authority, where the condition of the people is ignored completely in that process.

In recent history, the will of the people is rarely heard, and then only when they have become so absolutely disgusted by the behavior or actions of some Corporate business or some Government leader. Occasionally, the business or the government then actually acts to demote or transfer a face which had gotten into the News. The Roman Catholic Church seems to present a textbook example of this. When aberrant Catholic Priests were proven (beginning in the 1970s) to have been abusing small children, a Bishop would make sure that no information ever got out to the public, and the Bishop would simply transfer the offending Priest to a different Parish! Over and over and over, apparently thousands of times. Tens of thousands of new and unsuspecting children were then exposed to be absued by those aberrant Priests. And then recently, one of the Bishops who had been the worst regarding moving these abberrant Priests around, who might have been realistically put in prison for abetting crimes? No, the Catholic Pope decided to TRANSFER that Bishop to the Vatican.

How can Roman Catholics feel any confidence in their Church which does and condones these sorts of behaviors and decisions? The Catholic Members must obviously know that many decisions were made simply to PRESERVE the Oligarchy which runs the Catholic Church. The Church repeatedly made it abundantly clear that they had absolutely no concern about millions of children of Catholic families.

WILL the Membership of the Roman Catholic Church stage a Civil War or try a coup? I hope not, but they actually can't because they do not have any STRUCTURE where they could construct enough power to realistically confront that group of old Catholic men who adamantly insist on preserving their oligarchy within that Church.

In that case, the leadership of the Catholic Church is NOT going to significantly change, especially with the current Pope. Maybe if they would still have had the previous Pope, John Paul II, their Church might actually learn and grow. But they seem to insist on dempnstrating that they are a dinosaur, essentially impossible to change. The ONLY weapon that the Members have is that of LEAVING the Church. If Gandhi was around today (and was a Catholic), he might have created a New Church which actually cared about the people, and gotten those 700 million Catholics to leave the existing Church to go into a more vibrant atmosphere that it certainly should be capable of being. Once most of the Members had left, the Tithes would be so much smaller that the leadership of the Catholic Church would FINALLY have to start thinking about making some changes, but by then it would be far too late.Mo< Examples of these situations exist at all levels. I will briefly mention a small example. Due to some very popular movies of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Fort Lauderdale Florida became THE Spring Break destination for College students each year. The businesses in Fort Lauderdale prospered tremendously, and shop owners told me that they made more profits in those three weeks than in the entire rest of the year. They had a Goose that had laid a Golden Egg for them!

But College students can get loud, and the small government of Fort Lauderdale decided that they would massively increase parking fees (from a quarter to more than five dollars for out-of-state residents) and they changed all the small signs on the beach to indicate that parking at the meters was only good to 9 pm. In an incredibly stupid move, the City government would have dozens of tow trucks standing by so that at 9:01 pm,, hundreds of cars would be towed away, where obscene parking fines, towing fees and storage fees faced anyone who later tried to redeem their car.

I suppose it made their city quiet, but the next Spring was really amazing. Essentially NO College students arrived. The city's businesses were mostly wiped out by the missing huge profits they had previously counted on.

Amusingly, some years later, Fort Lauderdale rescinded most of the laws they had passed, but College kids had already discovered that Daytona Beach and South Padre Island in Texas, were great destinations.

I mention this example here as being one of the few times I am aware of where the LEADERSHIP eventually realized their earlier foolishness in ignoring the effects and well-being of the people. But the fact that they were in an Oligarchy, and therefore incapable of ever making any errors, caused them to take too many years before correcting their own foolish decisions, and they had killed their Goose.

Gandhi came up with an entirely new approach, that of PEACEFUL demonstrations and actions. I think that Gandhi knew that each time the British put thousands of PEACEFUL people into jail, the many millions of Indian people were watching.

Gandhi had discovered a new method of the people showing their will, without the violence of a military insurrection, and without the instability that generally follows Revolutions.

So by the time Gandhi led the Salt March in 1930, the stage was set for really getting the attention of the British government in several ways. He was showing that if 480 million people decided to make their own salt, and not pay taxes on salt purchases, the financial cash-flow impact on the British government and many of its businesses could be significant. Britain itself was still recovering from the costs of World War I, and they were also having many costs due to Hitler's rising power, so cash-flow problems in India were significant to them. In addition, Gandhi had gotten the Indian people to non-violently demonstrate their people-power in various other ways. This all put immense pressure on the British, financially, politically, socially, and regarding their image in the world. I guess I am suggesting that we again find ourselves in a situation where Gandhi's methods might provide the answers which we need.

The recent Occupy Wall Street movement certainly got the first step done pretty well. They got the attention that is needed. But unfortunately, OWS does not seem to actually have a plan to follow up with!

They (and/or following Movements that will come) need to have a follow-up plan. Wall Street is not really worried about being eliminated in a Revolution or by a coup. They also are clearly comfortable that their very close friends in Congress are not going to do anything that would impose any hardships on anyone in Wall Street.

What I am saying is that YOU need to become involved.

Somehow.

For example, an obvious thought to me is for millions of small investors to transfer their transactions to a Stock Market in London or in Germany or in France or elsewhere. The world's stock markets are so intimately involved today that if there are profits or losses, within seconds, the Tokyo and Australian Stock Market know about them and they react, much like the NYSE would.

With excellent world communications, do you really NEED to have a Trader on Wall Street? Couldn't a good Trader in Australia be just as good? Actually, probably BETTER, because he would probably be far more motivated to care about YOU as an investor, rather than only really caring about the Mutual Funds and such where Wall Street Traders make their million dollar commissions?

Would THAT get Wall Street's attention? Maybe, maybe not. But there are many people who operate Mutual Funds who would see that THE PEOPLE are speaking out, and I could imagine some of them contacting Australia or the Singapore Market to consider making their trades there.

See the point? Logical arguments or compassionate arguments would probably have NO effect on Wall Street. Neither would any kinds of threats of government regulation. But if their cash-flow would suddenly dry up, each Trader would suddenly be getting far fewer commissions. Actually, it would not surprise me if some Chinese Traders appeared who wanted far smaller Commissions, for equally as talented and effective trades???

Would Wall Street then VOLUNTARILY make drastic changes that we all hope for? It seems to me that they might. But if they did not, then Traders in London and dozens of other world cities might thrive on what would be a windfall for them, and YOU would likely get better and more personal service, at lower costs. It might resemble the Fort Lauderdale situation discussed above, where they could either BECOME CENTERED ON THE SMALL INVESTORS or they could have a lot more free time!

Could this straighen out our aberrant Congress? I don't know.

But I find it astounding that when a small town in the US has a street that needs serious repairs, the process by which anything gets done is amazing. They do NOT actually repair it themselves, as they see that as being too expensive to consider, so they do nothing! But they ASK the Federal government to authorize it. IF an authorization is Granted, then the Federal Government agrees to provide 90% of the total cost, and THEN the town decides to do the repairs! I know this for a fact, as the street my house is on was in dire need of being re-paved for a number of years. I was always told that the Federal government had not authorized the funds. WE as taxpayers in this town, send out tax money to the Federal government in DC, and then IF the bureaucrats there feel good, they agree to send some of it back to this town to do needed work. What a stupid system! I suppose it allows Washington to employ thousands of more bureaucrats to make reports and to authorize more paperwork for the ultimate benefit of THE PEOPLE.

Again, the NGOs are now enormous bureaucracies, where their primary focus is on making sure that their own NGO (and their own jobs) are preserved, and any actual benefit for people barely seems to enter the picture! It certainly would have been EASY for a bureaucrat in any of those NGOs that I contacted, to provide me with a few precise locations to send pumps to. They CHOSE not to BECAUSE they are such enormous (and impersonal) bureaucracies.

The ONLY subject that any of them had any interest in was in whether I was going to SEND MONEY TO THEM. Several of them seemed to nearly be automated robots in their constant reference to me sending in money.

The fact that I had made those long-distance call in order to try to save human lives, was clearly irrelevant to any of them.

By the way, WILL I ever again give any Donations to any of those NGOs? NOT A CHANCE!

This page - - - - is at
This subject presentation was last updated on - -

index.html

index.html