Term coined by J. C. Kumarappa for Gandhi’s approach to meeting material human needs. It is used as an umbrella term for an number of related concepts (or principles) in Gandhian thought. Namely these principles are:

• an economy based on needs rather than wants
• swadeshi (in the economic sense, localism and material self-sufficiency at the village level)
• economic decentralization
• cottage industry and the interdependence of small, local producers rather than dependence on mass production
• bread labor
• simplicity
• trusteeship (related to the spiritual idea of nonpossession)
• viewing material things as having three classes: 1) food, clothing, and shelter (of which it is everyone’s responsibility to make sure that all people have access, to or the society has failed) 2) the tools one keeps in order to do ones work (which are one’s personal responsibility to obtain, and which one should hold with an attitude of trusteeship, and 3) everything else, which is considered to be extra, that is, in the realm of ‘wants,’ rather than needs, and therefore inessential.

Resources:

E.F. Schumacher Society