Thus swadeshi implies a paradigm shift in the sense that Thomas Kuhn gave to the term. The problem is reframed as a problem about loyalty. Something happens that is like a gestalt shift, like neural reprogramming; it changes the formulation of questions and answers. (22) At every fork in the road, people make the choice that is best for the community. Instead of seeing a property-controlling entrepreneur freely wandering the world shopping for the most profitable place to site an operation, through the lens of the new paradigm there appears a community deliberating on how best to meet its needs with its resources in a sustainable relationship to its environment. The identity of the actors changes. The context that gives meaning to the discourse changes. 

A good part of the need for a paradigm shift, not just a change in policy or a new economic model, comes from two reluctances. The first is the reluctance of consumers to pay more for inferior goods. A second is the reluctance of entrepreneurs to forego potential profits by running businesses in the countryside and hiring local people. Given that one needs to be able to see the world differently to propose a conceptual framework in which it would seem at all likely that these and other similar reluctances could be overcome, Gandhi was the man for the job. He was an outsider to modern economic society, quite capable of seeing the world differently. He came from a rural backwater town; his mother was a deeply religious woman who could not read; he grew up in an extended family packed into the rambling rooms of a single large house. Early in his life the vision of restoring ancient India as it was supposed to have been before the British conquest gripped his imagination. He was qualified as few highly educated people were to think outside the box. What appeared to be impossible to modern common sense appeared to be possible to Gandhi. On his return from South Africa in 1915 [verify date] he spent a year touring Indian villages, listening to the people, seeing how they lived. He was uniquely qualified to connect a vision of another possible world to a close empirical study of observed facts. 

But I have not finished my account of the paradigm shift I attribute to Gandhi, and I have so far left his swadeshi, or communitarian, paradigm in a non-functional form. A moment’s thought will show that the two reluctances described above quickly morph into impossibilities. Over a certain range the conscientious consumer can buy union label garments and eschew sweatshops. Beyond that range, there is not enough money in the consumer’s pocket. Over a certain range, an entrepreneur can cut profits in order to put community values first. There is even a considerable upside range over which businesses can make money being local, green, and socially responsible. (23) But beyond a certain point, businesses could only site operations at inconvenient locations, raise wages and incur other social costs by operating at a loss, in which case they could only remain in business until their capital was exhausted. (Gandhi acknowledged this point and held that business owners, as trustees, should take no more for themselves than the workers got, and that they should operate at zero profit rather than pay less than a living wage, but that they were not obligated to operate at a loss.) Similarly, over a certain range putting more money in the pockets of the poor allows them to get a larger share of the available goods, but there is a point –easily reached in India—where the money demand for wage goods exceeds the physical capacity to produce them. Similarly, too, over a certain range of population densities, traditional peoples can feed themselves sustainably generation after generation using traditional technologies. But in today’s densely populated world it takes scientists like Vandana Shiva to figure out sophisticated ways simultaneously to feed everybody and to preserve the soil for future generations. (Gandhi acknowledged this problem also. He advocated migration from the densely settled areas to sparsely areas.)