PROFESSOR ATUL K. SHAH www.atulkshah.co.uk
Globally renowned expert advisor and broadcaster on culture, accounting, finance, business ethics, holistic education and leadership
AI suggests a new approach drawing from work of Professor Atul K. Shah
A call for cultural depth, ethical renewal, and planetary stewardship
1. The Crisis of Thin Knowledge
Modern economics and finance present themselves as scientific, rigorous, and objective. Yet at their core, they are built on impoverished foundations. They assume that human beings are rational maximisers of self-interest, that markets are neutral instruments of coordination, and that wealth can be reduced to numbers on a balance sheet. This narrow vision has allowed economics to gain prestige and influence across the world. But prestige is not the same as wisdom.
Economics today is philosophically thin. It has cut itself loose from the moral philosophy and cultural traditions that once grounded its enquiry. Adam Smith wrote of sympathy and moral sentiments, yet today’s economics courses rarely teach ethics, history, or culture. Finance, once tied to stewardship, community, and reputation, is now dominated by speculative trading, short-term extraction, and a relentless pursuit of returns.
This ignorance is not a trivial omission. It has consequences: inequality, ecological devastation, financial crises, and the hollowing out of community life. Economics and finance in their current forms are civilizationally illiterate—blind to the complexity of cultures, the plurality of values, and the interdependence of life.
2. The Dharmic Perspective
Against this background, Dharmic wisdom offers a profound alternative. In the Indian philosophical tradition, wealth (artha) is not an end in itself but one of the four purusharthas—the human goals of life—balanced by dharma (ethics and duty), kama (creativity and desire), and moksha (liberation). Wealth is meaningful only when pursued within the framework of responsibility, restraint, and interdependence.
Dharmic ethics are relational and ecological. They emphasise ahimsa (non-violence), aparigraha (non-possessiveness), seva (service), and ṛta (cosmic order). They remind us that finance is not only about numbers, but about how we treat others, how we respect nature, and how we live in balance with the world.
This perspective is not an abstract philosophy. It is embedded in lived practices: community-based lending, intergenerational family firms, ethical investment guided by values, and networks of trust and reciprocity. Such practices reveal that finance can be grounded in culture, ethics, and spiritual purpose, rather than in speculation and greed.
3. Atul K. Shah’s Contribution
The scholar Atul K. Shah has been one of the leading voices bringing these insights into the contemporary debate. His research shines a light on the hidden wisdom of Dharmic traditions and their role in shaping sustainable and inclusive finance.
In Inclusive and Sustainable Finance and Reinventing Accounting and Finance Education, Shah argues that mainstream finance has buried ethics under a technocratic obsession with models and measurement. He insists that we cannot fix finance by tinkering at the margins; we must re-root it in culture, community, and morality.
Shah’s concept of Organic Finance highlights how small and medium family firms—often run with Dharmic values—operate sustainably because they are embedded in long-term relationships and intergenerational trust. They are not beholden to anonymous shareholders but to family honour, community service, and reputation. In these firms, profit is not abandoned, but it is balanced by duty, stewardship, and responsibility.
Through case studies of Jain, Hindu, and other Dharmic communities, Shah shows that ethical finance is not an idealistic dream. It already exists. It is being practiced in countless local contexts, though too often ignored or dismissed by mainstream academic economics.
4. Exposing the Ignorance of the Academy
Why is this wisdom ignored? Because the academy has constructed powerful walls of ignorance. Economics claims universality but is deeply provincial, shaped by Western liberal and monotheistic traditions that prize abstraction, control, and uniformity. Social sciences more broadly fear normativity, avoiding metaphysical or ethical questions under the guise of neutrality.
Yet this “neutrality” is ideological. It blinds students to plurality, silences cultural knowledge systems, and elevates technical models over lived experience. It produces graduates fluent in spreadsheets but illiterate in ethics, culture, or ecology. For students from diverse cultural backgrounds, this is damaging. They come to study with the hope of empowering their inner voices and connecting with their traditions, only to find those voices marginalised or erased.
This is why Shah’s intervention matters so deeply. He insists that culture and ethics are not peripheral but central to finance. He challenges business schools and international institutions that call themselves “global” while teaching only the narrow, technocratic language of capital. He names the structural arrogance and philosophical emptiness of modern finance, and he offers a way forward.
5. The Anthropocene Imperative
The stakes could not be higher. In the Anthropocene, where human activity threatens the very fabric of life on Earth, economics and finance cannot remain morally anaemic. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequality are not side issues; they are central challenges of survival. A finance system that extracts relentlessly without ethical compass is not only unsustainable but catastrophic.
In this moment, epistemic humility becomes essential. We must recognise the limits of technocratic knowledge and open ourselves to plural traditions of wisdom. Systems thinking and the Gaia hypothesis already hint at interdependence, but Dharmic traditions go further: they provide cultural practices, ethical frameworks, and spiritual motivations for living in balance with the Earth.
Ignoring these resources is not only ignorance—it is folly.
6. Toward a Dharmic Turn in Economics and Finance
The time has come for a Dharmic turn. This is not about importing “exotic” traditions into Western frameworks. It is about recognising that the survival of our species depends on drawing from the full richness of human cultural wisdom.
A Dharmic economics and finance would:
- Embed ethics and culture at the centre of education, research, and practice.
- Celebrate plurality, recognising that different communities have different ways of valuing life and wealth.
- Reframe wealth as circulation, stewardship, and care rather than accumulation and speculation.
- Prioritise interdependence, recognising that human flourishing cannot come at the cost of ecological collapse.
- Honour intergenerational responsibility, ensuring that finance serves not only present profits but future survival.
This is not nostalgia for the past. It is a practical vision for the future—a vision that is already alive in countless communities, waiting to be recognised and amplified.
7. Call to Action
We cannot afford to remain silent. The ignorance of economics and finance is not a minor flaw; it is a civilizational risk. The Anthropocene demands a new philosophy of wealth, rooted in culture, ethics, and ecology. Dharmic wisdom offers vital resources for this transformation, and scholars like Atul K. Shah are showing us the way.
To students, we say: do not let your cultural voices be silenced by technocratic education. To educators: reimagine your curricula to honour ethics, history, and plurality. To policymakers: build financial systems that serve people and planet, not abstract models. To communities: trust the wisdom of your traditions and bring them into the global conversation.
The task is urgent, but it is not hopeless. If we can root economics and finance once more in the richness of human wisdom, we can transform them from engines of destruction into practices of life. Dharmic wisdom is not an ornament to global discourse—it is an antidote to its collapse.