On Amarnath... And Homesteading

The law and order situation in the state of Jammu & Kashmir is precarious enough, so the state-wide unrest following the government’s “allotment” of 40 hectares of forest land on the Amarnath yatra route to the “Shrine Board” must be seen as hugely unnecessary, given the fragile peace that prevails there.

I certainly do not believe in arduous pilgrimages as a means to discover Shiva, but a smokey friend does. He trekked it to Amarnath some weeks back. I quizzed him on the facilities on the route – for it took him a few days up and a few days down, in freezing cold – and this is what I heard.

All food on the route is free, gratuitously provided by wealthy believers.

“Where did you sleep then?” I asked.

He told me an unlikely tale. There are tents all along the route where pilgrims can rent a bed for the night. If you rent the bed before 3 pm, the charge is 100 rupees. If you rent it around 5 pm the charge can exceed 500 rupees. So this is how the money is made. My smokey friend said that there were more than 100,000 pilgrims in all. Grab your calculator and do the math and you know you are looking at some pretty big money.

Now, who “owns” the forest land, the 40 hectares (just 100 acres) that the government is giving away?

Actually, nobody owns it.

The huge amount of civil unrest that is currently going on is only because of the fact that it is the government that acted as the actual “owner” of this unowned land.

In Muslim-majority Srinagar there were violent protests because it was felt that the government was showing partiality towards Hindus. So the government revoked their allotment order. This sparked off the Jammu protests – and the law and order situation in the entire state has been unstable ever since.

What would a libertarian solution be?

Let us start with the First Principle: people own things, governments do not. Governments exist only to give titles to properties people acquire – either by purchase or by “homesteading.”

Homesteading means that anyone can lay claim to any unowned land. Thereafter, if he “mixes his labour with the original soil”, he possesses a “claim to title.” This is a claim that the government, at the local level, must recognize.

If the homesteading principle is applied to the whole of India, a lot of “unreal estate” would become “real estate” instantly – including the land on the way to Amarnath. Why just the Shrine Board, lots of others – maybe many Muslims too – would occupy and develop all the unowned land just lying waste there. Then, why a bed in a tent for 500 rupees, pilgrims might get a bed in a concrete hotel with a hot shower for less. If the local government’s only duties lay in recognizing claims to title and building roads connecting all the properties, the Amarnath area would see “development” – and this would benefit the entire state of Jammu & Kashmir.

There would be no civil unrest because the role of the government would be neutral: the government would not exist to give anything to anyone. If the government never shows favours to anyone or any group, but only acts against “outlaws”, no one and no group would rise in protest against any of its actions. There would be peace, harmony, co-operation in markets, the building up of property and towns, and the spreading out of the population all over this vast landmass. The government would enjoy the support and confidence of the society it serves.

This is where liberalism and socialism collide head-on: We differ over the role of The State in a free society.

And these are irreconcilable differences.

Onwards to a Second Republic!

And Booooom Shankarrr 2U2.

With Extreme Prejudice

Since senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj’s statement that the recent serial bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad were “a conspiracy to divert attention from the ‘cash-for-votes’ scandal” has been pooh-poohed by all the Reichwing editors, allow me to bat on the other side.

In the year 1985, shortly after Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the Anti-Sikh riots that followed in Delhi, and the widespread knowledge that Mrs Gandhi had “created” Bhindranwale, I arrived in sleepy Pondicherry as a rookie cop.

Bored of life in this crime-free town, I took my trusted Bullet 350 one Saturday morn and drove down to Point Calimere, a wildlife sanctuary at the southern tip of our eastern seaboard, where flamingoes were said to be abundant. I wanted to see the flamingoes.

That night at the FRH, a man knocked on my door and informed me that “The Boss” wanted to see me. It seems they had heard I was a cop.

But I was just a trainee cop on a much-deserved holiday!

Anyway, I was escorted to a room where I had the pleasure of meeting Anton Balasingham of the LTTE – with an Australian woman and a dog, smoking 555 State Express.

He is smoking The State, I thought.

Finding me completely harmless, Anton invited me to see their “facilities” the next morning. So, instead of flamingoes, the next morning I saw the ammo dump, the fuel dump, the rubber dinghies with 4 OBMs fitted on each… and so on.

Point Calimere is the closest point in India from Jaffna.

Even as a rookie cop, my impression of The State was that there were wheels within wheels within wheels. I opted out a few years later – and never looked back.

We must not forget that these “political parties” are known throughout India, by every beat constable, as those who engineer organized violence – like riots.

And since they come to control The State, they have these “dirty tricks departments” like IB and RAW at their disposal.

And if it be admitted that Sushma Swaraj mixes in their midst, her “suspicion of a conspiracy” should be taken seriously. You never know what these rascals can be up to.

It is with this deep suspicion that the press should report on the official investigations into these blasts. They should not get sidelined by Narendra Modi’s photo-ops, the Army being called in, and all the sniffer dogs.

They should probe the official probe – and probe it deeply.

The Only Problem: Bad Government

Abandoning their fetish for 9 per cent growth, India’s central bank has now honed in on inflation control.

Why is there inflation in the first place? Because the central bank had increased the supply of money and credit. With too much money chasing too few goods, inflation is bound to occur – and so the very same corrupt institution that created inflation is being given the task of controlling inflation!

This can never work.

As long as there is a central bank, and some bullcrap called “monetary policy,” booms and busts will forever continue.

Lessons can be learnt from the US, now facing a recession/depression for precisely the same reason: the loose and cheap money policies of the US Federal Reserve.

Karen DeCoster, writing on the Lew Rockwell blog, describes the pathetic scene in southern Michigan:

“Here in Southeastern Michigan, we got a head start on y'all in terms of the Depression. Things look especially bleak here. There are empty strip malls everywhere, especially in the medium-to-nicer suburbs. There are unfinished strip malls all around where I live. There are half-finished condo and townhouse projects, with the finished phases being 50% - 80% empty, and the rest of the property in 4-foot weeds. There are prime pieces of property on the semi-rural, north end of the suburbs that are cleared for development, with the home models sitting empty, and nothing but acres and acres of weeds filling the land.
So many niche businesses have closed - scrapbooking stores, mom-and-pop pet stores and grooming businesses, car detailing/accessory shops, small clothing stores, gift shoppes, florists, sports memorabilia shops, small gyms, etc. There are more empty gas stations and auto service centers than I have ever seen before. Nice - but newer - restaurants and taverns that opened at the height of the boom are mostly gone. Only the neighborhood staples and successful chains are going to remain. The super-duper auto dealers - who built massive castles on huge plots of land – are starting to fall.”

The same fate will befall India too, when the RBI’s credit squeeze kicks in. Businesses that were viable under a low interest regime will now prove to be loss-making, and they will fold. Consumer purchases fuelled by low interest rates will drop off.

If governments are the cause of boom-and-bust sequences, the only solution that faces ordinary people is to get their own businesses going. The US could recover if immigration is freed up, and anyone from anywhere who buys a house in the US is given a green card. The US will also recover if world trade is freed up – so that overseas markets for its produce are created and sustained.

In India too, getting out of the recession that is looming ahead requires freeing of businesses – including a freeing up of international trade. Total and absolute economic freedom in India is the best medicine for this country – and the ripple effects of this will positively impact the entire globe.

Thus, Kamal Nut’s intransigence at the WTO talks, which was the prime cause behind their breakdown, goes against the national interest. It also hurts the entire world. It depresses the global catallaxy and retards the international division of labour.

The idea that K Nut is a “representative” of India’s interests is false. He is a protectionist fighting for certain particular interests – the rest of the country, and the rest of humanity, be damned.

In many a way K Nut is like ramadoss (our health dictator) who recently spoke at an international conference, arguing for alcohol and tobacco bans, claiming to be “the voice of the sentiments of 1/6th of humanity living in the world's largest democracy.”

(His political party is the hitherto unknown PMK, allied with the DMK, which is how he became a minister in the coalition. Does anyone outside Tamil Nadu know what PMK stands for?)

This is the Big Lie: the idea of “representation.”

Neither the US Fed, nor the RBI, nor K Nut, nor ramadoss “represent” anyone but their own selfish interests. If we see through this deception, we will find the solution: Freeing all economic activity from all governments – including the production and supply of money, liberty to trade with foreigners, and freedom in domestic businesses as well.

Laissez faire is the ONLY WAY.

Liberalization Requires Liberal Politics

The Manmohan pyarey government, in an unholy alliance with Communists for 4 years, did nothing on “economic reforms”. In other words, further “liberalization” of the economy did not occur, and market forces and entrepreneurs were not freed.

After the Commies made their exit, and Mulayam & Co. joined the Congress-led government, many commentators wrote of the possibility of speedy liberalization, now that the Commies were out of the way.

Yet, a news report of today says that this is unlikely, as the opposition NDA has decided to stall economic reforms. They will not support the UPA on this.

Therefore, key reforms in banking, insurance and pensions are unlikely to be carried out. This is most unfortunate for Indyeah. We will remain stuck with the poverty-stricken India of old.

This impasse has occurred only on account of the fact that the UPA lacks real “politicians” at the top. Pyarey Manmohan is a baboo, Sonia is a bahoo, and the rest are inconsequential backroom boys of the Grand Old Party of the Reich, like Kamal Nut.

Real politicians would take the issue to the people, seeking to convince them of their stand. If the people support these politicians, then politics achieves its purpose, and no opposition outfit can accomplish much.

We must therefore arrive at the sad conclusion that India is a “democracy” with very little “politics” – the engagement of the people in an open public dialogue on all the issues that confront the collective.

As with the Communists in China, everything in India that is called “politics” happens behind closed doors. Thus, just as the Chinese Communists are more like a “secret society” than a “political party” in the liberal sense of the term, so too with the Congress, the BJP, the Commies, Mulayam and Co, and Laloo’s RJD: they are all “secret societies.”

The Reichwing editors have all praised the “debate” in parliament on the “trust vote” – but those who watched the debate and know their onions would all agree that this was mere “ritualism,” totally devoid of the true essence of democracy, which is public politics.

It has been my experience over the past 15 years that it is very easy to convince people – from the illiterate poor to the educated student community – of the need to replace planning by markets, dirigisme by economic freedom, and protectionism by free trade.

It is therefore Indyeah’s loss that true-blue liberals are denied entry onto the political stage.

There cannot be any Liberty in Indyeah as long as those who believe in Liberty are kept out – by these “secret societies” of shady backroom operators.

For more on this, read my recent column, “Politics Need Liberal Politicians.”

Kamal Nut On Livelihood

Kamal Nath is at it again: blocking free international trade on behalf of a nation of over 1 billion people.

This time, however, Nath has hit on the new tack: claiming to be the spokesman of 600 million Indians who are subsistence farmers.

The issue, he claims, is the very “livelihood” of all these poor people. He will “not compromise on matter of livelihood.”

Ho hum.

Actually, at the level of Urban Ground Zero, the State is the enemy of the livelihoods of the poor.

We see it all the time, everywhere: but the Indian political class never utters a word about “economic freedom.”

It is Urban India that needs economic freedom first, because that will turn the economic engine on, fanning the winds of international commerce over all the villages.

And anyway, we also see that villagers are “voting with their feet” in millions, migrating to Urban India.

They are migrating “From Subsistence To Exchange” – just what Peter Bauer asked them to do.

Subsistence is producing for self-consumption – and this has nothing to do with Catallactics, or trade, where we produce for strangers and buy from strangers as well, in an Urban Civilization.

The minister is defending trade barriers that are designed with the express purpose of imposing Subsistence (which is what the villagers are fleeing from) on Urban India, whose glorious future lies in Catallactics, or Exchange – with everyone, including all foreigners.

My fellow citizens must therefore realize that the customs department should be abolished. It blocks more economic gains than the revenue it generates. Its purpose today is not revenue, but political patronage. Kamal Nath wants to protect auto-component manufacturers – the “infants” he wants to coochie-coo – but that will mean more expensive cars and repairs for everyone. There is no trade with 400 per cent duties on wine and 200 per cent on used cars. No trade means no revenue. It is just a misuse of coercion for private ends – the same old story.

If the customs department is shut down today, and the entire landmass becomes the world’s biggest duty-free trading arena, and every shop, even the paan-bidi shop, stocks duty-free foreign products, will Indians be richer or poorer one year hence? Think about it.

Kamal Nut makes for strange “politics”: his constituency lies in a poverty-stricken autarkic landlocked hole in Madhya Pradesh. And he is the jet-setting face of the government of India’s attitude to foreign trade, flying all over the developed world. Where he claims to “represent the poor.” And that too, I would add, as a monopolist.

This is another case of “knowledge failure” under Manmohan’s regime.

The issue is extremely serious: Livelihood.

Reflections On The Bomb Blasts

The newspapers are full of the stories of the bombs that went off, first in Bangalore, and then in Ahmedabad.

Over 40 people died.

It is precisely in moments like these that ordinary people like you and me call for the government; that too, “strong government.”

This is a grave error, especially in India, where over 100,000 people die on the potholed roads every year – an average of 274 per day, every day.

The government police and the political class do nothing (and say nothing) about these easily preventable deaths.

Are these totally insincere and incompetent rascals going to combat what they call "terrorism"? In reality, they govern by terrorising the citizenry, crushing them under the jackboots of the state police.

Funny thing about these “bomb blasts” that are becoming fairly routine is that they differ from normal “criminal” activity, in which the criminal seeks personal gain – as with dacoity, burglary etc. By letting off these blasts, the criminal gets nothing. Why do these blasts happen so regularly then?

If such bomb blasts have nothing to do with monetary gain, but everything to do with “politics,” we must surmise that something is seriously wrong with our “politics” which no amount of normal policing can cure. Indeed, the phenomenal amount of VIP security given to ordinary politicians in India is actually a sign of the fact that our politico-administrative class has many enemies and cannot hold their own in civil society: they must be “protected” from the people. In London, in stark contrast, David Cameron, the leader of the Tories, cycles to work every day – often deliberately omitting to wear the mandatory helmet. The Tories, since Thatcher, call themselves “the party for law and order” – and this is no vain boast.

The answer, then, is not “political action” and “strong government” (and certainly not “central government”); the answer is to build a “body politic” in which all the citizens of the city or town feel proud to belong. In such a “body politic” the citizens are the eyes and ears of the police. Without this direct co-operation, no government policing and no “tough anti-terror laws” can work.

We must think anew. These bomb blasts only confirm this.

That all is not well in India is proved by the fact that millions of Indians are trying to emigrate. In Delhi, queues start forming outside western embassies from 2 AM! The New Indian Express has this funny story today of a temple dedicated to the “visa god”: pray at this temple, and you are bound to get your visa! It is no more Saarey Jehan Se Accha. It is more like "there must be someway outta here."

These are all signs that something has gone horribly wrong with India’s experiment with centralized socialist democracy. Unless we change this government, we cannot fix this mess. Let no bomb blasts shake us from this resolve.

Everybody MUST Get Stoned!

Cough, cough.

Bad smoke again.

Thanks to State coercion.

They force us to buy Indian – from Old Monkey to the Bajaj autorickshaw; they force us to “serve” in villages; they force us to smoke what they allow us to smoke; they force us to use what they call money.

The State is nothing but Coercion – but the intent is good: to use coercion against those who commit injustices.

But, of course, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and coercion is now used for patently unjust ends, including private ends: like vacating some villages for a Tata car plant.

Much of this misuse of coercion lies unnoticed, because the coercion is indirect: like the customs man, whom nobody sees, so nobody sees what is NOT on the market.

A liberal party is not on the political market because coercion is used to keep us out.

This entire Socialist State is nothing but the ABUSE OF COERCION.

I wondered what I would do if I had this power of organized, legitimate, tax-funded coercion.

I would declare Bob Dylan’s “Everybody Must Get Stoned” the national anthem.

Emphasis on the MUST.

If you are not stoned, and the police notice, you might be in serious trouble, especially if you are a complete stranger to the manners and customs of the local people.

We prefer peaceful stoned strangers to drunken strangers here, or even "sober as a judge" strangers, who are often very mean machines.

The unstoned stranger would be sung the national anthem and the policeman would offer him a mighty spliff.

These are our “customs,” he would say; and, so far, no unjust force has been used.

What if the stranger refuses to light up; or worse, like clinton, refuses to inhale, thereby wasting tax money, uselessly burning up a Spliff of State?

It is then that FORCE comes in.

The policeman would pull out his .45 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world, that can blow your head clean off.”

This is threat of grievous hurt – so must be seen as COERCION.

He would play the national anthem once again and then, pointing his .45 Magnum at the stranger’s head, would offer the choice: choose how your want your brains blown, punk, because the laws are very TOUGH in this land: it’s either the spliff or the .45 Magnum.

We all know how this story will end, of course.

Peace will prevail.

The stranger will get stoned and peacefully mingle in the market.

The policeman will return to his station.

There, he will light up a spliff himself, and say to the mirror on the wall: “You know why they call me Dirty Harry? Because I get all the dirtiest jobs.”

Ramadoss: Coercion Once Again

India’s health dictator, Ramadoss, has come up with another coercive idea: to force MBBS students to spend one year in rural India as a condition for getting their degrees.

While this will increase the number of years a student spends to acquire a license to practice medicine, thoughtful people have for a long time been advising the obverse – that is, paramedics with 2 years training can easily serve village India.

Indeed, over 90 per cent of all illnesses that affect our rural population are common infections, mainly water-borne. These can be easily treated by paramedics. Similarly with malaria, another major disease that affects rural Indians.

We can see why such an idea would be against the financial interests of the Medical Council of India; and further, why increasing the time required for getting an MBBS degree would benefit all practicing doctors. The MCI knows it gains when the supply of qualified medics is reduced. And the health dictator, Ramadoss, is actually on the side of the MCI, while pretending to serve the needs of the rural poor.

There is another aspect to bringing medical care to our rural people – and that is transportation. If there are no roads to the village, no doctor is going to be able to reach there. The sorry state of our roads network is an impediment to any good or service reaching the rural people, including medical services.

My reader might be familiar with those highly enjoyable books of James Herriot set in rural England of the 1950s. Herriot was a veterinary doctor whose tales of his practice enthralled the world. But he could conduct his practice only because he had a car – and there were roads to every village in his county.

I have myself spent more than 2 years in rural Goa, and my community was ably served by many specialists who drove there once a week from the big city Margao, 45 kms away, where they lived, in order to consult at a small private hospital a local GP had built near the village. A surgeon, an orthopaedist, a dermatologist, a heart specialist – all served the villagers because they had cars and Goa has rural roads. (These are undersupplied, of course, being extremely narrow: I call them “Goa Constrictors.”)

The problem with our politico-administrative apparatus is that they lack sincerity. Everything they can think of requires coercion – and unjustified coercion at that. And everything they do is just a charade, a false pretence.

“All I wanna say is that they don’t really care about us": The song.

My Crony Is An Infant

Kamal Nath, our anti-commerce minister, has spoken of the need to “protect infant industries” from foreign competition. This includes automobiles – a sector dominated entirely by foreign firms. This was said in Geneva, at the WTO, on taxpayer money.

In the meantime, beauty queen and actress Sushmita Sen has had her SUVs impounded by the police, who are conducting forensic examinations on the cars. (This, while forensic tests in murder cases are not conducted: recall Scarlett Keeling.)

Sen apparently fudged the age of the cars in order to pay lower duties. Both SUVs were bought second-hand in Dubai – and the customs are asking 20 lakhs (2 million) rupees in duty. For what? To “protect infant industries,” of course!

Would every Indian not gain if second-hand cars are allowed in duty-free?

Is the customs department a revenue collector or a trade blocker?

There is no revenue collection when tariffs are fixed so high that all trade stops. So the customs department is nothing but a trade blocker. Why is it blocking trade? To protect “infant industries,” of course.

The basic idea is corrupt. The news report mentions that the major Indian chambers of commerce, like FICCI and CII, are with the minister in this. These corrupt businessmen, aged cronies of the state posing as infants, will block their competitors from entering the market. The consumer will get fleeced.

What is worse is that Kamal Nath is quite prepared to let the WTO fail if the demands of his cronies are not met. The resulting breakdown of international trade will hurt all Indians – and hurt the rest of the world too. Global prosperity will fall.

The “infant industry argument” for protection was first expounded by a German, Friedrich List, in the mid-19th century. It was used by German nationalists to promote an aggressive economic nationalism that led to two World Wars – simply because international inter-dependence via trade, an idea so carefully nurtured by Cobden, Bright and Bastiat in the first half of the 19th century, broke down. The fallacious infant industry argument caused wars – because it pitted one nation’s economic interests against that of all the others.

In India, the “infant industry” argument was used by Nehru and his successors to protect Birla’s Ambassador, Bajaj’s scooter and Tata’s trucks. All these infants are now senile – but still walking around with government-supplied poopcees in their toothless mouths.

The correct way to look at these issues is from the viewpoint of the non-competitor. If you examine the matter closely, you will see that every non-competitor gains when trade is free. When the second-hand SUV sells for peanuts, Tata Motors might go belly-up, but every producer of everything else (except cars) gains, because the sale creates the demand for everything else.

If Sushmita Sen did not have to pay 50 lakhs for her used SUV, but only 5 lakhs, the money saved would be spent on other things, like plasma TVs – and everyone else would gain. This is the basic lesson from Jean-Baptiste Say’s “Law of Markets,” rightly understood: The sale of X creates the demand for all non-X.

Seen in this light, it becomes obvious that Kamal Nath’s neo-protectionism in not only anti-national, it is anti-world as well. It will make Indians poorer; it will make the world poorer too. It will add to global economic conflicts, and foment wars.

We have had protectionism for 60 years – and lost. This loser and his gang of losers will make us lose again.

When will they ever learn?

When will we?

And, of course, they want to teach!

Editors! Think Anew

I watched the proceedings of the Lok Sabha with horror last evening, and heard all the Reichwing editors issue their apologia for the Reich.

And this morning, the papers do the same – all the “opinion” published, either as unsigned editorials or as opinions with a name behind them, are apologia in various forms. For example: Ronojoy Sen’s leader article in the ToI is entitled “It’s Messy, But It Works.” (Sorry, couldn’t find the link.)

What works? Repeat: What works?

Actually, throughout this vast sub-continent, including the capital city, NOTHING WORKS. This post is appearing late today because of a power failure in the morning – in New Delhi.

Here is today’s news (from the ToI) about Bangalore collapsing after some rain. This happened in Mumbai a while back. It happened in Delhi just the other day. And I saw pictures of this happening in Guwahati, Patna and Lucknow. This is a common happening in Indian cities and towns today – and the Reich talks about 9 per cent growth. And Rahul Gandhi talks about nuclear power helping the poor – exactly as his great-grandfather’s steel mills did, I presume.

We need institutions of urban local government that work.

Our Reichwing editors are all infatuated with the centralized, socialist State. They all see State and Society as One.

They see this State as not conforming to their “theories” – but they are wont to think anew.

They might not call themselves “socialist” today – but they cling helplessly to other tags of legitimacy the State employs – like “democratic”. Yet, true democracy, as in Switzerland, is about diffusing power, not concentrating it.

Fortunately, although our Lok Sabha has sunk to its lowest depths – “nadir” was a word used many times on TV last night – there is no need for despair. The failure of “political society” can only be good for civil society. Our solution therefore lies in making the government more and more irrelevant in our lives. We have to think in terms of free markets, free international trade, free trading cities and towns – a world in which individuals survive via the free processes of voluntary market exchanges. A world, that is, where politics does not affect economic outcomes. That is the world-view of Libertarianism. Our Reichwing editors need to travel this distance in their minds. Then they too will think in terms of a Second Republic.

I Shot Wee Willie Winkie

An important area of “economic freedom” is the freedom to operate at all hours – what is also known as a “24-hour economy.”

“The City Never Sleeps,” as they say.

But here in India the authorities who cannot do anything right – cannot build roads, cannot manage traffic, cannot clear garbage, cannot solve crime – these very same worthless people impose a “Wee Willie Winkie Law” and force all establishments to close down well before midnight. Yet, Wee Willie Winkie put children in their beds; this law is for adults.

The protest that is in the news today comes from Bangalore, India’s most cosmopolitan and youthful city. The article compares cities like New York, Paris and Madrid to New Delhi, Calcutta and Pune. Our Indian cities come off as dead cities, bereft of nightlife. This is because of the tyranny of the authorities, who should not be allowed, by law, to impose any rules on closing time. These decisions should be taken by the proprietors and the employees themselves, keeping in mind the wants of their customers. If more and more customers come late in the night, and are served, it is good for the local economy, period. The extra taxes generated should be used to fund police patrols on the streets.

There are already many establishments that stay open all night – pharmacies, hospitals, highway dhabas, railway stations and airports among them. Why cannot then the entire city remain awake and commercially active at night?

Lastly: They call this the ICE Age: Information, Communication and Entertainment. The “I” and the “C” are working fine in India (especially in Bangalore) – but whatever happened to the “E”? What about Entertainment?

India has enormous talent in this area – just watch TV.

Live music and live dance should be big business in each and every city and town throughout India.

This is especially important for the children of poor people – who may not possess “education” but have been gifted by God with the particular talents the Entertainment industry values.

Recall that the children of black slaves in America first made it big in music (jazz) and sports. They had their own city – New Orleans – and it never slept.

A Rule of Law solution is to treat private property rights as inviolable. Each nightlife establishment is the property of a proprietor, and he alone is free to decide working hours, in agreement with his employees. No one from the government can interfere.

If this is made the Basic Law of the Second Indian Republic, Wee Willie Winkie will run no more through our city streets. And all the kids will party.

Onwards to a New Liberty!

Open Up Big Ticket Retailing

For many years now, a shrill debate is being conducted on the entry of big money, including foreign capital, into the retail sector – that is, organized retail, or supermarkets.

Joining in the debate now is a government report on employment – a report that predicts job losses if supermarkets are allowed to do business in India.

This prediction is not based on sound theory. It is mere play with figures.

Consider this: Supermarkets will cater to the well-off, who can buy a month’s groceries at a time.

The corner-shop will always be there for those who buy their needs on a daily basis – those who earn daily wages: the bulk of the population.

This is the reason why 70 per cent of the shampoo sold in India comes in small sachets. This packaging concept is seen across the board in many consumer goods, and is designed with the lesser-off consumer in mind. What is the theory behind this phenomenon?

As Peter Bauer’s pioneering studies of developing countries showed many decades ago, the “distributional chain” in developing countries is long, requiring the “breaking down of bulk” into smaller and even smaller portions, because the capacity to buy is low.

This is why cigarettes are sold loose by retailers: many consumers buy just one cigarette at a time, unable to invest in a full packet. This is why the bulk of IMFL alcohol is sold in "quarters" of 180ml. There is in India this vast majority that buys loose dal half-a-kg at a time.

Since the bulk of the population buys everything in very small quantities, supermarkets will not drive custom away from small shopkeepers.

However, supermarkets will deliver huge gains to the middle and upper classes, when they buy shampoo in big bottles and rice in 5 kilo bags. These savings should not be sneered at – for the money saved will be spent on other things, or invested, and thereby contribute to further economic activity, which will benefit the lesser-off.

Further, supermarkets will be big players in real estate – and the construction industry will benefit. The government report says that this is the biggest employer today. Then why quash its growth?

The report also talks about the potential of tourism – but does not see that tourists like to shop.

In the final analysis, this government report on employment is like an RBI report I read in the early 90s that warned against ATMs as they would cause unemployment. Yet we see today that ATMs have vastly improved efficiency – and created millions of more jobs; that too, productive jobs. This government report on employment is based on Luddite reasoning.

Supermarkets create big gains – by buying in bulk and selling in bulk. These gains are for the big consumer. But it is rarely seen that in an underdeveloped country wholesale supermarkets could create similar gains for the small retailer – and inject much-needed efficiency into the retail sector as well.

So away with statistical analyses and their gloomy predictions. Let us have sound theory instead – and Liberty!

And Progess as well.

On Teaching English Via Radio

Last Sunday we commented on the Mayawati government’s decision to teach English in Class 1. The post was entitled “Leave it to Edupreneurs” – saying that vouchers would be wasteful and quite pointless.

After all, neither the State nor the private sector can recruit the huge number of good English teachers that would be required.

This Sunday, then, there is news that an “Angrezi Seekho Radio Lesson” is to be launched in Mayawati's Uttar Pradesh from August 1. School teachers are expected to tune in and learn English, along with their students. The news report says that “the module will be launched in 1700 primary and 400 upper primary schools simultaneously.”

This is indeed the best way to accomplish the task.

But should the government be involved?

Cannot edupreneurs do this much better?

I am extremely skeptical of any government education because the tendency will always be to teach what is in the interest of the government.

We need to teach kids about Liberty Under Law – why they should be free from all government interference while going about conducting voluntary market exchanges.

I am a bit worried that the Mayawati sarkaar’s English lessons via radio will contain “education about environmental concerns.” This could well be harmful propaganda that promotes government interference on environmental matters. Let us keep the kids far away from global warming poppycock.

That apart, the idea of English lessons via radio is an excellent one, capable of wide reach at extremely low cost.

A far better idea than educational vouchers.

On Torts... And A Rule Of Law Society

A headline story in the ToI of today says that the health ministry (of Ramadoss) is planning to introduce a bill soon that will increase the punishment for those who manufacture or sell spurious drugs, from 10 years to life.

Yet, the same paper, on the very same day, has two other stories on spurious products:

First, on spurious alcohol.

And the second on adulterated ghee.

There was the sensational case some years ago about people getting afflicted by dropsy from adulterated mustard oil.

Then, of course, there was the Bhopal tragedy.

And I am being plied with nakli ganja and charas all the time. Cough, cough.

What about all these? The legislation that Ramadoss seeks will only apply to medicines.

The solution then, is to seek a GENERAL RULE: a rule that will apply to all such cases in all future instances.

That general rule is the Law of Torts.

(The word “tort” is the root of the word “torture” and it means that damage has been caused, physical, mental, or material.)

Anyone who causes damage to anyone else, knowingly or unintentionally, will have to fork out monetary compensation to the victim/s.

This will be a civil (and not criminal) case, which will be decided quickly, “on the preponderance of evidence.” Criminal cases need to be proved “beyond reasonable doubt,” – so they take much more court time. Torts are therefore “efficient.”

There will thus be a monetary incentive to be careful, i.e., in other words, there will be a serious disincentive against carelessness.

In the case of medicines, then, the retailer will have to take the first call of the court – for it is he who sold the spurious medicine.

As this general rule will apply across the board, all retailers of medicines, ghee, booze, spices, ganja and charas, or whatever, will be careful not to pass on adulterated stuff.

And if they do, they run the risk of having to sell their shops to cough up the damages.

Note that Ramadoss’ bill is heavy on the criminal justice part: jail for 10 years extending up to life imprisonment. With our dysfunctional criminal justice system, there is simply no chance that manufacturers of spurious medicines will feel the deterrent effect of this proposed punishment. And anyway, the bill will apply only to medicines. What about all the rest?

Just the other day, over 250 people died in a “hooch tragedy” in Karnataka – and the government paid the compensation! This means that taxpayers are being held liable for the damages caused upon others by tortfeasors.

If damages are to be paid, then these should be paid by the tortfeasor, under civil law. This should have nothing to do with the government, or its criminal law.

Torts are therefore a pillar of a “rule of law society”: a society that operates under general rules that all individuals will happily follow.

The other choice is the “rule of men” – as with parliament passing ramadoss’ bill. This is like “central planning” of law, and it cannot work.

A rule of law society exhibits a “natural order” – an order that the arbitrary and capricious “rule of men” destroys.

Away with ramadoss’ bill!

And read my old article: “Ring In Torts”.

A Miserable Failure Indeed

Bibek Debroy, commenting on a Failed States Index that ranks India close to the bottom, believes that this dim view of the Indian State is misplaced.

Is the Indian State a failed state or not? – that is the question.

Note that the question is not whether the Indian people are a failed people, or whether Indian businessmen are failed businessmen. The question is specific to the State.

Before pronouncing a judgement, however, let us review some critical evidence.

The news is that Sonia Gandhi has pronounced Andhra Pradesh as the Number One State in the country. Yet, there is ample evidence from the same newspapers that this state is reeling under a severe power crisis, and long power cuts occur every day, everywhere. This state has also been giving away free power to farmers for 4 years now. They give away free rice; there are many other “social welfare schemes” that bleed this state’s finances. Sonia has just launched another one – for the poor farmers, once again. One report, quoting sources from the World Bank, says that Andhra Pradesh has been "run aground." What about the rest of India?

The question whether the Indian State is a failed state or not must therefore be examined in the context of the goals that this State had set for itself. The State is not Society – no matter what the leftists say. The State is an organization within society, set up with particular objectives in mind. What are these objectives, and have they been realized?

If matters are examined from this perspective, then it becomes crystal clear that the Indian State is definitely a failed state: it has failed to achieve any of the noble and worthy objectives it had set for itself. It started off wanting to make steel (to benefit the poor?) – but failed in its deeper objective. It wanted to bring about Equality – but failed, producing a VVIP culture instead.

If the Indian people are a little better off today, the credit goes to private businessmen alone – the bold entrepreneurs who have brought telephone services, good cars and two-wheelers, cheap airline seats etc. within the reach of almost all.

And if the Indian people are suffering today – crying out for bijli, sadak and paani – then the sorry FACT remains that these three essentials fall under State monopoly. If the wives of poor farmers are trekking for firewood every day, it is because every source of energy is under State monopoly – which is why I oppose the proposed Indo-US deal on nuclear power, which will further entrench this ugly, exploitative monopoly.

We could continue to live in denial, like Debroy or Sonia – or we could wake up to our predicament. We Indians have been lulled into believing that all good and great things require the State. Yet, in terms of its own objectives, it is this State itself that is a miserable failure. And, of course, if we look at the true functions of any State - like law and order - we find failure writ large: just yesterday, 21 cops were killed in Orissa by Maoists; this, after 39 "elite" cops were killed some weeks ago. There is rampant lawlessness everywhere, and, to survive in office, Sonia's Reich needs the votes of criminal MPs.

Away with this FAILED socialist state!

And onwards to a Second Republic!

On Kamal Nath, Anti-Commerce Minister

India’s commerce (or foreign trade) minister, Kamal Nath, who has staged walk-outs during WTO meets before, is threatening to do the same again.

Note that his constituency is some land-locked poverty-stricken hole in Madhya Pradesh, and not some coastal city, where gains from foreign trade would be obvious to any true representative of the local people.

Nath says that “unless India gets clear binding commitments from the US, the European Union and other developed countries to liberalise trade in services, there will be no deal in the WTO whatsoever.” He says he will pursue this agenda "aggressively."

The crucial philosophical error in Nath’s thinking (does any Congress loyalist know how to think?) – is that “reciprocity” must guide international trade.

This doctrine means that politicians and baboos are required to “represent” national economic interests in international fora.

Yet, it is individuals who trade, not nations.

When individuals trade, reciprocity is meaningless. We do not buy from people just because they buy from us. I will not buy a Nokia phone just because the Nokia GM dines at my restaurant regularly. I will buy the best phone for my money just as he is buying the best dinner for his money. I will, indeed, show off my Motorola phone to him, pointing out why it is a superior choice – and he cannot be offended.

Kamal Nath and his band of “government trade negotiators”, however, believe that reciprocity must guide international trading relations. Thus, Nath believes he must “walk out” of the WTO mini-ministerial in order to promote the export of services.

But this will hurt all prospective importers. I cannot open my Harley-Davidson showroom because of Nath – and my prospective customers will suffer too. Ditto with Californian wines or French cheeses. Or the “Beers Of The World” store my friend is planning to set up in New Delhi?

And who will gain: Cuo Boni?

Obviously, these are the “lobbies” that are funding Nath’s petulant walk-outs. These include the IMFL (Old Monkey) mafia. And all the other peddlers of swadeshi crap.

Says Nath: “There cannot be any agreement in industrial or agricultural products which creates or demands any sort of liberalisation in sensitive sectors such as automobiles, textiles or chemicals.”

How are automobiles a “sensitive” sector? Are we to “protect” Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Ford, Mitsubishi, Skoda, General Motors, Daimler-Benz, Audi and BMW, who are all in India? Or is this a ploy to protect the Tata Indica?

How are textiles and chemicals “sensitive”?

Thus, Nath (and his government) are not representing “national interests”. They are representing particular local manufacturing interests, who exploit the Indian consumer and share their increased profits with elite political prostitutes.

In truth, just as consumption is the goal of production, imports are the goal of exports. You make money when “your ship comes in.”

The East India Company sent its tall ships to our waters laden with gold – so as to import spices, and thereby rake in fat profits in their local London markets.

Our political prostitutes always use public money for “export promotion” – in a nation that bars imports.

This makes no sense.

(Does anything they do make sense?)

I suggest that a vocal group of importers be formed, to voice their own grievances with the tariff regime.

They might benefit from my old article: “Forget the WTO: Focus on Trade.” The subtitle reads: “Why India Should Open Up To Foreign Trade Unilaterally.”

This is not only the pathway to prosperity; it is also the only pathway to peace and good relations with all the nations of the world.

Stopping trade makes wars easy. They say “when goods do not cross borders, armies will.”

Let us then resolve to completely abolish customs duties and establish this great sub-continent as the largest duty-free trading area in the world.

That is the peaceful and prosperous India of my dreams.

For Visas On Arrival

There is no bureaucrat I hate more than the immigration bureaucrat.

It all began when I went to England for higher studies. The visa official at the British High Commission created so many hassles for me that my hatred for his entire tribe was born, and has only intensified since.

I hate the visa-passport regime – deeply.

It was therefore wonderful to read that the government of Bahrain has decided to give Indians the benefit of visa-on-arrival.

India should do the same for all nationalities. Our own visa officials are a pain in the butt for all tourists. All tourists I meet complain of the expense and the delays in getting their Indian visas.

Bahrain aims at expanding tourism – the biggest industry in the world, bigger that airlines, automobiles and railways combined. Much, much bigger than software and IT. It is said that one tourist creates 12 jobs when he visits India.

If we instituted visa-on-arrival for all tourists, students, medical treatment seekers and the like, India would gain immensely.

The case that immediately comes to mind is Kabul: the embassy was bombed, but it is back to business-as-usual now – the business being the issuing of visas to Afghans who want to study or receive medical treatment in India. 65 visas were issued in one day.

Read the news report on the visa seekers outside our Kabul embassy here. Unfortunately, the internet story does not contain the picture that came in the paper – of young students lining up for an approval from Indian baboodom. It reminds me of my own experience with the British baboo when I was a student seeking a visa, and I empathize deeply.

Away with the visa-passport regime!

As Marley sang:

Why can’t we roam this open country.
Why can’t we be what we want to be,
We want to be free.

He added:

Hey Mr. Cop,
Got no birth cerfiticate (sic) on me now.

Away with all these government papers.

Freedom!

If your credit card guarantees your identity and solvency, no government paper is required.

And the credit card company is called Visa.

That’s the only Visa we need.

What Exactly Is Going On?

There have been official allegations that “horse trading” is going on as the Congress, now bereft of Communist support, attempts to forge together a governing majority.

It is scientifically more precise to call this “vote trading”.

And the “going rate” for the vote to one MP has been quoted at Rs. 25 crore. (250 million).

Dismissing these allegations, spokesmen of the Reichwing Congress have called it an “insult to MPs” – but political economists have been analyzing vote trading for decades now.

Of course, these economic analyses of government failure in a (liberal) democratic setting are still not taught at the Delhi School of Economics. But the subject – Public Choice – is over 30 years old. Click here to download the pdf file of Gordon Tullock’s The Vote Motive, that too, the 30th anniversary edition. Scroll down to Chapter 5 entitled “Logrolling” – and this is the polite term Tullock uses for vote trading. Note that these are analyses of western liberal democracy. In our centralized, socialist democracy, vote trading is much, much uglier. And this is how “government failure” occurs – while the professors at the DSE teach their students about “market failure”. Bah!


Let us now turn our attention to Sonia Gandhi, in whose name these votes are to be purchased. What is she doing today?

The news is that she is addressing a public rally in Ongole.

"Where the fuck is that?" my reader will surely ask.

Well, here is the map. It is somewhere in the Maoist-Naxalite areas of Andhra Pradesh. It seems a highly urbanised area, with lots of little, little towns with stranger names.

She will be there for 60 minutes (obviously landing by helicopter) and over 2500 policemen have been deployed.

This is “Indian Politics”. And we know what is "Indian Economics" - the shit the professors teach.

But is this politics?

There is no Mayor of Ongole.

Ongole must be the pits.

Yet, we Indians very much have “government” – but nothing works. Not even New Delhi, where 2500 policemen (or more) guard the “political” personnel of the “government”.

Important words have lost their meaning.

Confucius said that “when words lose their meaning, the people will lose their freedom”.

This is how we Indians have lost our freedom – and our teachers are much to blame.

I will close with some lines from the opening para of Thomas Paine’s little pamphlet that fired the American revolutionaries in 1776, Common Sense:

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which might be expected in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.” [Emphases in the original.]

Let us pledge not to suffer fools gladly.

Then, maybe someday soon, we can be free – from the “government”!

Break Every Silly Rule

A news report says that a local politician from Nagpur is leading a “break rule agitation” – and the rule they want to break is the helmet law for motorcyclists.

Heck! Even I like the wind in my hair, but on our unsafe roads – especially unsafe for motorcyclists and scooterists – maybe voluntary helmet wearing is not a bad idea. If not for the driver, then at least for the pillion-rider, whose risks are greater.

And there are so many better rules to break:

Like the ganja rules
Or the alcohol rules
Or the customs rules
Or the dance bar rules

Or the rules against gambling

So how about a real “break rule agitation”?

That is, breaking significant rules that affect our lives.

Gandhi, of course, showed the way by making salt.

I prefer to break the rule against ganja – by making a nice chillum and smoking it, in public, every day.

So excuse me, for I have a rule to break right now.

Leave It To Edupreneurs

Gurcharan Das’ column in the Sunday ToI makes for good reading. He raises a toast to Mayawati for the fact that 8,600,000 children in class I have just begun to learn English in the government schools of Uttar Pradesh.

He adds that this has “fulfilled a longstanding demand of parents who believe that they have lost two generations to Hindi chauvinists. They know that a child who learns English by age 10 has a natural advantage for the rest of its life.”

Yet, as Das notes and as we all know, government schools are not the answer. There will never be enough good teachers of English for all government schools.

Das proposes vouchers – but here too, the question of cost-efficiency comes in. If we are to collectively fund schooling for all poor children, the costs of even private sector delivery will be astronomical – and inefficient, in terms of both money as well as time.

The only efficient way, then, is to allow competing for-profit firms to develop packages that teach children English using television or Internet for a fee.

I recently saw an ad on a Delhi street: “Learn English in 6 months”. Formal schooling cannot do this job so fast.

Efficiency also refers to Time. Poor children cannot afford to spend years and years in school. They must be out in the market fast. Competing for-profit private edupreneurs can easily teach poor children some basic things like English and how to operate a calculator – essential life skills – real fast. That is the only practicable way forward.

As an aside, this Dalit preference for English also indicates that Dalits are pro-globalization and pro-liberalization.

Poor people are not stupid.

They are hugely aware that their economic and social betterment lies in markets, cities and a world language.

They are a good constituency for Libertarianism.

Production, Peace And Prosperity

Time magazine notes how Libertarianism is gaining ground rapidly in America.

The article notes that libertarians believe in freedom and private property.

But there is more to it than that.

We believe in production and exchange.

We abhor war and plunder – although we champion the right to bear arms for individual self-defense.

That is the choice before mankind: Production or Plunder.

This is the choice between Peace and War.

Americans, above all, need to make this choice.

To help them in this, here are some of my favourite anti-war songs.

Donovan’s “Universal Soldier”.
Country Joe McDonald (from Woodstock) and his “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die”.
Bob Dylan’s “John Brown” (this is a cover version).
Pink Floyd’s “When The Tigers Broke Free”.

Libertarianism is not just about Freedom.

It is about the only way to achieve lasting co-operation among all the people of this huge planet.

Co-operation is what markets achieve. And prosperity too.

Governments cause conflicts – and profit from them.

Americans have installed a “welfare-warfare state”.

Libertarians in America therefore have their work cut out for them.

It's Teflon Versus Gold

In recessionary times, the economics pundits have all but disappeared from the same TV screens they used to hog all along.

Simon Jenkins lambastes this “Teflon Profession”:

“Controlling the agencies of credit has proved beyond the finest professional minds in the game. Where now are the effortless pundits of the Treasury and the Bank? Where now the gilded ones of Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, credit raters to the mightiest in the land? They should have stuck to goose entrails... “

Read excerpts from this article here.

Indeed, our very own Teflon-coated economist PM is going gung-ho on various fronts – from the nuclear deal to the opportunistic “vote trading” with the Samajwadi (Congresswadi?) party – but is totally quiet on all economic matters.

On this economist the pronouncement from London reported today is that he has been a “crashing disappointment”. I could not agree more.

In the meantime, the simple-minded common people of Vietnam have found the way out: conduct all deals in GOLD.

That is, of course, what all the good economists have been saying all along – only they are never seen on TV.

So out with the Teflon-coated economists, and let’s bring on the gold-plated ones.

Manmohan Should Quit

The prime minister has concluded his meeting with the G-8. There, he talked some climate change stuff and some nuclear deal stuff.

Both these are stuff-and-nonsense.

In India we waste fossil fuels – on bad roads.

Read this lament on Mumbai’s roads – India’s wealthiest city.

Then think of how much fuel we waste throughout India.

The waste is surely enormous.

If our planners did some “cost-benefit analysis” they would definitely find that good roads would deliver far more benefits than they would cost.

But they want to teach!

(They want to teach “cost-benefit analysis”!)

They think they are smart – and that the people are stupid: that these stupid people need some “knowledge” from them.

Actually, as our cities, towns and roads prove, the planners are the ones whose brains need medical examination.

The people are smart: they can sing and dance (just watch TV) but nightlife is banned throughout India.

They can make exotic alcoholic drinks like feni, urak, mahua, handia, apong, toddy and so many more – but these are banned.

These smart people of India need Liberty, not State education – all ugly propaganda, harmful for the mind.

While Manmohan pyarey, the Greatest Planner of All Time, jets about meeting foreign politicians, talking about lowering emissions and generating nuclear fuel, our embassy gets bombed in Kabul.

This is the condition of our “foreign policy”.

But what about conditions at home?

Should the government try and fix the godalmightymesscalledindia or what?

There is a news report today from the capital of socialist India, New Delhi, the capital city of Manmohan’s government: An incense seller’s little son is mowed down on the road. He doesn’t get justice for over 9 months. The cops want money; he is poor. He and his family therefore start begging outside the courts and then send this money to the police commissioner!

I am therefore inclined to accept the crux of Harsh V Pant’s column: “Dr. Singh, Lead or Leave”.

Indeed, every idea of this man has been wrong-headed – from the “education cess” to the “rural employment scheme” to everything else.

In reality, the man just sat back and let Indian crumble.

He should quit.

War Footing Required On Roads

The news today is that the Karnataka government has finally given the nod for the Bangalore-Mysore Expressway – the famous infrastructure corridor being built by a private firm, NICE.

I recall the day in early 1998, when this project was much in the news, that the British transport economist, author of Street Smart (see my review of this important book here), Gabriel Roth, visited India as a consultant to the project. I had my first occasion to meet him then.

10 years have gone by.

The road is still being ‘cleared’ by the government.

Actually, even the prestigious Golden Quadrilateral government project is heavily delayed. It will take many more years to be completed. Read the disappointing report on its progress here.

In my book, roads in India should be built on a WAR FOOTING.

Vital urgency must be injected into road construction all over India because the automobile revolution is already upon us.

If India does not build roads and attend to matters like traffic management, she will suffer greatly.

Every one of India’s cities (including Bangalore) is experiencing traffic grid-lock on the streets.

Yet, there is abundant land.

The shortage is not of land, the excess is not of population – the only real shortage is of roads, a government monopoly.

Something must be done – and fast.

To My Funny Valentine

Happy Birthday, my little Yeda,

And I'm a Yeda too!

Life Without Statistics - Hooray!

Some good news: the government of India’s bureau of statistics is losing data-collecting staff, as they are leaving in droves for better conditions in the private sector.

Very soon, it seems, the nation’s “vital statistics” will be unavailable to the central planners.

Data like “gross domestic product index, index of industrial production, price indices and national surveys” will soon be unavailable.

So bloody what?

Recall Sir John Cowptherwaite in colonial Hong Kong: he refused to set up a statistical bureau and see how Hong Kong prospered.

Such statistics are only important if you want to “plan the economy.”

If you do not want to “command the economy”, leaving all businessmen perfectly free, you do not need statistics.

You do not need statistics on the “national economy” (what’s that?) if you only want to administer justice.

Cowptherwaite ran the police, some courts, and kept the city functional. No statistics are required for the efficient performance of these functions.

The report says that the Indian statistical bureau will try to sell data to private companies. But business decisions are mainly based on profit and loss – and very little else.

Planning decisions are based on statistics – without any reference to profit and loss. This is the worst of all possible worlds.

And note that planning refers to the future, while all statistics are numerical accounts of the past. Every statistic is "the numbers" on something that happened in the past.

Thus, the planner seeks to know the future – but all the “knowledge” he really has is about the past.

Can the future be inferred from statistics?

Of course not!

There are no statistical laws.

There are only laws of Economics (or praxeology or catallactics).

The planner knows naught of these.

And yes, he wants to teach.

Uniforms Of Brutality

As per a news report in the Times of India of today, 3 drunken cops beat up a young man for no rhyme or reason – and the poor fellow needed 375 stitches after the beating!

And the cops were drunk in Ahmedabad, where there is prohibition of alcohol – which they enforce.

When I visited Ahmedabad some years ago, I was informed by a local doctor that the highest incidence of liver cirrhosis was among police inspectors!

As Bob Marley sang, “They are all dressed in uniforms of brutality.”

In India, people do not feel safe when a cop car approaches. They actually feel fear and trepidation.

This country is not ruled by law, it is ruled by coercion.

The law does not safeguard the individual. Rather, the law has become an instrument of coercion.

We don’t need these laws, and we don’t need this police either.

Urbanization... In The Hills

There is a report in the Times of India today that says the Kalka-Simla railway is to be declared a World Heritage Site.

The first time I visited Simla was in 1973, and I took the Kalka-Simla railway both ways - and it was great.

I had already spent 5 years in a Darjeeling school, where too there was a mountain railway that I simply loved.

As far as I know, the Darjeeling Hill Railway is already on the World Heritage list.

We have other hill railways too – in and around the Nilgiris, and up to Matheran in the Western Ghats.

All these railways are over 100 years old – that is, they were built when the automobile did not exist.

They were tremendous feats of engineering. Of the Kalka-Simla railway, the World Heritage Committee noted that it represents “an exceptional technical achievement in the development of the Himalayan mountains because of its length, its altitude and the difficulty of the terrain through which it runs in difficult tropical climatic conditions."

But what did this “exceptional technical achievement” aim at?

This quote is telling: “The railway enabled significant and enduring human settlement.”

That is, rapid urbanization in the previously inaccessible mountains was the purpose.

The Brits built over 80 “hill stations” – new cities and towns – in 50 years, all based on railway connections, in the age before the automobile.

The hill stations, and the railways, were laid in a “hub-and-spoke” arrangement around the principal metropolitan cities: The Simla – Mussoorie belt around Delhi; the Darjeeling – Shillong belt around Calcutta; the Ooty – Kodaikanal belt around Madras; and the Poona – Sahyadri belt near Bombay.

If we in India are to seek a renewed urbanization, the building of many, many new cities and towns, entirely from scratch, so that we can escape our present-day horrific urban conditions, we must emulate the British in India and build “hub-and-spoke” transport arrangements from the big cities to all these new urban centres in the hills.

Of course, the automobile revolution is now on, so highways should come first.

And let every middle-class Indian have two properties: one in a city; and the other in the hills – just as things were in British times when there was such a surge in the supply of new property on the market that properties did not cost much.

Good thought on a Sunday, what?

And read my earlier post: “Bungalows For All… And More”.

Keep On Truckin'

Unlike The Indian Express, who have shown no sympathy for India’s truckers (see their editorial), I remain firmly on the side of truck drivers and truck-owners.

Transportation and trade go hand in hand. All tradeables have to be transported to the most distant markets if really fat profits are to be booked. Kulu apples cannot be sold in the Kulu Valley itself; they must be taken to where apples do not grow (like, say, Chennai) and where they are therefore scarce, for fat profits to accrue. Exotic flowers grown in Coorg or Jharkhand (like anthuriums) must be transported quick to the Amsterdam Flower Market for the highest gains to be made.

Now, in socialist India, everyone will surely agree, the transportation sector sucks real bad. And trucking, its biggest part, sucks the worst.

Protectionism has meant that truck owners must invest in pygmy Tata trucks. We do not see such trucks on the real highways of the West. Now think of the poor truck driver, driving this horrible machine with “double declutching” required for changing gears. And think of the roads he drives on. And also think of how IMPORTANT a role he plays in our economy.

I have no hesitation in affirming that the role played by truckers is a million times more IMPORTANT for our survival that the role played by pyaray Manmohan and all his stupid "planners".

Trucks are the biggest consumers of highways – but the administrative apparatus of the socialist Indian state preys on them because they have monopolized highways – that is, the “notional highways” of India. Trucks are routinely stopped at “check points” every few hundred kilometers for octroi and bribes. They are apparently now being forced to buy premium branded diesel (because the oil companies could not manage to sell premium diesel to car owners, I guess.)

Further, there are highway tolls too – which is “double taxation”. Truckers pay the cess on diesel. This revenue stream is already dedicated to the Central Road Fund. So there should be no tolls on government-built highways. But here there are tolls. There should actually be “freeways”.

An idea whose time has come is dedicated “truckways” with “open road tolling” powered by GPS. These can easily be privately supplied, given the customer base of truckers on all key routes. Yet, this will require upgradation to modern multi-axle trucks, which do not destroy road surfaces. For this, free trade in used multi-axle trucks is required. Our pygmy single-axle Tata trucks will surely not be allowed to ply on these modern truckways because they cause damage to the road surface and private truckway owners will debar them on their properties. Our horrible highways and our horrible trucks go together – and so must depart together as well.

India does not need “education” and “healthcare”.

India needs a REVOLUTION in Transportation.

Shubh Laabh and Shubh Yatra – let these be our slogans.

(Read the news report on the truckers strike here. And the Express editorial here.)

An Ad For An Ad

With inflation crossing 11.7 per cent (bravo to the statisticians who measured it so precisely) it has been reported that the government is coming out with a “slew of ads” as propaganda designed to confuse the public into thinking that this inflation is caused by “global factors”.

They are calling it an “awareness campaign”!

Whatever happened to Truth?

What about Truth in democratic politics?

What are the “values” of the senior functionaries of The State? – the cabinet secretary is quoted in the report.

What kind of people squander public money in a poor country – where there are so many better ways to spend this money – in spreading treacherous lies?

Actually, even this slew of ads will be inflationary, considering that the government will “create money” to pay for them.

Taking into consideration that the government will pay in its own paper notes, and that they will be exchanging “real” ad space for these property-less paper notes, newspaper owners should refuse to accept these ads. They should politely inform the government that they are actually quite broke – in “deficit” – that this deficit is causing inflation. They should voluntarily refuse to accept ads paid for by further deficits.

And if these ads are carried, civil society should release its own ads, telling the government that it needs to tighten its belt – for it is loose spending by the government that is causing inflation in India.

Our ads versus your ads, Manmohan.

And read my “Funny Money” to understand money, inflation, and the ultimate cure.

Against The Nuclear Deal

I opposed the Indo-US nuclear deal in a column published more than two years ago.

And the arguments I made then still stand:

What if there is a nuclear accident?

Will you like a nuclear power plant to be located in your city/town/village?

When there is no relief in torts, how can the average Indian risk nuclear power?

And if nuclear power is generated by the State, how will we ever attain the goal of 24x7 private electricity supply?

With the State in power generation, we will forever be plagued by power cuts.

And why don’t we have free trade with the people of America, so that we can all benefit from buying cheap Californian wine, Harley-Davidson bikes and other American products?

This Indo-US nuclear deal is a deal between the government of India and the government of the USA.

It is just like the deals our government used to routinely have with the Soviets when I was young – all government-to-government deals.

We don’t need such governments, nor do we need such deals.

We need free trade unilaterally – something I was also one of the first to call for.

This Is Not Progress

There are two stories in the papers today that illustrate the fact that India is not progressing.

By “progress” I mean moving forward.

India is not moving forward.

The first story is how Mumbai flooded up as soon as the first (highly predictable) monsoon rains hit the city.

This happens in Mumbai year after year.

And no one is “responsible”.

The buck, as it were, stops nowhere.

There are politicians, there are bureaucrats, there is a corporation, there are other authorities – but there isn’t anyone responsible for Mumbai.

I therefore propose that the first article of the Constitution of the Second Indian Republic shall read thus:

Every habitation with a population above 500 shall elect a Mayor, who will be responsible for the smooth conduct of all business in his area.

We need not write more than that in the Constitution for “smooth conduct of ALL business” means no flooding, no garbage, and the protection of street hawkers and vendors.

Let us continue to the second story that illustrates India’s regress:

High airfares because of high taxes on ATF have drastically lowered the number of new fliers – especially from the small towns, who used to take short-haul trips by air to the nearest city and back.

The unsafe railways, and the even more unsafe roadways, are being “promoted” by official policy.

This is not progress.