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.