On Congress Badness... And Madness

Lead editorials today are all about the decimation of the LTTE. But there is also an interesting interview with Kamal Nutt, the anti-commerce minister. Let us look at each in turn.

As I reported in an earlier post, I myself stumbled upon an LTTE camp on the Tamil Nadu coast in 1985, where I met Anton Balasingham, their ideologue. And was taken on a guided tour of their fuel dumps, ammo dumps, etc. The LTTE was part of the criminalized “politics” that Indira Gandhi indulged in; she also created Bhindranwale.

As liberals, we would use different means. We would champion the cause of free-trading and self-governing cities. Jaffna could be one such city, and this would enable the Tamils to not only participate in the global economy, but also retain their culture and identity. There would be peace and prosperity. There would also be Freedom. The political means, most importantly, would be just.

If there is a “one-man roadblock” to the employment of the above means in India’s foreign and trade policies, it is Kamal Nutt. I watched him with horror on tv last night, and am happy that he has said so much in an interview with Mint, so we all have him permanently in black-and-white.

Now, this man, we all know, hates the idea of free trade. He is a protectionist; an economic nationalist. And he is Sonia and Manmohan’s foreign trade minister. Since his mind is in serious error, and these errors cannot and must not continue to be translated into official policy, this interview is opportune. It enables us to look into the inner workings of his brain, to the theories which he uses to perceive the world of the senses.

Kamal Nutt begins by saying that he advocates looking at things from “a very India-specific manner.” This is the fatal idea of a Volkswirtschaft – the National Economy. Kamal Nutt says that this national economy requires a “domestic stimulus encompassing rural India…because demand in rural India can be phenomenal. And that will then drive our manufacturing sector.”

In plain English: The State pumps up the villagers with fiat paper notes. This will spur growth in manufacturing. He adds that “one job in manufacturing creates three in services.” Where did he get that, I wonder.

Actually, India can easily be a global centre for manufacturing, what with its trained manpower and English-knowledge skills. What inhibits it is the entire gamut of what, since the 70s, has been called “infrastructural bottlenecks”: roads and highways, power, water, railways, ports and airports, functional cities and towns… the lot. This fucked-up infrastructure takes away all the locational advantages that India has in its people.

And surely sound money and free international trade are the pathway to prosperity, not more and more fiat money “pumping up” a closed domestic market? Note that the minister is possessed of a distinctly Keynesian mindset.

Kamal Nutt also displays the fatal schizophrenia of those who believe in the Volkswirtschaft – the idea that the only objective of a foreign trade policy is exportation. In reality, just as a peanut-vendor “exports” peanuts in order to “import” all his necessities, from chai and bidis to a new pair of chappals, so too does a nation export in order to import.

Further, the import is more important than the export – for we export what we do not want (as with the peanut-vendor and his peanuts) while we import goods we desperately seek, because we cannot produce them ourselves. These imports then become our prized possessions. Kamal Nutt, trade minister of the Congress, opposes all imports. He wants to export, export and export only.

Ludwig von Mises says that those who do not see themselves as both producer and consumer rolled into one, but see themselves as producer only, suffer from “schizophrenia.” They are divided against themselves. This is the precise mental condition of our trade minister.

It was revealed on television last night that Kamal Nutt has been winning his seat in parliament from the same constituency in poverty-stricken, land-locked and remote Madhya Pradesh for the last 29 years. The UPA government needs a trade minister that hails from the coast.

Further, I would like to see a detailed investigative report on conditions in Kamal Nutt’s constituency. Things must be much worse here than in Amethi or Rai Bareilly.

Kamal Nutt is just a symptom; the real disease is Congressism, with its Volkswirtschaft, its fiat money and its economic isolationism.

The poverty of India lies in this Congress way of thinking.