On Learning... And Laughter

Thanks to LRC, I got the link to a Reuters story on US treasury secretary Tim Geithner’s visit to China. This portion is noteworthy:

"Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.

His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience...

Chinese students are smart!

Ha ha.

Wonder how long it will take desi students to laugh loudly at our finance ministers and central bankers.

And talking about students makes me wonder why so many are going to Australia. Could there be a direct link between Indian students going overseas and restrictions on private sector higher education in India? Vipin Veetil, writing in, seems to think so. He, of course, laughed at his professors, dropping out of the Delhi School of Economics; that too, after topping the BA. He is now studying in Europe. Perhaps if we had a school of economics here, where the right stuff was taught, students like Vipin would have stayed back. And laughed.

Anyway, if the goal is to see students laugh loudly at officials and their pronouncements, government education must be done away with.

I would love to see students laugh at “rural development.”

In China they are building new cities all the time – and all along the coast. There is nothing called “rural development” in China. All efforts are aimed at urbanisation.

However, the good news is that in India today there are voices of reason and sanity calling for an end to the sham of rural development, saying that cities and towns must take the lead in the economic development of the nation. Read Pramit Pal Chaudhuri in today's HT here. He concludes with a chilling statistic:

The last census shows that over 50,000 villages have been abandoned.

Indeed, my own trips in rural India have revealed that most villages are peopled by the elders – and unmarried girls. The young and able are all in the towns and cities, trying to earn money.

There is no mystery in this tendency. It is indeed predicted by the laws of Praxeology: the division of labour is greater in highly populated cities and towns as compared to sparsely populated villages. As Adam Smith wrote, "The division of labour is limited by the size of the market." Where markets are bigger, there is greater specialization: you cannot be a receptionist, plumber, taxi driver or even chai-wallah in a sleepy, underpopulated village.

Thus, the “economics” that our The State teaches and practises goes against some of the oldest insights into the market economy. The division of labour features in the first chapter of the Wealth of Nations. Some Greek philosophers had also noted it.

There can never be a rural utopia of village republics.

The idea must be laughed at.

Laugh, Indian students. Laugh.