Ground Zero: Cities Are Capital

Yesterday, I wrote about how a city high street and its shops are precious Capital whose value must be maintained. It follows therefore that an entire city is nothing but precious Capital, and fixed capital at that. The real task of any city-level civilian administration is to seek the preservation and maintenance of the city's capital value.

This is precisely what the British did to Hong Kong, which was a barren rock when they got their lease, and was a great piece of valuable real estate when they handed it over to the Chinese. In Singapore, they have done a fine job at maintaining the capital value of the city.

The civilians of the East India Company did much the same in India. Calcutta started off as 7 villages whose revenue was granted to the EIC. Soon, it was a "City of Palaces." The footpath on Chowringhee is wider than the whole of Main Street, Hassan. The Maidan opposite is endless open space. Park Street, New Market, and Dalhousie Square, where offices are located, are all nearby. From 7 villages to a mighty city.

Ditto for Bombay, an island with a fort, surrounded by malarial swamps, that the Portuguese gifted the English Crown. Not finding any revenue, the King leased the island to the EIC - and they immediately went about improving its Capital Value, and building a great city. It is a grievous error to think of these EIC civilians only as "clodhopping collectors" in vast, rural districts. The best among them aspired to run the big cities. Mountstuart Elphinstone was Governor of Bombay. And when Sir Bartle Frere was Governor of Bombay, Florence Nightingale wrote him a letter of congratulation on the fact that his city had a lower death rate than London. She joked that soon she would recommend to Londoners that they repair to Bombay for their health. Actually, London has always been known as a filthy city. The new cities in India were clean and healthful. Darjeeling, with its wide Mall Road lined with big shops, has a beautiful, large sanatorium for TB patients from the plains, so that they could recover their health in the clean, pine air. The British built 80 hill-stations in India in 50 years - and that is a lot of Capital, a lot of Property.

Sitting here in Hassan, Karnataka, looking at the conditions on Main Street, the chaos, the filth, the broken footpaths, the cows and stray dogs, the antics of the policemen - and all this within yards of the colonial bungalow of the IAS successors of the British raj - I am overcome with a sense of deep sorrow. It is as if some great evil has befallen our land, a great darkness. It seems perfectly clear to me that there are powerful evil forces that are taking this huge nation of a billion people down the path to "de-civilization." If there is one apt word to describe this evil force, then it is this: SOCIALISM.

By the way, I have thought of a solution to the cows on Main Street. I think there should be a Cow License in every Indian city and town. And there should be a strict policy that these licenses will NOT be given under any circumstances.

There are other animals we could see on city streets. In Rajasthan, tourists love elephant and camel rides. There are always pony rides to be enjoyed in the hill stations. But these urban city street cows must go. License Raj for them. Ha ha.