Ground Zero: First Principles

The dosa shop where I just had an excellent brunch is not something you will find in any village. In the City Market, we create wealth by producing for others, not ourselves. Janardhan makes thousands of dosas every day - for others. In the village you have to make your own dosa - and start grinding.

The City Market thus caters to a "division of labour society," where each produces for others, and obtains his needs from yet others. No one is "self-sufficient." This is what we mean by a "market society." The Gandhian vision of "self-sufficient villages" where each spins his own yarn - and makes his own dosas - is actually "anti-social."

The Market Economy is located always in a City. Note that no one in the City knows a thing about farming. Agriculture is not an economic activity that takes place in any City. Yet, all our "democratic representation" is about villages, villagers and farmers. Cities and the division of labour therein are not even mentioned in school textbooks.

Now, a City is a valuable piece of Property. A small room in a big city can cost more than a few acres of farmland in some distant village. Further, commercial property is the most valuable, and a room in the City Centre is worth much more than one in an outlying residential suburb.

Now, if one seeks to administer the common affairs of a City, one must pay great attention to the Central Business District (CBD) - which is where all the action is. It must be well connected to all the outlying suburbs; it must be clean; traffic must move smoothly.

Of course, this is certainly not how the socialist bureaucracy is administering our common affairs. New Delhi lacks a proper CBD. The Mughals built Chandni Chowk, the Brits built Connaught Place, the socialists built the disaster called Nehru Place. What is not happening in New Delhi is certainly not happening in Hassan, Karnataka. Looking at conditions on Main Street here it seems obvious that important words like Market, City, Property, and CBD do not figure at all in the socialist minds of the local administration. They do not possess important "concepts" in their minds. They have therefore ruined every City.

The officers of the British colonial civil service in India were thoroughly trained in classical liberal political economy. There was an East India College in Haileybury where classical political economy was taught by eminent men, including Malthus. When I last lectured at the IAS Academy in Mussoorie a decade or so ago, the Professor of Economics there was a Marxist. Das Kapital lay on his table, with many pagemarks. His shelves were full of evil communist literature. This is why the civilian administration in India has failed. Their very training is wrong. And it all boils down to words like Socialism. And other words like Market. It is indeed an "academic" question.

More than 10 years ago, I had offered a course on Market Economics for IAS officers - for free, for I was anyway getting a sizable salary from the Economic Times, and I saw no reason to loot the Exchequer. Wajahat Habibullah was then Director of this important government institution, and he found it fit not to reply to my offer. He seemed comfortable teaching Marxist bullshit to his recruits. He is known to be "very close to Sonia Gandhi."

What more can I say? I tried everything I could to prevent this disaster from happening. I tried to spread Knowledge. I conclude this post with lines from an old Dylan song:

Don't say I didn't warn ya,
When yer train gets lost.