On The Road, Again

Fled the humdrum, domesticated life in South Goa and am now holed up in a clean, single room in a small lodge in Hassan, Karnataka, looking for both solitude as well as adventure. It's like the old Dylan song:

But sometimes a man must be alone,
And this is no place to hide.

Hasan should be on the tourist map. It is the closest city to Halebid, Belur and Sravanabelagola. Nestled in the hills of the Western Ghats, "the weather here suits my clothes." I love the monsoon, anyway.

I took the Konkan Railway to Mangalore and then the bus to Hasan. The railway urgently needs competition from buses - for which a Coastal Expressway is a must. The seats were hard and horrible. The bus had excellent reclining seats but I couldn't sleep a wink because of the bumpy road. It was a government bus from a government bus station 10 kms from the rail station. The auto-rickshaw from the railway station to the bus station cost more than double the railfare. Guess our government hasn't heard too much about "multi-modal transport." It has been a tragedy that wee the sheeple handed all transport over to The State. Everything needs to be privatized.

The highway from Mangalore to Hasan is terrible. Our Tata bus groaned and moaned all the way, not possessing the power to take on the climb. The road was jam-packed with heavy vehicles and progress was excruciatingly slow.

Got some poor quality grass through a local contact. At least now I am putting into my body what I want to put into my body - I am excercising self-ownership.

The lodge I am staying in is on a wide, busy thoroughfare. The shops nearby cater to all my needs: there are two booze shops, three restaurants and even a bar called "Cocktail" where I had some beers this afternoon. Hard-drinking men sat around, downing whiskies and rums in the daytime. Beer is ridiculously expensive. This is very bad for tourism. But the bar itself had a Wild West atmosphere. Next door was the Hasan Armoury - a gun shop!

Read the Times of India yesterday, Mysore edition. The leader article was by a State-employed nuclear scientist arguing that "India needs to play a major role in harnessing this technology." Hasan needs electric power alright: there are long power cuts throughout the day. This should be privatized. With nuclear power under State-ownership, we will never get electricity 24x7.

Anyway, the author of the article is not an economist. He is merely arguing for State subsidy for his own "knowledge" area. An economist talks about "economization" - something we do all the time, about means and ends, of choosing between options. The country needs roads - and Adam Smith said this was the "third duty of the Sovereign." In his exact words, apart from national defence and the administration of Justice, the sovereign has:

...the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.

I champion roads. They should be Top Priority. Nuclear power India does not need.

Saw an intersting advertisement in the ToI put up by the Karnataka BJP - in Kannada. Jalebis all over an English paper! Lots of mugshots of local politicians who don't speak our language and profess to linguistic chauvinism. The signs on the government bus was in Kannada - very bad for tourism. English is the language of the future. I champion the English language. It can be learnt fast from for-profit companies. Learning English does not require government schools.

Saw another ad in the ToI on the back bage - of the central government's Ministry of Urban Development building a modern bus station in Bangalore. The central government suffers from serious knowledge failure. If we want to develop our cities and towns we must hand them over to local bodies possessed of local knowledge. Buses can be run, and bus stations built, by the private sector - as is already happening with airports. Their problem is the complete absence of the ability to think consistently. Perhaps the minister needs a "decent smoke." I surely do. Goodbye.