4 Idiots

Take this, from a news report, for starters:

"Shopping malls are vulgar display of wealth and a vulgar wastage of energy and space," minister of state for urban development Saugata Roy (Trinamool Congress) said at a seminar, agreeing with environmentalist R K Pachauri who also described the malls as "energy guzzlers".

This minister - and Pauchauri too - ought to have been asked some very hard questions. There is surely more to reportage than dumb reportage.

The Central State ministry for urban development, which this fellow now heads, has always been in charge of the "planning" of Nude Elly - which is a planned, "new" city. This ministry controls the Delhi Development Authority (DDA - on which I wrote yesterday) which is a land and housing monopolist. They have built DDA housing - a very vulgar display of socialist architecture. Over half the city's inhabitants live in slums and "unauthorised colonies": should we applaud this vulgar display of poverty?

Note that these "central planners" who planned the very city they live in, never thought of physical markets. In the older parts of the city, there are huge markets: Chandni Chowk, Daryaganj, Sadar Bazaar, Connaught Place, Karol Bagh... But look at the tiny market places in the newer localities of swank South Delhi: Defence Colony, Panchsheel Enclave, the four Greater Kailashes, and all the rest. These planners have, however, dedicated huge spaces for "parks." They don't know anything about cities as market centres, as commercial engines. After all, they are "socialists": IAS officers and CONgressmen. Contrast Saugata Roy's CONgress mind with that of Sir Stuart Hogg, who built Calcutta's "New Market" - still "The Shopping Mall" of that city. Every British hill-station has a central shopping mall - the "maal road," as locals call them.

Let us turn to Dr. RK Pachauri, Nobel laureate. He thinks malls are "energy guzzlers." This seminar was held in the Habitat Centre, where TERI occupies a few centrally air-conditioned floors. The reporter ought to have asked Pachauri if the Habitat Centre was not a guzzler of energy too.

The same report says that the Central State minister for environment is also very upset about energy guzzlers on wheels:

Recently, environment minister Jairam Ramesh termed sports utility vehicles (SUVs) as diesel guzzlers and called their use in the country "criminal".

If you are seriously concerned about wastage of energy, you would fix the roads and the traffic chaos first. Bad roads and choked traffic cause even tiny Marutis to waste enormous amounts of fuel. You cannot drive 25 metres in Nude Elly without having to change gears thrice. Just as land is a DDA monopoly, so also roads are a State monopoly. Both are therefore being "undersupplied" to benefit the monopolist State and its functionaries. India's roads and highway system - a State monopoly - causes a huge amount of energy wastage. When I drive the 35 km stretch between south Goa and my nearest city on the National Highway #17, I encounter at least 25 speed-breakers each way. Some positivist ought to measure how much fuel is wasted because of the speed-breakers and pot holes all over the country's highways.

I have another report on what the Communist MP Sitaram Yechury said in another seminar in another city. For example, this commie called for:

a powerful people’s movement against this crass consumeristic culture unleashed by market forces...

Yechuri studied his communist theories in Nude Elly's Jawaharlal Nehru University in the good old days when everyone worked and the shop-shelves were all empty - as were the streets. If you really "care" for the working classes, do you not feel happy when they consume better in exchange for their hard work? Why do people labour? - if not for the sake of enjoying whatever fruit that labour yields. Consumption is the purpose of production. The word "crass" means "vulgar." These union bosses want higher wages, but oppose "wage goods" as vulgar!

Not much difference between the minister, Pachauri, Ramesh, and Yechury- all a bunch of commies.

What is decidedly dangerous is what the minister is aiming at, which Pachuri, an intellectual bodyguard of The State, is strongly supporting:

"It is high time the society steps in and puts certain regulations on shopping malls which are energy guzzlers," Roy said.

Society never steps in anywhere; society is just a myth. Parliament will step in and pass Legislation - and then armies of baboos will step in, all answerable to this minister, and to all his successors - these self-styled "representatives of society." This is the root of all the "delegated totalitarianism" I wrote about yesterday, which connects bureaucracy with democracy in totalitarian states. This is precisely how Jairam Ramesh's baboos in Goa are going about "implementing" the Coastal Regulatory Zone Act - an invasion of Private Property I wrote about the other day.

The minister should be told to disabuse himself of the notion that private citizens and businessmen are in the habit of wasting energy - or anything else. On the contrary, it is The State that wastes, and wastes, and wastes. In the energy business, all the electricity companies monopolistically owned by our The State "waste" trillions of rupees of our money every year. Because of erratic electricity, all of us "waste" trillions on inverters, generators, UPS systems etc. Such regulations as the minister and his ally Pachauri desire will waste time and human energy.

Notice how statists of all hues inevitably turn into totalitarians, hungry for power. Commies!

My message to these 4 Idiots is:

1. Get our The State out of the energy business.

2. Get our The State to fix the roads and regulate traffic - not business.

3. Get out of the highway business.

4. Get out - period.


Quite frankly, I don't know what exactly a "vulgar display of wealth" is. If you've got it and you flaunt it, who is a minister to complain about your aesthetics?

What I find offensive are "vulgar displays of power" - like the 12-car motorcades of our socialist ministers, complete with "commandos" openly carrying machine-guns. How much energy does that guzzle?