Free Cities: India's Alternative Future

It is quite apparent today that our Central State is collapsing; that Chacha Manmohan cannot stop the tide; that Rahul and Sonia Gandhi are non-entities; that the BJP is clueless and quite evil, too; that the Commies are zeroes; and all the other parties are bereft of any real ideology other than the same old CONgressism. Yet, this could have been predicted by any good historian. After all, the Roman Empire collapsed for similar reasons - the pre-eminence of the Fuhrer Principle (of a Supreme Leader); the absense of free enterprise; excessive interventionism and all the consequent corruption; and, finally, inflationism and the debasement of the currency. It is for these very reasons that the USSR collapsed. And, I daresay, it will be for these very reasons that the USSA will collapse too. What is wrong in History cannot work in Practice.

But then, what is wrong in Theory cannot work in Practice either. The Gandhis and their CONgress are biting the dust because their Mahatma was completely wrong in Theory. His aversion to modern machinery and technology was stupid Luddism - and put India back by half-a-century or more. His distaste for alcohol has corrupted modern Gujarat - as I wrote about while touring there a month or so ago. Similarly, his vision of an India comprising "self-sufficient village republics" is nonsensical - because the "division of labour" is maximised in cities and towns, as the higher populations there make for bigger markets: you cannot even run a chai-shop successfully in a sleepy, vacant village. Thus, we in Indyeah need to embrace a VISION of the future that is proven right in History, in Theory, and in Practice. We can be a nation that is a League of many thousands of free-trading and self-governing cities and towns - all competing for business and citizens. Something like the Hanseatic League of Olde Europe.

There are many reasons for us to proceed on this path urgently - for one, our people are predominantly poor and deserve much better. And second, the "developed world" is going to go through hell soon. The USSA, the EU, Japan and China are headed nowhere but hell - only because of massive State interventionism and inflationism. Do read this extensive interview with Bill Bonner that appeared in The Daily Bell, an online publication favouring Austrian Economics and Free Markets that I found today on LewRockwell.com; it will tell you that, if we get things right - get our act together, as they say - we could make this Hindustan of ours truly sarey jahan se achha.

Bill Bonner, in the interview cited above, is introduced as a "hard money maven" - and the most important issue facing our nation today, and each "competing city" comprising it, is the issue of "sound money." Austrian economists have always held that to be COINS of gold and silver, while they have treated paper notes as "money substitutes." If we get our money right, and free our economy - laissez faire, laissez passer, laissez aller - then the world's hard Capital will come into our rock-solid banks. Our currency, now based on gold, will appreciate against all the fiat paper currencies of the rest of the world, and our poor will become big consumers of cheap imports - and prosper.

As the great poet put it, "Into this Haven of Freedom, my Lord, let my country awake!"