Only A Constitution of Liberty Can Save India

The Anna Hazare-led "movement" to battle corruption is fading out - as I had predicted - and, in the meanwhile, here is a fresh report of massive corruption from today's news, pertaining to Air India's purchase of airplanes. This time, an entire "Group of Ministers" are involved, including Praful Patel (civil aviation minister) and P. Chidambaram (police minister).

What is the solution? Anna Hazare's Jan Lokpal (ombudsman)? Or a New Constitution that severely restricts this overweening Socialist State - and delivers freedom from State interference to the citizenry? 

I would insist on the latter: that only a Constitution of Liberty can save India. Thus, if the New Constitution debars the State from running businesses of its own, and all PSUs are privatised, a whole lot of political and administrative corruption will be ended for ever. Similarly, if the New Constitution guarantees Economic Freedom to us all, and this State is dethroned from the "commanding heights of the economy." Ditto if Private Property is made inviolable by the State. If Liberty prevails, then only will corruption cease.

So we do not need to draft a Lokpal Bill. We need to draft a New Constitution - which should be short and crisp. This should guarantee Liberty, Property and the Pursuit of Happiness to us all. Power - that too, very limited power - should be decentralised to the level of city and town: subsidiarity. The Centre must fold. Powers to tax should be strictly limited. Powers to inflate should be taken away - by mandating Private Money: gold. Powers to engage in "social justice" should also be done away with - no more MGNREGA, which funnels loose money to the officialdom. Instead of "fundamental duties for the citizen" there should be fundamental duties for the personnel of the State. Freedom to trade by land and sea should be guaranteed - and customs duties disallowed by law. Also, most importantly, the State should have no role in education.

Anna Hazare seems to be quite a monster, actually. According to Amit Verma:

He [Anna Hazare] runs a village in rural Maharashtra as if it is his personal fiefdom, like an authoritarian feudal lord. He is a fan of Shivaji, and admires him for once chopping off the hands of a man who committed a crime. In that vein, he passes an order that anyone found drinking alcohol will be tied to a pole in front of the village temple and publicly flogged. Several men undergo this, one of whom, a vice sarpanch of the village, says: “I was drinking. I was ... tied to the pole and flogged two-three times. It is normal. [He] will try to make you understand once or twice and thereafter, he will beat you badly.” He believes in “rigid implementation” of family planning, including forced vasectomies.

Doesn't sound much like a "freedom man," does he? More like a tin-pot dictator, if you ask me.

It is an old adage that power corrupts. Our present Constitution gives the State huge powers - while giving no guarantees of either Liberty or Property to the citizenry. Nandigram, Singur, Meerut, Jaitapur - these are all because of excesses of State power, because they have the power to take our Property away. Surely, ours cannot be called a "constitution of liberty."

A wise man once said:

The original idea behind constitutions is that of limiting government and of requiring those who govern to conform to laws and rules.

 So I shall stick to my earlier suggestion: We need to "seize Liberty and end Tyranny" through a New Magna Carta of our own.

Nothing less will do.