Free-Trading & Self-Governing Cities & Towns As The BASIC POLITICAL UNIT Of The Second Indian Republic

Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" Gandhi erred on many fronts: His hatred for alcohol has corrupted Gujarat, where everyone, rich or poor, drinks in hiding, and where the highest incidence of liver cirrhosis is among police inspectors; his hatred for machinery put India back by half-a-century; and, lastly, his "vision" of Gram Swaraj and "rural development" led to the utter neglect and consequent destruction of all our cities and towns. 


In the meanwhile, the villagers are moving en masse to urban areas looking for opportunities in The Market - while chacha manmohan wants them to stay back and dig ditches for his MGNREGS for inflation-affected RBI paper notes.


The village CANNOT be the basic political unit. It MUST be the city and the town. This is what "civilisation" means. This is also what "politics" means, rooted in the polis. 


Today, all our "metropolises" are seats of "higher levels of government" - and these higher levels have destroyed the cities in which they are based. Nude Elly is the best example. But not that Calcutta and Bombay are any better. Or Bangalore, for that matter.


And we have at least 150 smaller cities. And thousands of towns of all sizes. All are close to collapse.


Why do cities matter so much?


Because, where population is high, markets are bigger. In the very first chapter of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith says that "the extent of the division of labour depends on the size of the market." So, if you want to become a taxi driver, receptionist, plumber, electrician or even a cigarette-vendor and stay back in your sparsely-populated village, you can FORGET ABOUT IT.


The "division of labour" is what SPECIALISATION in the market economy is all about. Ludwig von Mises calls the Principle of the Division of Labour or Specialisation the "Principle of Cosmic Change and Becoming." This is how we "become" what we want to become - which is how and why I became a Philosopher of Freedom.


You cannot "become" much stuck in a village.


British India was an urban success story. Do read Anthony King's Colonial Urban Development. They built 80 "hill-stations" in 50 years - and all the Big Cities and even all the Small Towns were well looked after.


These morons have destroyed them all - including Simla, including Darjeeling, and including Mussoorie, where the IAS Academy is located.


They have built only 3 new cities - and all are State Capital Cities: Chandigarh, with its hideous Le Corbusier architecture; Bhubaneshwar, where I just returned from, and which is a disaster; and Gandhinagar, from where Narendra Modi rules over Prohibition-era Gujarat.


The Principle to invoke is Subsidiarity - which means that, first, if something is required, the Free People will be asked if they can produce it themselves, via The Market, or via Charity. If there is something the Free People cannot produce, and this is required, like a good road with a broad footpath, then this task must be handed down to the LOWEST LEVEL of government - which is the City or Town "Civil Government," which is an "honest civic corporation."


So, let this be the First Task of all the Free People of Urban India - to set up ONE honest civic corporation in their respective cities and towns. These are governments with their "nose to the ground." We need these first - and thousands of them.


We can think of higher levels of government later.