On Anna Hazare... And Bangalore's Metro

I thought that this perceptive article on India and Anna Hazare from TheDailyBell.com titled "The Corruption of India's Economic Miracle" is well worth a read. It rips a Wall Street Journal article on the subject apart - and I place the concluding remarks below:

For another, the article assumes that the current Indian vitality is the result of inexorable cultural and entrepreneurial shift. We would argue this is entirely incorrect. India's resurgence is driven by central banking money printing and may not be seen as a natural expression of industry and society.

It is extremely important that the progress of the BRICS be placed in perspective. Brazil, China, India, even Russia, all have aggressive central banking policies. China and India, especially, have economies that are obviously being stimulated by excessive money printing. Both countries have a problem with price inflation as a result.

Progress built on printing money from nothing is ephemeral. In America and Europe, thanks to the debasement of money and the vast resources it grants (temporarily) to government, economies can seem quite healthy  one moment and then ill the next.

Money printing hollows out economies. It distorts business and job growth. It makes people feel wealthier than they are in reality. In both China and India, economic implosions will eventually take place. It cannot be otherwise, because central bank money stimulation inevitably leads to an exaggerated business cycle and subsequent busts.

For this fundamental reason in particular, the Wall Street Journal article is flawed. India has not necessarily experienced a resurgence of business and market creativity. It is simply going through the same cycle of monetary stimulation that the European PIGS and America went through recently.

As Ludwig von Mises cautioned in his great book Socialism, an ideology he abhorred and battled against all his long life:

There is no evidence that social evolution must move steadily upwards in a straight line. Social standstill and social retrogression are historical facts which we cannot ignore. World history is the graveyard of dead civilizations.

We can go backwards any time.


And the proof of that is the photo above of the Bangalore Metro on MG Road. They have DESTROYED MG Road, the prime property in this Fair City, with this ugly overhead train. If it had been underground, the properties on MG Road would have trebled in value. Now, the open space around this magnificent thoroughfare has been blocked. Property prices may not rise much in this ugliness.

The Trial Of chacha manmohan s gandhi - Part 3: Take #2

The first post in this series referred to the charge levelled against Dr. Karl Marx at the LSE's Old Theatre - of "having wasted the time of humanity with his theories." 


In yesterday's post, the second of this series, I also pointed out that the entire "miseducation system" that chacha manmohan s gandhi has deliberately designed seeks to waste the precious years of youth in pointless - and intellectually damaging - pursuits. This delays their entry into The Market; it delays marriage by delaying the ability of young people to support themselves; and, what is worse, it corrupts sexual morality by keeping young boys and girls in college where all they do is "party." This is precisely what is happening in the USSA and elsewhere.


Now, time is of the essence. Life is measured in time. Productivity is measured in time. The wages of labour are paid according to time. Interest is charged according to time. Rents are also paid on the basis of time. It is therefore Time that is the most important "factor of production." Our chacha is wasting time - the most precious years of youth.


But it doesn't stop there.


Throughout India, our horrible transport system wastes time on a colossal scale. Our trains are the world's slowest; and as for our "notional highways," the less said the better. I do believe chacha has deliberately not built proper highways in order to FORCE our people to travel by train, which are his MONOPOLY. Modern buses on modern highways would have given the Indian Railways a run for their money. No one travels by train in the USSA because they have Greyhound buses and good highways.


And what about civil aviation? Our chacha has imposed such heavy taxes on "low cost" airlines that, once again, we are FORCED to travel by his unsafe and slow trains, his MONOPOLY.


I also believe our chacha has taken deliberate measures to ensure that the automobile revolution does NOT happen in India. He has done this deliberately in order to protect his cronies - like Rahul Bajaj MP, whose FUCKED-UP auto-rickshaws clog all the streets in all our cities and towns. Actually, Calcutta had an excellent PRIVATE tramway before the automobile was invented. Private tramways in all our small cities and towns would deliver the two- and three-wheeler industry a death-blow.


Further, our chacha has not pursued an "automobile policy" that seeks to ensure that all Indians have cars; rather, he wants all Indians to own motorcycles and scooters, thereby making their lives unsafe, especially when little children have to be ferried about. He is NOT protecting the people and their kids; he is protecting some bozos who cannot compete with duty-free second-hand car, bus and truck imports.


Amazing, ain't it? We fuckers have to sit "competitive examinations" all through our lives - CAT, IIT-JEE, UPSC et. al. But these cronies must be protected at all costs, and kept safe from competition.


One of the costs of such protectionism is human life - our lives. Over 200,000 people die on our unsafe streets and highways - and many times more are seriously injured. But our chacha, the great Central Planner, Chairman of the Planning Commission, would rather provide us with "food security." He seems to be unaware that billions of tonnes of fruit, vegetables and fish rot throughout India because these perishable commodities cannot reach markets on TIME.


Last evening, I had a great dinner off a roadside stall here in Pondicherry: dosas with fried chicken liver. Excellent! I told the vendor that he was engaged in true "social service" - and that the Pondicherry "Food Minister" was engaged in theft.


Since our chacha has also monopolised the teaching of History, I think he has deliberately kept the Babur Nama out of the curriculum, because therein this Great Mughal writes that he was horrified when, after conquering Dilli, he found there was "no cooked food available in the bazaars." He took immediate steps to ensure that this was rectified and Mughlai kebabs were available for the populace. 


Our chacha, the great History teacher, wants to parcel raw rice and wheat to all Indians! In the meantime, ask any street-food vendor in Nude Elly (or anywhere else) as to how much harassment he faces daily from chacha's khaki-costumed goons.


Theatre of the absurd, ain't it?


While we are all wasting Time, it is noteworthy that our great chacha himself has NO TIME TO WASTE. 


There is a lead editorial in The Hindu of today that points to the fact that our great chacha "has held only two press conferences and two interactions with editors in Delhi in the past seven years. As for interviews, he has allowed himself to be questioned by an Indian newspaper only once and never by an Indian [television] news channel."


In other words, these seven or eight long years of chacha's misrule have been a colossal waste of time - for the Free Press, a vital Institution of Freedom, to which I proudly belong, with a track record of 20 years of distinguished service.


Now, as the ancient proverb goes, "Time is money." 


Of course, chacha's fiat paper money loses value with the ticking of the clock. The inflationist-welfarist-Keynesian bozo!


It is HIGH TIME this waster of time and money was shown the door - Exeunt! as The Bard would put it - and this vast sub-continent got down to the serious business of making money by saving Time, which is the only way Productivity can be raised, thereby raising all wages and incomes. 


We need a wholesale transport revolution. 


We need "street security" not "food security."


And we need Sound, Private Money, which will give all our poor people "financial security." Inflationism erodes the Capital of all. And welfarism is nothing but "capital consumption."


[This will be a 5-part series. Stay tuned for more.]

The Chakra... And Our Civilisation

In Juggernaut Puri, everything revolves around the chakra - the wheel. The road servicing this area is named Chakratirtha Road - which means "the pilgrimage of the wheel." The skylight in my room in a quaint, old hotel is shaped like the chakra. And I bought a souvenir of carved stone of this chakra. There are 16 spokes around the hub - and the base is held up by 10 elephants. Which means the ancients understood that the power of the spoked wheel was greater than that of 10 elephants. There are other figures holding up the chakra that I bought - and these include strange monstrous creatures as well as pretty dancing girls. I think dancing girls must have been big in our ancient civilisation - for the first hall in the Sun Temple of Konarak is the Hall of the Dancing Girls. But no music and dance on the streets of Puri - or should I say "non-streets."

It rained a bit last morning - and the whole town flooded up. Funny how excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro reveal elaborate storm-water drainage systems - that too, in a desert, where it could not have rained much. Today, our civilisation lacks storm water drainage - it floods up in Nude Elly, where it rains twice a year, at most; and it floods up in Mumbai, too, where the monsoon hits with predictable certainty. So what could be different about Juggernaut Puri.

Read a strange article by the "RTI activist" Aruna Roy trying to define "civil society." I think it might be better if we first tried to define "civilisation" - a word based on civitas, which means "city." If our cities have collapsed, so has our civilisation. And as for "civil society" - it is a meaningless socialist concept. The market order is based on individualism - and it is what Hayek called a cosmos, just like all the individual stars in the night sky, a perfect "order without design." Indeed, one of Hayek's most important books is titled Individualism and Economic Order. 

Aruna Roy is part of our "political society." All her "activism" has resulted in more jobs for the baboos - and there are now "Information Commissioners" everywhere, with their offices and big bungalows, their peons and chaprasis, and their dowdy Ambassador cars. Similarly, Kiran Bedi is "political society" - and Anna Hazare rules a little village, not a city, and it is reported he whips all those who drink alcohol in his "political domain." A real "civilian" would be the owner of the village pub, a "publican." We have none of these.

None of these "civil society activists" have anything to with "civilisation" - which means an amorphous collection of individuals peacefully co-existing in a city, serving customers, surviving thereby, and enjoying life. The emphasis is on "enjoying life" - and the essential reading on civilisation is Plato's Symposium, a word that means "drinking party." Plato tells the tale of one such drinking party that Socrates attended - and, sure enough, there were "flute girls" in attendance. Do read Symposium sometime. It will tell you what is civilisation, or, what was civilisation. We don't possess it anymore - at least not in India.

The Kiran Bedi - Anna Hazare nonsense will also create another government office. They will entrench "political society." We must focus on the root word "civilisation."

And we must also focus on the chakra - the wheel. Our people need wheels - and roads. I had to go out in an auto-rickshaw into town in the morning drizzle - and I got wet. What kind of silly vehicle is this - so open to the elements, and so uncomfortable? Is this "civilisation"? This silly vehicle hogs the non-streets of all our cities because it is "licensed" by The State - and Rahul Bajaj is an MP, a member of "political society."

Last evening, over some whiskies followed by (excellent) Royal Challenge beer, I tried smoking some of the bullshit grass my taxi driver brought me. And I thought of the guy who invented the chakra, the spoked wheel. It struck me that this unsung hero must have had some good chillums to smoke while pondering over the problem. If you remember your Sherlock Holmes, you will recall that for Holmes, a major mystery was always a "three pipe problem." To design the chakra must have taken three or four good chillums, I thought. After all, the chillum was invented long before the wheel, and ganja has been smoked in India from long before the temple of Juggernaut Puri was built. 

Enough of this bullshit grass, and this bullshit town. I am off today, by train, to Sambalpur, in the west, in the jungle, where the ganja is famous, and where Nehru built the Hirakud Dam. That was Nehru - the Dam Builder, unhappy to just sit by and "watch the river flow." Nehru's The State has persisted in blocking everything our free society could be. It was Nehru who established the "license-permit raj." This was his damned Dam Vision.

There are these dams everywhere, and even in Canacona, South Goa, I found a Big Dam (serving no ostensible purpose). 

I hate dams. I like free flowing rivers. I am a Freedom Man - that's how lucky I am.

The Sun No Longer Shines On Konarak

Took a taxi ride to see the Konarak Sun Temple, 40 km from Puri. Within a couple of kilometres we were out of city limits - and the slums.

Then, we passed some "residential localities" of the middle class - but no markets there, and poor inner roads. No space for the automobile. Or servants. 

And then, the JUNGLE started. All jungle between Puri and Konarak. Forest Department warning signs about deer crossing. Casaurina trees, cashews too - but all jungle.

Finally, reached a sort of roadside town - quite a shambles - with a statue of Biju Patnaik pointing in the general direction of The Sea. But there is no promenade for tourists. A municipal functionary operating a roadblock took 10 rupees tax from me.

A few minutes later, we were near the famous temple - and a cop had to be bribed to drive inside. Another 10 bucks for a ticket - and I made the fortunate decision to hire the services of a guide. 

The Sun Temple in Konarak is built on 24 "spoked wheels" - each with a massive "hub." That is, two hub-and-spoked wheels for every month, representing the phases of the moon. They worked as "sundials" too, my guide told me, and you could tell the time by them.

The temple is elaborately carved - but not too well maintained. Scaffolding all over the place, and many "new stones" that are out of place and ill-designed, obviously by our The State. What is interesting is the representation of the "stages of life" - with animals cavorting for the children, sexual enjoyment for the adults, and metaphysical speculation for the aged. Metaphysics has been the bane of Indian philosophy.

One interesting mural showed a day in the life of a noblewoman - she wakes up and stretches, bathes, helped by servants, and then rides out on a horse to hunt! 

No hunting allowed any more  in Orissa - a heavily forested State of the Federation. Why not deer ranching in the private sector? Barun Mitra is going gung-ho about tiger farming; but I think we should begin with deer. And ganja farming, of course.

I enjoyed a venison steak at the Ikea showroom in the outskirts of Frankfurt-am-Main. The photo accompanying this post is of deer hunters in the USSA.

I must mention what the noble-woman did after the hunt - well, she enjoyed her man. The Good Life! In three or four different positions.

My guide smoked ganja - and we shared a couple of chillums in the unkempt temple gardens. Some other chaps joined us - sellers of precious stones, which seems to be a big "street business" here. This is also "knowledge" not taught in school. The gemstone sellers commented how ganja was a "good nasha" - and how alcohol was killing the people. My guide scored some ganja for me - which did the trick this morning, somewhat.

But the Sun is not shining on this Tourist Destination. The crowd at the Sun Temple was immense! That too, on a Monday evening. All along the road, people have opened dhaba-type shacks. I even found a Cafe Coffee Day - and enjoyed a cappucino. I thought of Goa, where, all along the NH 17, you find establishments calling themselves "Bar & Rest" - the Goans are too susegaad to use the full word "Restaurant"! - but here on this jungle highway there are no bar & rest signs. No Freedom. No road. No wheels. Abundant Space.

I thought a Great Idea would be to rig up a private consortium that would build a sea-side train ride between Puri and Konarak - and develop commercial property all along. The crowd of Bengali tourists would love it. Maybe some would buy Property here for their retirement. This would be real "development" - coming from The Market, an Institution of Free Society that socialists like Biju Patnaik could never comprehend. And they never looked towards The Sea; they only looked towards Nude Elly - for "planned development funds": all the "funny money" of the RBI. Funny money that loses value even as I write.

You might as well burn your Macroeconomics textbook too.

It rained on the return journey - and all was cool. Not violent rain like the Goan monsoon, but a gentle drizzle, with blowing gusts of cool wind. It was nice driving through The Jungle, but when we reached The City all was a mess. Can't enjoy the weather in The City. 

Saw a guy with a t-shirt saying "My idea of a Balanced Diet is a Beer in Each Hand" - but I find the beer here prohibitively priced. For the price of one beer I bought a 180ml bottle of Seagram's Royal Stag IMFL whisky. It costs much less in Nude Elly. It costs even less in Goa. So the poor drink chullu. Smoke bidis. And horrible ganja. And their savings are eroded by Inflationism.

What the fuck!

You might as well burn your Microeconomics textbook too.

It is the Science of Economics you need to know - as developed in the Tradition of the Austrian School.

So stay tuned to this blog, where I will elaborate key principles each day.

Holy Smoke In Juggernaut Puri - and other tales

Last evening, my hotel receptionist, knowing well my craze for ganja, dropped me off at a nearby Shiva temple where devotees supposedly gather at sundown and big chillums are smoked. The small temple had a sign outside saying Sabka Malik Ek - The Lord Is One - and it featured the symbols of four faiths - Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, and, of course, our "Om." But the great party didn't happen. A lone priest showed up late and performed some prayers and lit some incense. He offered to "score" some grass for me - but this, too, was terrible stuff. Imagine that, the holy priest of a Shiva Temple that respects all faiths smokes ganja laced with chemicals!

The sun rises very early on the East Coast. I was bathed and ready, out on the beach for a cuppa by 0530. Then, I trekked it to the market area - but everything was closed. Spotted a rickshaw-wallah - the 3-wheeled cycle type - who looked like a major stoner, wispy beard, matted hair, lean frame - and, sure enough, he confessed to smoking 10 chillums a day. We rode off down the main thoroughfare - no footpath - and it struck me that Juggernaut Puri ought to get itself a tramway. These days, underground railways are coming up in two land-locked cities, Nude Elly and Bangalore, and both are under State-ownership. But cities like Puri can get tramways from private players, preferably foreigners, who know something about these things. Our guys know nothing. This City of the Juggernaut needs The Wheel - and all these three-wheeled beasties must go the way of the dodo.

On the ride, it became apparent that this is a completely uncared for city. Passed the BNR Hotel - and how grand it still is. It came with The Wheel - the private Bombay-Nagpur Railway (BNR).

The wheels in this town are all obsolete - mainly three-wheelers, of the motorised sort. Many financed by banks. How does Kathmandu have Toyota taxis (and a tramway)? Import! Import second-hand cars from the East. Get rid of these beasties. Dump them in the sea.

The rickshaw-wallah and I had a couple of chillums - bought not from a government shop, but a private entrepreneur. Little pudias for 5 rupees each. No kick at all - but no chemicals, at least. Then the guy offered me a "trip" for 25 rupees - and they mix some hard opiate into the ganja and smoke it! I refused.

I began the post with the tale of the holy priest at the Shiva Temple smoking chemical-laced ganja. I end it with this tale of the rickshaw-wallah who gets no kick out of the stuff being sold - and so heads for opiates.

Why can't we get GOOD SMOKE?

This is VERY BIG BUSINESS.

Big ganja-charas companies ought to be floated on the Stock Exchange.

Only Brand Names can guarantee quality.

Legalise it!

Don't criticise it!

I'll advertise it!

Mises - On Mexico's Economic Development

I spent a happy morning reading a monograph on Mexico's economic development penned by Ludwig von Mises in the early 1940s, shortly after he had moved to America, but before the end of WW2. The monograph has much of interest to other Third World nations, in Latin America, Asia and Africa, including especially India, which took all the wrong advice from all the wrong economists. Let us begin with "industrialisation."

Over 70 per cent of Mexico's population was engaged in agriculture in the 1940s - and Mises rightly asserted that the country needed to industrialise. Mises begins with a critique of the "closed door method of industrialisation": that is, which aims not at securing the nation in the "international division of labour," but which aims at the "commercial insulation" of one's own country.

This foolish path is what we followed in India, thanks to Raul Prebisch and Hans Wolfgang Singer, who had the full support of every United Nations development organisation. Prebisch and Singer had argued for "import-substitution industrialisation" - and Mises writes about how foolish the idea is, "to cheer when the statistics show a decline in imports." He rightly says:

The advantage derived from foreign trade lies entirely in importing, not in exporting. An increase in exports is only the means to increase imports. A reduction in imports is not a blessing, but a calamity.

The lesson: You must integrate your nation into the international division of labour by specialising in the export of those goods you can produce efficiently and in which you can compete - and use the proceeds to import all your needs, including especially capital goods for your factories.

Import-substitution, on the other hand, penalises domestic consumers - while also hurting foreign nations. When these foreign nations cannot sell to you, they cannot buy your exportables either. Double whammy!

Autarky, or economic self-sufficiency, is "economic suicide."

Another point that Mises makes - extremely relevant to all under-developed nations - is that they need to import Capital. Thus, policies of expropriation, taxation, currency control, and nationalisation which hurt foreign foreign investors must be done away with. If foreign investors are not secure in their investments, the nation will lose.

Today, India is holding up foreigners who wish to invest in supermarkets - and this hold-up is nonsensical, according to Mises. Indeed, there is an entire section in the monograph on "Small Business and Distribution" in which Mises champions the small shopkeeper - and says how his "eminence lies in his adaptability," while the chain store is standardised. The small shopkeepers of North America have survived chain stores and supermarkets, Mises notes, because they adapt themselves faster and better to local and personal conditions. In any case, in poor nations, people buy in small quantities - from small shops.

Mises pays great attention to transportation - favouring the privatisation of Mexico's horrible railways. He says they should be expanded with an eye on freignt and not passengers, which also means lower investments. For passenger traffic, Mises favours building roads and airports - so that civil aviation, personal automobiles, and motor buses can flourish. Indeed, this sentence, written in the early 1940s, before India gained independence, is worth quoting in the India of 2011:

Under present conditions, the construction of modern motor roads is more important than the improvement of the railways.

Mises, thus, would not have advised us to build the Konkan Railway. Rather, he would have insisted on an ultra modern coastal highway. And we would have been immensely better off. Mises waxes eloquent on Mexico's tourism potential, and also on the possibility of her "coastal regions" taking a lead in "processing industries" catering to the export market.


On currency policy, Mises praises The Banco de Mexico for allowing the free purchase of gold and advises this poor nation to refrain from inflationism - a foolish policy to which the US and Britain have "sold themselves." He points out that if the Mexican peso is pegged to gold, it will appreciate against the currencies of these great economic "powers." Then, of course, Bretton Woods was yet to happen, and a world fiat currency system was unthinkable.


On government spending, Mises was no Keynesian, writing that:

When the government spends more, the individual citizens spend less.

He advised low taxation, too.


But it is the section on education that deserves our greatest attention today, not just in India, but in the West as well. I will quote it in full:

Mexico is a country rooted in an old civilisation. Its universities are notable seats of teaching and research. It has succeeded in the last decades in the establishment of an efficient system of primary education for the masses. It is anxious to further vocational and technical schools. All foreign experts are unanimous in the praise of Mexican achievements in this field.

However, the economist must warn of the dangers of some trends in contemporary education. Germany and France were paramount in the development of teaching and instruction. But the results did not come up to expectations. Germany is today [1943] a nation of barbarians; Germany, once styled as a nation of poets and thinkers, is now a nation of gangsters. The high state of French education did not prevent a moral and political collapse.

The truth is that the French and German schools instilled in their pupils a pernicious mentality. The students were imbued with the religion of étatism [French term for "statism"]. They were taught that the State is God, that nothing counts but its power, greatness, and glory. And they were also taught to despise and to hate all other peoples. Graduates looked down upon the business of private citizens. Their only aim was to obtain jobs in the service of the government. The ideal of the Frenchman was to be a fonctionnaire, that of the German to be a Beamter. [Both words mean "civil servant" or "State functionary."] They were not eager to work; they wanted to give orders and to be paid out of funds collected by taxation. They preferred the parasitic life of a bureaucrat to the industrious life of a plain citizen. They did not care for anything other than a career in the daily increasing body of State employees.

Corrupt politicians and unprincipled civil servants have ruined the glorious civilisation of Western Europe. The institutions of learning and of education were instrumental in creating the vicious mentality that led to this disaster. It is a characteristic fact that many of the most eminent harbingers of the new barbarism were professors of the German universities or members of the Académie Française. Intellectuals have built the houses in which Hitler, Mussolini, and Laval lived at their ease. It was a real trahison des clercs ["treason of the intellectuals"] as Julian Benda stigmatised it in his well-known book.

A nation that would guard itself against such a catastrophe has to watch its educational institutions. The youth have to be protected against the arrogant self-conceit that makes them disparage ordinary business activities. It is true that one goal of learning is to train people for the correct fulfilment of duties in the civil service. But the first requirement of a government employee is due regard for the individual citizen, for the man whose work produces the means of supporting the nation and the State.

The worst outcome of the étatist superstition is the habit of considering the "State" as a mythical being, commanding inexhaustable treasures that it can lavishly spend. The State should do this, and this, they say; it should pay more and more for various purposes. It never occurs to the étatist mind that the State cannot spend except by collecting taxes or by incurring debts or by embarking upon inflation. They do not realize that "The State" that pays is the citizenry itself and not some mythical Midas.

The problem of a balanced budget and of an equilibriated economc system are not political and technical; they are moral and intellectual. If public opinion is convinced that The State has never-failing sources of income, and that the only decent way to make a living is to get salaries or subsidies from the Treasury, then even a well-intentioned government and parliament cannot succeed in making both ends meet.

One of the main purposes of education must be to dispel the superstitions of étatism.

It is a common mistake of our contemporaries to view a country's economic problems primarily as a matter of "material" factors and of technical changes. The main issue is intellectual and moral; the spirit is supreme in this field, too.

Thereafter, Mises makes some concluding remarks:


1. Civilisation depends on material well-being. The richer a nation, the better.


2. There is only one way to get richer - Production.


3. To produce more requires Capital - and the private accumulation of Capital is a blessing, not a curse.


4. Private Property and Free Enterprise are the foundations of civilisation.


The final paragraph is worth quoting in full:

The German socialist and harbinger of National Socialism, Ferdinand Lasalle, sneered disparagingly at liberal civil government as a "nightwatchman" and proclaimed, "The State is God." It is this superstitious belief in the omnipotence of government that has brought about the present crisis of civilisation.

Unfortunately, this paper is not available in PDF on the internet. You can buy the book containing this essay - and many more - in India here. And from the Mises Institute here. Well worth buying, and studying - and telling others, too.


The fact that State-employed professors in Indian universities were teaching State-worship to their students is well brought out in my old post titled "The Evil Professors of Delhi U."

Arundhati Roy, Division of Labour, And Cities

Arundhati's latest book is out. Called Broken Republic, excerpts from the introduction have been published in Outlook. Below is how she begins:

The minister says that for India’s sake people should leave their villages and move to the cities. He’s a Harvard man. He wants speed. And numbers. Five hundred million migrants, he thinks, would make a good business model.

She then proceeds to demolish the minister. And I thought it was Ms. Roy who once wrote, "India does not live in her villages; she dies in her villages."

Frankly, I am on the side of the minister on rural-urban migration. 500 million such migrants is a great idea - and we could easily be a nation of 1000 cities then, instead of just five. The USSA has 350 million in 200 cities. Very few Americans - less than 2 percent - live on farms. If we did the same in India, farm labourers would be rich - because their wages would shoot up when the majority of them shift to urban areas and out of agriculture. And farms would be mechanised - hence, more productive, too.

In either case, whether Ms. Roy likes it or not, Indian villagers have been migrating to cities in droves - just look at the slums and the overcrowding. Why do they do that? The only answer: these villagers are better off in crowded cities than in the vacant countryside; further, they know their fortunes improve because of the greater division of labour in the cities. Allow me to explain this point in some detail, beginning with an example that came to mind the other day.


I saw a construction labourer the other day, and his shirt was dirty and torn. My question: Why does this man not sit with a charkha, spin some yarn, weave some cloth, and make himself a new shirt? Why does he work at construction instead - that too, building a house for someone else? The only answer: He sees his work as a faster and better way to obtain not only a shirt, but all else that he needs to survive. This is the magic of the division of labour - which is specialisation and not self-sufficiency. Each human mind is capable of realising this - we all possess a "sense of gain."


As Mises put it (and this was quoted in an earlier post, too):

The fundamental facts that brought about cooperation, society and civilisation and transformed the animal man into a human being are the facts that work performed under the division of labour is more productive than isolated work and that man's reason is capable of recognising this truth.

The extent of the division of labour is limited by the size of The Market. A chai shop in a tiny, remote village may not be able to yield much profit. You cannot be a taxi-driver, receptionist, plumber or electrician in a sleepy village. It is for this reason, to participate in the greater division of labour possible there, that people migrate to cities. They are attracted by The Market; they smell economic gain. In the cities, they "become" what they want to be: actor, dancer, musician, writer... whatever. No one is "self-sufficient." All are specialised. It is in order to specialise that people move to cities.


There is no reason why India should remain a nation of just 5 big cities - and not 1000. There is enough land, for sure. With unilateral free trade, just the twin coasts could host 100 new cities. Add to that their satellite towns - and we are looking at an Indyeah that is predominantly urban - and rich. With so many new cities and towns, urban overcrowding would end. With good transport connections - roads, railways, tramways, the automobile - there would be enough urban space for all, because transportation adds to the supply of urban land. We must therefore dream a new dream: not the Gandhian dream of "self-sufficient village republics," but an Indyeah of thousands of free trading and self-governing cities and towns - that is, an Indyeah fully incorporated into the "international division of labour."


The division of labour is elaborated upon in the very first chapter of The Wealth of Nations - but it is Mises who put it best when he wrote:

The principle of the division of labour is one of the great basic principles of cosmic becoming and evolutionary change.... Human society is an intellectual and spiritual phenomenon. It is the outcome of a purposeful utilization  of a universal law determining cosmic becoming, viz., the higher productivity of the division of labour.

Arundhati Roy needs to study some basic Economics. I am confident that, if she does so, she will eventually come on to the right side in the State-Market Debate. Today, she is anti-State - and anti-Market, too. But there is no Third Way! It can be either the State or the Market; either coercion or voluntarism; either Force or Liberty.


The Welfare State is what has brought Europe and the USSA down. In India, where the vast majority are poor, welfarism cannot work. A big Welfare State printing money, borrowing, and taxing us to the bone will only wipe out Capital - which needs to be invested in real businesses and in physical infrastructure like roads if the poor are to benefit. In my view, the poor need Liberty, Property, Free Trade, Urbanisation and Sound Money. Welfarism funded by inflationism will destroy them. I hope all those who have the true interests of the poor at heart realise this.

Why Pay Taxes To A Kleptocracy?

It is indeed an ominous sign when a leading business daily publishes an editorial on "India's treacherous roads." The editors of Mint say:

The major estimates are startling: there were 4,90,000 accidents in 2009, killing around 1,25,000 people, and injuring almost five times as many. Beyond the numbers, it shows that accidents have refused to decrease in number despite better and wider road networks. Indeed, estimates suggest the number of road accident deaths in 2010 was close to 1,60,000.

This means that if we add fatalities to injuries, there are over 10,00,000 victims of our treacherous roads every year. There were far less casualties  in the Kargil War! We are "unsafe" on the streets. We might well be far safer in war.

In Goa, over 300 people are killed every year on the roads, and many, many more injured, including lots of foreign tourists. Not a day passes by when the local papers do not mention a road accident death.

All that the cops here do is hang around to impose fines on those who don't wear seat-belts or helmets! 

And, of course, they have the Anti-Narcotics Corps (ANC) who hassle all those "good people" who peddle substances that make tourists happy. And these cops "collect" their huftha: an "illegal tax."

Indeed, just the other day, the chief of Goa Police declared Goa to be a "safe destination" - in these words:

"You get a feeling of safety while moving on the beaches in Goa. There have been some wrong impressions created about Goa and that needs to be corrected. I can say with certainty that Goa is not an unsafe destination," Bassi told reporters.

I, on the other hand, when advising foreign tourists, always tell them to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL on our roads. 

Only the other day, a middle-aged English couple asked me how they could best get to Anjuna (in North Goa) from where we were - Canacona, in South Goa, some 100 km away. Should they drive there on their hired scooter? they asked. I advised them to hire a taxi - and relax on the back seat with a bottle of wine. "It is too dangerous to drive here," I told them.

Note that road safety ought to be a priority - and a specialisation - for the officers of the Indian Police Service (IPS). Yet, it is most certainly not. This is an area they completely overlook when they talk about how "safe" we are. Mint is right when they say that road safety for  pedestrians, cyclists, scooterists and motorcyclists should be a matter of TOP PRIORITY - since they are the "most vulnerable." But in Socialist India, there is no "equality" - and the poor get fucked: right there on the streets.

What do the cops do? That is, apart from VVIP security. 

Do read Bruce Benson's The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State which says how we can happily exist without any "criminal justice system" - by imposing fines on all "crimes against the individual," which are Torts. There are no "crimes against The State" in a stateless "private-law society." That is the direction in which our country must head - in my opinion.

Indeed, why just the cops: What does the whole fucking government do? Apart from MGNREGA. And Air India. 

Why do we pay taxes at all? For what "goods and services"?

I conclude with what the BRASS SIGN on my door says:

TAX COLLECTORS WILL BE SHOT!

(This is not a threat; this is a prophesy)

It makes no sense to pay taxes to kleptocrats.

Think about it. And revolt!

Ashoka's Chakra... And Gandhi's Charkha

In yesterday's post, I discussed our State Emblem, which has the chakra (wheel) of the Emperor Ashoka at its base. The fact that this wheel is flanked by a horse and an ox indicates that, way back then, in the 4th century BC, our ancestors had realised the huge gains in efficiency brought about by the wheel when combined with animal power. The horse-drawn chariot won battles; and the ox-drawn cart powered trade by improving transportation. Since all tradeables must be transported, civilisation galloped along - thanks to the wheel.

The wheel remained more-or-less the same till the 19th century - when railways arrived, thanks to the Brits who invented it. It was now steam power, and the wheels were of steel. The rapid spread of railways in British India knit the country together. Of course, tremendous gains were made in efficiency.

The automobile only came in the 20th century - and the Brits built roads to accommodate them. And then, along came Gandhi...

Gandhi's charkha (spinning wheel) was anti-technology. In the 1920s and '30s, India was already the world's biggest importer of British textile machinery. There were modern textile mills all over the country - particularly in Bombay and Ahmedabad. Gandhi's Luddism disapproved. He wanted to halt all this technological progress, to renounce all the gains in efficiency and productivity, and increase "employment." All that increased was "labour."

That is, instead of "saving labour," Gandhi increased it. Thus, in independent and free India, the modern textile industry in our country was shackled and an enormous amount of State interventionism was introduced in order to promote hand-spun cloth (khadi). We lost our comparative advantage in textiles. All these textile mills had to be nationalised!

But this is not all. What about the wheels of transportation? What about the automobile?

From 1947 to 1984, Indians were denied free access to modern wheels - the car. Scooters came with a 10-year waiting list, as did the silly Fiat. Indeed, the waiting period for Fiat cars was so long that a 5-year old Fiat sold for more than the new one.

Things are different these days, and we are able to buy cars and scooters off the shelf. Yet, universal automobile ownership is not a goal of official policy in India. The vast majority ride two- and three-wheelers. And as for the roads...

Compared to Gandhi and Nehru, even Hitler was better in this particular area, for he universalised car ownership in Germany with the Volkswagen Beetle and he also built all the autobahns.

If we want to progress, we in India need wheels and roads. I recommend duty-free imports of used cars, trucks and buses. We must dump the idea of "import-substitution industrialisation" (which is State interventionism) and embrace free trade. There is no logic in protecting MNCs. We now have so many automobile MNCs manufacturing in India - Hyundai, Suzuki, Toyota, Honda, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Skoda... Why do we want to protect them?

So, let trade be free. Open up the ports. Let the people buy cars - that is, four wheels, no two or three. Let roads and highways be built, so that these wheels can be effectively used to power our moribund civilisation and take it forward. Without wheels and roads, we are doomed.

As for our The State and its Planners - let me say that I hate the lot of them. They refuse to build roads. And they refuse to embrace the wheel. The State car is still the aged Ambassador! This is the result of Gandhian nonsense: idolisation of the charkha instead of the chakra. It's the wrong wheel, dude!

Of course, the automobile and the highway are not all that we need. Our railways are terrible. And we have no tramways at all. Further, whatever happened to modern boats?

Yes, free trade, Free enterprise. Privatisation. We must fix our transportation. That is the lesson to draw from the chakra of Ashoka the Great.

Recommended reading: My old article on trade and transportation.

The Chakra... And The Blind

The invention of the wheel was a tremendous achievement of the ancients - including in India. Not all societies discovered the wheel, but here in India it was celebrated by kings and commoners alike.


The wheel - which we call chakra - is therefore seen in our State Emblem, which dates back to Ashokan times (4th century BC), right at the base. This chakra is a spoked wheel - that is, its design is that of "hub-and-spoke." It was a very advanced wheel. A horse and an ox are also depicted - because the spoked wheel increased their efficiency.


Now, hub-and-spokes are basic to transportation systems. Such systems evolve to carry goods from the place of production to the place of consumption - that is, from the fields and the farms to the cities and their markets. Cities become hubs - and spokes are built into the countryside. Thus, "all roads lead to Rome." And, in Old Delhi, the various "gates" of the ancient city lead to destinations in the manner of spokes from a hub.


Hubs-and-spokes are seen even in civil aviation. Every major airline has a home airport which serves as its hub. It is from these hubs that flights take off to various destinations, which lie on spokes.


Ditto for the railways - and their "junctions."


Funnily enough, the layout of the Lutyens' Bungalow Zone (LBZ) in Nude Elly is also a hub-and-spoke design. The LBZ is where all our ministers and top officials live. When chacha manmohan leaves his residence on Race Course Road to go to his office in South Block, he immediately encounters the Akbar Road roundabout, from which one spoke leads to Indira Gandhi's old house on Safdarjung Road, and another spoke leads to Nehru's house on Teen Murti Road. There are two more roads leading out of this roundabout. Hubs-and-spokes are what the LBZ is all about.


With the chakra on the State Emblem, and chakras on the road layout in the LBZ, one would think this "design" ought to penetrate the minds of our "planners" - especially those who plan transport networks.


Yet, when we look at their most ambitious highway project, we do not find this design. Rather, we find a "quadrilateral." What kind of stupid design is that?


Indeed, the road layout of the rest of Nude Elly (a "new city") is along the pattern of multiple T-junctions! No hubs-and-spokes here. Not even the standard "grid pattern." This faulty road design is why Nude Elly is doomed to eternal traffic snarls. The city must either be abandoned - or re-built.


The British built 80 "hill stations" in 50 years using a hub-and-spoke design for transportation. These 80 hill stations - a tremendous burst of urbanisation - were all linked to their "primary city" (which was the hub) by spokes:

• Poona, Mahabaleshwar, Matheran, Lonavla, Khandala, Panchgani - were on spokes leading out of Bombay.

• Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Shillong - on spokes leading out of Calcutta.

• Ooty and Kodaikanal on spokes leading out of Madras.

• Simla, Kasauli, Mussoorie, Dehra Doon, Nainital, Landsdowne on spokes leading out of Delhi.

Today, all the primary cities are overcrowded and close to collapse, as are all the wonderful hill-stations. In the meanwhile, all urbanisation has stopped - because the Gandhian State pursues nonsensical "rural development." Summer is here - and there are no pretty hill stations for us to holiday in any more.


Of course, we could build many new cities and towns, and new hill stations too, if we fixed our transport system. It must be HUBS-and-SPOKES - the chakra. Only then will thousands of "satellite towns" develop around the cities. The cities will decongest. And we will all have some lebensraum. The whole of India will become a great piece of real estate.

And as for all these blind planners of Hindostan:

Throw them out of the LBZ!

 

(Read the second part of this post here.)

Goa's Image - Good & Bad

The "image of Goa" is a big issue here these days, what with a Bollywood film on the "drug scene" being shot here. The majority opinion seems to be that Goa's image is being dented by this film.

My own opinion is that if Amsterdam can proudly declare itself the "Marijuana Capital of the World," why cannot Goa be proud to be such a place too? After all, it is the hippies who first put Goa on the global tourist map. If there were hash cafes here, would that dent Goa's image or improve it? Would it not attract tourists in bigger numbers - just as Amsterdam does.

To the politicians and busybodies who are bothered about Goa's image, I would like to point out that what really sucks here are the roads. Goa is a big place, stretching 150 km from end to end. The "notional highway" is of an age before the automobile explosion. Tourists can scarcely travel safely from north to south. I read the statistics of foreign tourists killed on the road - over a hundred - and this is truly bad for Goa's image.

The Konkan Railway offers NO means of travel within Goa. There are also no tramways. If internal railways and tramways were built (by entrepreneurs, of course) Goa's image would surely improve. Even the Goans would be better off. Let Switzerland, another tourist haven, be the guide here, for the transport system in this mountainous country is astounding.

Further, the internal roads by the beachside "villages" are terrible, too narrow, too unsafe, no footpaths, no signage at all. I call them "Goa Constrictors."

The beachfront settlements are also not very attractive. Every one of them seems like an overgrown village - and not a pretty town. And the old towns built by the Portuguese are facing imminent collapse. All these deserve the serious attention of the government - and the citizenry.

Indeed, Goa's politicians themselves give Goa a bad image. The State Police also have a very bad image - especially over corruption related to the drug trade.

As for this Bollywood film: It is titled Dum Maro Dum after a line in a famous song of some decades ago, and it refers to the chillum in which ganja and charas are smoked. The original song, and that film, in my opinion, gave a very bad image to all smokers of this Holy Herb. The songline went:

Dum maro dum,
Mit jaye gam...

Which means:

Smoke, Smoke, Smoke,
And your sorrows will be wiped out...

While there are many who "drown their sorrows" in alcohol, ganja-charas have the effect of opening the mind, and they are used for this purpose. Cannabliss is truly the philosopher's drug - which is why sadhus use it. The medical texts say that it delivers a mild euphoria, colours seem brighter, music resounds better, there is an effect of seeming to float, and observations are more acute. Dev Anand gave this Holy Herb and its smokers a bad image. We need to correct it.