On Their News... And Mine

The 15th of August was not just the anniversary of the First Indian Republic: this day also marks the 40th anniversary of the US dollar's link with gold getting broken. The year was 1971 - and the president was Nixon. Then, an ounce of gold was worth 35 dollars; today, it is well over 1300 dollars. Do read Doug French's article on this "unhappy birthday of global fiat paper money." After that, Cris Lingle's piece for The Freeman on the "dangers of central banking" is worth going through too, and slowly. 


Our Great Leader, chacha manmohan s gandhi's Independence Day Address to the Nation from the ramparts of Red Fort was received unenthusiastically here in South India: the local paper I read, in its editorial, called it "uninspiring and repetitive, and full of excuses." But an editorial in The Indian Express carried an excerpt which is worth pasting below for my reader's attention:

"Controlling rising prices is a primary responsibility of any government,” said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his Independence Day speech at Delhi’s Red Fort.  “We have continuously taken steps to rein in prices,” the PM continued, “but, unfortunately, sometimes we have been confronted with a situation in which the reasons for rising prices lay outside the country.”

I hope my reader by now knows that the above statement is a bald lie.


In a Free Market Economy ALL PRICES ARE FREE. The government only acts against ENEMIES OF PEACE AND ORDER. The money is HONEST.


Inflation is a purely monetary phenomenon. It occurs because the central bank increases the supply of money to fund The State, which is a "dissaver," always in "deficit." Inflationist-welfarism is thus a CRUEL JOKE on poor people. It MUST be ended.


Do also read this latest Deutsche Bank Update on Inflation in India.


The main person in the news, however, is Anna Hazare, with his crusade against corruption, aimed at nothing else but the creation of YET ANOTHER government department! 


I have a few posts on this nonsense you can easily search and find, but today I would like you to read two excellent articles against this nonsense by two young fellows whose minds I played no small a role in shaping. These young lads are Vipin Veetil and Chandrasekaran Balakrishnan. The former dropped out of the Delhi School of Mathematical Economics after a few discussions with me (and some talks); he then became an editorial writer for Mint; after which he is now pursuing a PhD in Economics in the USSA. The latter is from the Planning Commission (no less) and writes the Hayek Order and also the Soldier of Freedom blogs, both of which are on my Blog List.


The first of these articles, jointly authored by the two, was published in Forbes Magazine, and can be read here.


The second of these articles, from Pragati Magazine, authored by Vipin, can be read here.


I hope you will all then realise what the ONLY solution to GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION is - and that is, a drastic cutting down of The State and its powers, so as to let all businessmen FREE of State Interference.


This means A Second Republic!


No less.


And now, for my news. An anonymous comment that I did not publish inquired as to why no posts had appeared for five whole days: was I in jail or an asylum? he asked. Well, the answer is a little of both. The cops picked me up from my perch next to the sadhu, took me to a hospital - and from there, by ambulance, to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMHANS) in BANGALORE! What a horrible ride!


Anyway, the first evening, a nurse wanted to inject me with some "sedative" - but when I looked at the pamphlet of this injection, it said it was meant for "serious psychoses and mania." I was horrified! Have I exhibited such symptoms? I asked the nurse, She said if I did not take the injection, she was authorised to use force on me by calling for the security guards. However, better sense prevailed. She called in the Junior Doctor. I told him that I am a student of "reality"; that I have been "calm and composed all day"; and that "psychoses" according to the DSM III mean a "gross distortion of reality." I told him that not I, but all "mathematical economists" suffer from this "gross distortion of reality." I told him that 9.3% inflation rate and 7.7% growth rate are both gross distortions of reality.


They changed my ward.


Things are better now. The doctors are all very friendly.


Oh yes. MY MOTHER was there all the time. But she should be leaving soon.


All should be well.


See you all tomorrow.

I Disown This Publication

India's premier online bookstore, Flipkart.com, as I just discovered, is selling a book purportedly written by me called Busy Bee 4 Teacher's Resource, published by Macmillan Education of the UK in 2003. The book is priced at Rs. 581.

Funny thing is this: I have never written any such book, nor do I have any written contract with Macmillan Education of the UK.

I have had two books published by Macmillan India, and both are available from Flipkart.com:

First: Antidote: Essays Against the Socialist Indian State, available here, for Rs. 189 in paperback, published by Macmillan India in 2000.

Second: Antidote 2: For Liberal Governance, published by Macmillan India in 2003, available here in paperback for Rs. 280. The title given by Flipkart.com is Antidote 2: Columns for Freedom. I wonder how they got this title, for this was rejected by the Macmillan editor, in favour of the tame one - For Liberal Governance.

I have written to Macmillan India and they have promised to look into the matter.

However, what I want to publicly state on this blog is that I disown the book published by Macmillan Education of the UK in 2003, under the title Busy Bee 4 Teacher's Resource.

Don't ever buy that book.

As a true teacher's resource I recommend my Free Your Mind: A Citizen's Guide to Political Economy, available free online in its second edition here. If anyone wants to publish this as a book, I would be happy to write a third edition. This second edition is now available in many languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Kyrgyz and Portuguese.

This post is for the record.

Not Thinking Of New Delhi

It was more than two decades ago that I, then an insignificant employee of this vast socialist and centralised Indian State, lost complete faith in central government. Perhaps it was the three years I spent in Pondicherry between 1985 and 1987 that made me think of "local government," for tiny Pondicherry then had a huge government - lieutenant-governor, chief minister, a cabinet, chief secretary and many secretaries, inspector-general of police and so on - but the tiny city seemed quite a mess, especially the areas outside the small French enclave. Every night I used to take a walk with my dog on Beach Road, and pass the old Mayor's office from the French era, and which now lay disused. I used to wonder always whether a Mayor might not be far better for this little city than this vast socialist government.

When I resigned from government service in 1989 and proceeded to the LSE, I did not take up any course in Economics. I pursued a Master's programme at the LSE's Department of Government. My principal area of interest was a paper titled "Comparative Local Government." The paper comprised 20 lectures and seminars over two terms. These were conducted by Professor George Jones, then on the British "Who's Who" as an authority on local government, the principle that lies at the very foundation of the unwritten English constitution.

Since then, I have continued to be deeply interested in local government. In recent years, I studied "New Public Management" at the International Academy of Leadership in Gummersbach, Germany. New Public Management (NPM) is a movement in public administration worldwide, aimed at using The Market to provide local services. I met NPM practitioners in Germany. I met the head of the German Liberal Mayors' Association. And my course mates, from all over the Third World, revealed to me how their own countries had suffered and gone horribly wrong because of a strong central State, that too, usually a socialist one. Interestingly, I met and interacted with participants from Egypt, Tanzania, Ghana and Yugoslavia, and discovered that my early hunch so long ago was quite right. For they revealed how all those great socialist friends of Nehru - Nasser, Nyrere, Nkrumah and Tito - had destroyed their countries.

You can read my brief monograph on NPM here.

It is a curious fact that my year-long course on comparative local government held in the heart of London did not include a word on the Olde City of London and its Lord Mayor, its traditions, its history, and its dominant role in British capitalism. Perhaps because the LSE is a socialist institution and the Webbs hated the Lord Mayoralty for its naked capitalism. However, I have since studied whatever I could get hold of on this pillar of English local government, and you can find an interesting essay on this subject in my new book Natural Order: Essays Exploring Civil Government & the Rule of Law, which can be read and downloaded for free here.

Today, more than 20 years since I began my intellectual journey, a journey that has never stopped, it seems quite apparent that the idea of a strong, socialist central State sitting far away in New Delhi, ruling a vast sub-continent, and "planning" for over a billion people, has been a colossal error. As my numerous posts on the city of Hassan in Karnataka make clear, this country needs to urgently think of urban local self-government. (You can read all the posts on Hassan by clicking the label "Hassan" on the right-hand bar.)

Thus, for 20 years and more, I have never wasted any thoughts on how a central government can be run. My area of specialized interest has always been local government, and I daresay I have made some intellectual contributions towards a proper understanding of the theory, the history and the practice of local government.

Jim Morrison once sang: "I'm a freedom man, that's how lucky I am."

I guess I must be equally lucky. I too am a freedom man. Further, I am a local government man.

I never think of the State in New Delhi. As they always said in the rest of India: Dilli door ast. (Delhi is far away.)

On Coercion... And Torts... And Ganja

We are all being coerced into paying compensation for the victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. As this news report says, the tax-payer is picking up the 1500 crore rupee tab. This money is being coerced out of us. We can go to jail if we do not pay taxes. All this should be borne in mind when the Nuclear Civil Liability Bill comes up in Parliament, for in that too, it is contemplated that, rather than the tortfeasor, it is the tax-payer who will pay. Coercion heaped upon coercion.

Now, the interesting thing is that coercion is an actionable tort. Coercion is actually a horrible thing. The libertarian ideal is a society wherein there is no coercion and every exchange is voluntary. That is a free society. That is the ideal. In this Utopia, he who coerces another commits a tort - and pays compensation to the wronged party.

I hate coercion because I have been its victim many times - and all over ganja. The fucked-up State police coerced me in Mangalore. And some of my fucked-up relatives coerced me in Delhi - by forcing me into a lunatic asylum against my will on alleged "cannabis induced psychosis." The psychiatrist, on meeting me first, said I was "schizophrenic." Luckily, my wardmate was a smackie named Lala Hardyal who was carrying a goodly quantity of hash on him. We smoked his hash every day in the hospital. I was let off after a month of smoking hash! By then the doctor had revised his diagnosis and said I was "bipolar." Today they say I suffer from "hypomania" - a condition I share with every driven entrepreneur. The doctors were wrong.

This is coercion. It is an actionable tort. I should be able to sue the doctor and my fucked-up relatives some day.

Now look at the photo accompanying this post. It shows a sadhu exhaling a nimbus cloud of ganja smoke in front of an image of the Lord Shiva, the greatest of all Hindu gods. Why does the law treat sadhus differently from non-sadhus? Why is this coercion so arbitrary? This is because the fucked-up police coerce only those they can, and leave alone those they can't. The law cannot be applied uniformly because it goes against Indian "culture."

Property, Contracts, Torts - this is the world of "private law." This is all the law we need. Say no to coercion - including taxation. Say no to the Nuclear Civil Liability Bill. And say yes to ganja - the smoke of the "holy man."

Et Tu, Parth J Shah

Ever since 1991, after returning from the LSE, I have been a private scholar and writer; a struggling one, if I may add. My first break occurred around 1994, when I met Barun Mitra at a Mancur Olson seminar. We got along like a house on fire and I was soon invited to a "Freedom Workshop" conducted by his newly established Liberty Institute. I presented a paper titled "Bauer Power: Getting the State OUT of Development." It was there that I first met Parth J Shah, then visiting from the US, where he was a professor of Economics. It was great meeting other Indian libertarians. It gave me strength to carry on.

In 1997, Parth set up the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) in New Delhi. I was then a freelance journalist, earning little. But the very next year I was invited by Swaminathan Aiyar to join the editorial team of the Economic Times. While I was there, I did a lot for Parth and his CCS: I publicised them in my columns; I travelled far and wide to lecture for free at his "Liberty & Society Seminars" for college students. In 2000 Macmillan India published my Antidote: Essays Against the Socialist Indian State.

In 2002 I walked out of the ET edit team over an editorial I had written against Sonia Gandhi which the editors butchered. Shortly thereafter I received the Frederic Bastiat award from Baroness Thatcher. Parth and his wife Manali were there at the Royal Commonwealth Club in London when I received the prize. He offered me the HONORARY post of editorial director of CCS. I accepted. In early 2003, Macmillan India published my Antidote2: For Liberal Governance. Unlike the previous volume, this second one was not a success at all (though it is a better book).

Now, to get to the point: Parth requested me to order 150 copies of this book, Antidote2, for CCS in my name, so that CCS could avail the special 40 percent "author's discount" - which meant I got NO ROYALTY. This was in March 2003 and I assumed that CCS had settled the bill. Recently, Macmillan India has furnished me with written proof that these books were delivered and received by CCS, but NOT paid for. Till today, Parth refuses to pay Macmillan the 30,000-odd rupees he owes them. Because of this, Macmillan is treating the matter as a debt I owe them, and deducting it from my royalties year after year. For over 6 years now, I have received no royalties from Macmillan, for both books.

I have written to Parth - but he refuses to reply. I find this very strange because I have worked only for the good of CCS. I wrote Free Your Mind: A Beginner's Guide to Political Economy for them - and did not take a paisa. I have met countless young people who joined CCS and became libertarians because of this book. As I said, I have lectured for free for them all over the country, for many years, at my expense. I took "earned leave" from my job to do so - thereby sacrificing holidays. I see no reason for this peculiar behaviour.

The other day a friend tried to talk to Parth about settling the bill and he told her: "I have even given Sauvik a GRANT of 1,00,000 rupees" - as though this exonerates him from his dues to Macmillan! Anyway, this is a lie.

In 2007, Parth offered me the said sum for the PURCHASE of the copyright to my unpublished travelogues, many of them travels with Team CCS. But he never published the book! Indeed, I asked him if I could offer the book to some other publisher and return his money. He agreed. Unfortunately, the book is still unpublished, though you can read the e-book for free here.

So here I end my sorry tale of a false friend. I had to get this off my chest. Parth must be pressurised to settle with Macmillan. I, still a struggling author, cannot subsidise CCS.