Fuck The Indian Police, And Fuck Chidambaram, Too - For Gross Dereliction Of Duty

It's official! A report by the highways ministry has said that 1,60,000 people are killed on our roads every year, and more than 5,00,000 are injured, most of them seriously. A Times of India news report adds that a Member of the Planning Commission, BK Chaturvedi, estimated that road accidents cost India 1 lakh crore rupees annually - that is, 1,000,000,000,000 rupees.


Now, I wouldn't trust these government statistics - precisely because they show the State in a very poor light. The same news report says:

Road safety experts feel that the number of accidents and road deaths reported are less than the actual figures due to lack of scientific data collection.

What is incredible is that no statistics are reported from the police! For example, we do not know how many of the people seriously injured subsequently succumbed to their injuries, or how many were permanently maimed, making them unable to earn a living. We also do not know how many were pedestrians, how many cyclists, and how many were riding scooters and motorcycles. Such data ought to come from the police - but police crime data has NEVER been trusted in India. In the case of road deaths and injuries, it is amazing that they have NO DATA to offer.


On the other hand, just the other day, the Indian Express website had a photograph of Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi distributing some 600 wheelchairs to the disabled. The question is never asked as to how these people were disabled. Could it be road accidents? After all, we have beaten polio.



Thus, my own guesstimate would be that some 3,50,000 people or more are killed or permanently disabled every year because of road accidents, which means some 1000 people EVERY DAY. 


In sharp contrast, Kasab and his gang killed 200 people in Mumbai over two days. 

This is SHOCKING! And the Home Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, harps on and on about how "terrorists and Maoists are India's gravest security threat" - as though road accidents are not happening, that too on such a massive scale. I have a previous post on this.

I am therefore of the opinion that this is a case of GROSS DERELICTION OF DUTY on the part of our The State - in particular, the Home Minister, and the entire police establishment. I do not care whether the corruption charges against Chidambaram are true or false - but in this case, he seems to be UTTERLY INCOMPETENT. He has been Police Minister at the Central State since the 1980s - and NEVER have I heard him say a word about road deaths and injuries. However, in one of his Budget speeches while he was Finance Minister I did hear him announce an import duty reduction for orthopaedic equipment. So he must be aware of the fact that Indians are importing such equipment in huge quantities. In every city and town, specialised orthopaedic hospitals are mushrooming.


Now, look at the photograph accompanying this post: this is the cover of the "Abbey Road" album of The Beatles, dated 1969, and it shows the Fab Four using a zebra crossing. In India, more than 40 years later, and after some 20 years of an "automobile revolution," there are NO such zebra crossings in any Indian city or town.


This is a BIG CRIME OF OMISSION on the part of our The State - particularly the police and their minister.


In modern cities and towns, zebra crossings come nowadays with a button operated traffic light for the pedestrian. He only has to press the button and the lights go red, all traffic stops, and he safely crosses over.


In the West, you rarely see traffic policemen on duty - the entire system is operated on high technology. Thus, I do NOT think the Indian police "lack manpower" as they always claim. Their manpower is more than sufficient - and most of it is "armed police." What they need to do is get rid of all this surplus manpower. And the State must invest in Capital Equipment to make roads safe.


Chidambaram, to me, seems to be a "house-trained" Police Minister, a puppet in the hands of his officials, all of whom are deeply involved in political skullduggery. The man is effeminate - and thoroughly incompetent. He - and the entire police top brass - need to be taken to task over the FACT that some 1000 people per day are killed or permanently disabled on our fucked-up roads.


And by "taken to task" I mean that they should get FUCKED - by the press, and by public opinion. Heads should roll. Careers should get ruined.


One more point: When we discuss police predation on street hawkers, senior police officers always say that these hawkers "harass pedestrians." Actually, these hawkers provide indispensable services to pedestrians, while the actualy life-threatening dangers lie on the roads - an area where the police (and their minister) display GROSS DERELICTION OF DUTY.


In my view, this police force we have is NOT an asset to society; it is a LIABILITY. They only serve their political masters; they do NOT "serve and protect" the people. Indeed, they prey on the people. They are precisely the kind of "robber kingdoms" St. Augustine wrote of, in the quote I provided yesterday:


Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity.


I am therefore of the firm opinion that the entire "criminal justice system" must be abolished - and replaced with a system of Torts. Bruce Benson's The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State becomes essential reading for all educated and concerned Indians. You can order this book in India here.


Lastly, do NOT take this lightly, dear reader. You - and your children - could be affected. Rajesh Pilot, Roads Minister, died in a road accident. Ajit Jogi was permanently disabled. One of Bal Thackeray's sons was killed on the road. They don't care. We must. We must ROCK their boat. They must be hauled up - and made to ACT. We MUST be SAFE. They own the roads - and they must fix them.


So, as the title of this post put it:

FUCK THE INDIAN POLICE

AND FUCK CHIDAMBARAM TOO

FOR GROSS DERELICTION OF DUTY

We Don't Get Fooled Again!

A Deutsche Bank report just reached me, warning of recession in the USSA. But their analysis is based on "consumer spending" - and this might suggest to many that another "stimulus" is required from the Fed.

This displays ignorance of Say's Law of Markets.

Last night, I watched a BBC programme called "The World Debate" on the current economic crisis, hosted by Nick Gowing. Of the four debaters, three were government people - Christine Lagarde, who heads the IMF; a guy from Obama's economic team; and a dude from the EU in Brussels.


Lagarde spoke of the need for the G-20 to get together and do what they did last time - and I could have cried out loud. That time the G-20 nations inflated their currencies along with the US Fed, which is what "central bank co-ordination" is all about, and which is why the crisis is so widespread today. Nick Gowing, on his part, asked for "more decisive political leadership."

This, too, displays ignorance of Say's Law of Markets.

Today, the Keynesians teach this law as follows:

Supply creates its own demand.

This incorrect formulation of this vital law makes their students believe that "monetary stimuli" create demand.


So, let us think things through: 


The supply of plasma TVs does not create the demand for plasma TVs. Yet, if cars sell, if jeans sell, if shoes sell, and if beer sells - then, and only then, will some people from these latter industries be tempted to buy a plasma TV. Thus, what Say's Law actually means is:

The sale of X gives rise to the demand for all non-X.

If X sells, it creates the demand for all non-competing goods.

So, if you want increased demand for your plasma TVs, don't go to The State asking for a monetary stimulus. Instead, make sure all those who do not compete with you are selling their stuff.


There is another reason for this: If you ask The State to inject a monetary stimulus, all that will happen is another boom-bust cycle - and inflation. The entire economy will be hurt, including yourself, and including all those who do not compete with you.


On the other hand, if you want those industries that do not compete with you to do well, you will NOT favour loose monetary policies based on the false idea of boosting consumption. Rather, you will realise the importance of SAVING and INVESTMENT. You will realise that these businessmen who do not compete with you will need to save and invest - in order to produce. You will favour "capital accumulation" and despise "capital consumption" - which is Keynesian-welfarism-inflationism. You will champion "sound money."  


That is, you will realise that production of goods and services boosts demand - not the production of money. Indeed, not even the production of gold boosts demand. All that happens then is that the price of gold falls - look at the history of Spain and Portugal when they brought gold and silver back to Europe from South America. Spain and Portugal never got rich. And there was inflation throughout Europe. Britain got rich not by digging for gold and silver - but by trading in nutmeg and pepper, and tea, and opium, and tobacco, and sugar, etc.

Increased production of "funny money" is a VERY BAD IDEA.

Thus, Nick Gowing is WRONG when he asks for "more decisive political leadership." The solution does NOT lie in politics. On the contrary. The solution lies in "private money" - and "free banking under law." 


That is: the size, scope, powers and resources of The State and the politicians must be drastically cut down. Money must be given back to the people - to save and invest, to produce. That is how demand can be permanently boosted and boom-bust cycles avoided forever.


Indeed, the current crisis is BECAUSE OF POLITICS. Central banks and their member banks are collapsing. Politics lies at the root of this crisis.


So, let us NOT GET FOOLED. 


Paper notes are just a "money substitute." This is what the "promise to pay the bearer" indicates. Something "hard" is (and always was) real money - GOLD.


So, as the song goes:

I tip my hat to the New Constitution,

Take a bow for the New Revolution,

Smile and grin at the change all around me,

Pick up my guitar and play,

Just like yesterday,

Then I get on my knees and pray:

WE DON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN!

While that covers widespread miseducation in the USSA, Britain and Germany, let us now turn to our own country.


Did you know that both Amartya Sen and chacha manmohan s gandhi were students of Professor Joan Robinson in Cambridge - who was Keynes' right-hand man, and who made it her "mission to destroy Say's Law"? It was Joan Robinson who cleverly coined the "supply creates its own demand" nonsense.


And, as I wrote the other day:

Without Sound Money - what is the State 

but a band of robbers?

That should take care of Kapil Sibal's "(mis)education."


Let us now turn to Palaniappan Chidambaram, the Central State Police Minister, whose name has cropped up in the 2G scam. There is a report written by the Political Editor of The Sunday Guardian that says that in the Nira Radia tapes, A Raja told Radia that "PC got a lot of money."


The Central State's Police Minister is corrupt?


And he has been police minister since the 1980s - and there have been no police reforms. Policing has just got worse. Now, road deaths total over 2,00,000 per annum - and the police don't even possess the "knowledge" to fix things.


We must ABOLISH THIS STATE. And replace it with honest civic corporations - one in each city and town.


A Second Republic!


A Republic WITHOUT any police - like the England of old, before Peel set up the Bobby. Like India of the Company, before the Crown passed the Indian Police Act in 1861.


TORTS - which are "crimes against the individual" and for which financial compensation must be paid by the tortfeasor to the victim: this will be better than any "criminal justice system." Anyway, ours doesn't work. And the minister is corrupt. Indeed, the Entire System is Corrupt.


So let us vow to throw the whole thing out, beginning with the Central Bank, and ending with the State Police.


Liberty! Property! Justice! The Pursuit of Happiness, Subjectively Defined!

WE DON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN!

(This turned out to be a 5-part series on Say's Law. The next post can be read here.)

Nilekani's UID - Passport To Totalitarianism & A Police State

Before assessing Nandan Nilekani's UID (Unique Identity) Scheme for iris-mapping and fingerprinting each one of us for Police Records, it might be useful to read Wendy McElroy's recent article against passports titled "Passport to a Total State." UID could be a means to convert our totally failed The State into a Total Police State. McElroy, a US citizen, begins thus:

"Your papers!" In old movies, the demand is barked at trembling travelers by a Nazi with a guttural accent. If the demand is made in the opening scene, then the audience knows immediately that they watching a totalitarian state in which travelers are in danger.

"Your papers!" now rings out at every American airport and border crossing. The accent is different but travelers need to recognize with equal immediacy that a totalitarian state is playing out in front of their eyes, and they must be careful.

McElroy asserts: "It is the mandatory nature of any travel document that converts it into a violation of rights." UID will be mandatory, too.

  

She adds: "With the exception of trespassing on private property, people have an absolute right to travel in peace and at their own discretion." 


And she ends her piece with these ringing words:

The passport has grown into what is arguably the single most powerful tool of totalitarian America, second only to law enforcement [read "legislation-enforcement"] itself. It no longer pretends to protect individuals; not a single terrorist has been apprehended as a result of passport checks. But it does cement the totalitarian state. The mandatory passport should be reviled and rejected as an abuse of human rights and common decency. A nation that requires one cannot be free.

 In my life I have never suffered more than at the hands of passport officials and, of course, their counterparts, the visa officials. And The Police, of course. 


The question is: Do we strengthen these bastards? Or, do we get RID of them?


In my book, in a market economy, citizens must have secrets, including especially business secrets. Bank accounts must be secret - as they were in Switzerland once-upon-a-time. 


On the other hand, whatever is done in the political-bureaucratic sphere must be completely OPEN. No "official secrets."


Think about it.


Song of the Day: Mr. Bob Marley, of course, singing:

Why can't we roam,

This Open Country?

Why can't we be

What we want to be?

WE WANT TO BE FREE!

Hey! Mr. Cop,

Ain't got no Birth Cerfiticate (sic) on me now...

You can watch the video of this great song here.

True Law Is Never "Made"; It Is "Found": Take #2

Let us take another look at Adam Smith's "Three Duties of the Sovereign," which I had quoted yesterday:

According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings:

first, the duty of protecting the society from violence and invasion of other independent societies; 

secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice;

and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.

Today, I would like to focus on the second duty - which is "establishing an exact administration of justice."


Note that Adam Smith never says that the sovereign must "make law." Not at all. No one makes law in the "system of natural liberty." What happens is that if there is a dispute, both parties hire their own lawyers, who scour through the books for past decisions in similar cases, based on which they put forward their arguments before an impartial judge. This is how the law is "found." It is never "made."


This true Law upon which a Private Law Society is based consists of Property, Contract and Torts - and nothing else. There is NO LEGISLATION. Thus, there is NO COERCION. And we are all FULLY SECURE. And also FULLY FREE.


Actually, Adam Smith, when he wrote The Wealth of Nations (1776) promised his readers that he would write a subsequent treatise on government - but this promise he never fulfilled. In fact, he burnt all his unpublished manuscripts shortly before his untimely death. As far as his Lectures on Jurisprudence are concerned, these were re-created from lecture notes of two students who attended them. But in Adam Smith's time, it was UNTHINKABLE that Parliament would pass legislation after legislation masquerading as True Law. In England, to this day, the Sovereign does NOT make law. Parliamentary sovereignty has meant that Parliament today possesses more powers and takes away more Liberty than any sovereign has ever done in the past.


As Property and Contract have been covered often on this blog, today I thought I would talk about Torts. These occur when any Individual (or his property) is harmed - even unintentionally. In all such cases, this Individual must be financially compensated for the damages he has suffered.


I have an old article on Torts, which you can read here.


Today, I would like to add that with Torts, our society can solve the problem that is the Indian Police. If all crimes are "crimes against individuals" and if in all such cases the convicted criminal must financially compensate his victim, jails and police are no longer required. The victim can prosecute his own case. 


The Indian Police are indeed a problem waiting to be solved. They do nothing right - not even traffic. Open-and-shut cases like the murder of Jessica Lal do not get solved. All the police do is VVIP security - and "law & order" bandobast for the political parties. As far as the "common man" is concerned, the police are also seen as totally corrupt - and even brutal.


Indians need security - but they cannot get this security from the Indian Police, not even on the roads. In fact, there isn't a functioning zebra crossing anywhere in India - not even in Nude Elly.


Thus, Torts are what we need. In a Private Law Society.


Finally, I would like to add my own experience with the Pondicherry Police. These guys have walked off with my books - some 20 of them, which were being safely stored for me by the Good Firemen. The Pondicherry Police approached the firemen saying I had asked for my books back (this was when I had been spirited away to NIMHANS, Bangalore). Unsuspecting, the firemen handed over the books. And, till date, the cops refuse to hand them back.


What kind of cops do we have?


And how will our people be secure?


These are very important questions. 

The Trial of chacha manmohan s gandhi - Part 5

Yesterday, I discussed the "Corruption of the Law." Today, I shall conclude this Prosecution with a discussion on the natural fallout of legal corruption - and that is Corruption of the Police. They become a "legislation-enforcement agency" - and all these amoral and immoral pieces of legislation passed by our Socialist Parliament are essentially Predatory, like the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. In any case, the Indian Police are known to be Predatory on every city and town street pan-India. They only protect the VVIPs; they prey on the rest of us.

Let us begin with some History. The modern State, equipped with a Police Force and a Central Bank, is very new. Sir Robert Peel set up the London Metropolitan Police - the unarmed "Bobby" - only in the 1830s. They used to be jeered at on the streets when they first made their appearance. 

In India, the Honourable East India Company ruled without any police force. They had an army - but no police. The "civilians" of the HEICS roamed their vast districts unarmed and unescorted, maintaining land records while sitting among the peasants, settling disputes on time, providing Justice, collecting taxes in exchange for Property Titles - and, of course, building "roads, bridges and canals."

The Indian Police Act is dated 1861. This was immediately after the horrors of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, and the Government of India had passed from the Honourable Company to the British Crown. Victoria was now "Empress of India." It is an interesting coincidence that Rabindranath Tagore was born that very same year, in 1861. While Tagore dreamt of an India "where the mind is without fear and the head is held high," the motto of the Indian Police is "Fear is the Key."

Let us fear them not - if we want to be Free.

In this post, I will relate some anecdotes. The first of this is especially for the Free Press, because these events occurred on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, the Fleet Street of Nude Elly. I was then working with The Economic Times, and my offices were in Times House. One afternoon, Professor Christopher Lingle came calling - and I invited him out for lunch. There was an Udipi restaurant nearby. The alternative was the vast array of "street food" on the opposite side of the road. Cris is adventurous, and he opted for the street food. We ate all kinds of stuff, like the delicious papaya salad one guy makes, and we washed it all down with a nimboo masala soda prepared by a guy whose masala is his own secret formula. The sign on his stall says he has been in operation since god knows when.

A few days later, I bumped into Cris again at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute, where I had gone to attend a seminar. After the seminar was over, I had to rush to office to pen my editorial of the day, and Cris tagged along  with the special purpose of trying out the BSZ Marg street food once again.

But lo and behold! When we arrived we found that every single hawker and vendor had been evicted!

Cris, who is a very widely travelled man,  then made a remark that I have never forgotten. He said:

"The poor people of India are exceptionally honest. In any other country if such things happened, the people would have turned to crime."

That is the moral choice we all face - to survive through moral, voluntary and gainful exchanges in The Market, or to live off plunder and theft.

Continuing on the same theme, my second anecdote is about India's "super-cop" KPS Gill. Around 1999 or thereabouts, Professor Madhu Kishwar raised a big stink about police predation on street-hawkers and vendors, particularly in Nude Elly itself. She even made an excellent - and blood-curling - documentary film on the subject, which I hope, if she is reading this, she will put on YouTube. 

As a columnist and editorial writer with ET, I supported Madhu to the hilt. Finally, she called me for a meeting at the India International Centre. And who should be there but KPS Gill. We briefly discussed the matter of police predation on the poor - and Gill thundered, "You cannot stop it." As if on cue, Renana Jhabwala of the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), whose members include women street vendors from all over India, retorted, "In my lifetime we will stop this." It was quite a sight seeing Renana, a tiny woman, say this to this huge, big super-cop. One can only wonder what "commands" such cops issue to their subordinates. There must be come "corruption of the mind" that makes them, in reality, not super-cops, but super-thieves.

My own horrible experience with the Karnataka cops is well known: arrested repeatedly, harassed, and even an assassination attempt. They serve their political masters. Just as KPS Gill killed thousands of "Sikh terrorists" without trial for Indira Gandhi and her CONgress. The Free Press hailed him as a "hero" then; in particular, Chandan Mitra of The Pioneer.

My concluding anecdote is not about cops, but it is extremely relevant nonetheless. While I was working with ET I had to give up writing in the "white papers" as I used to do while a freelancer. Thanks to Jug Suraiya I finally managed to edge myself onto the ToI edit page - and my monthly thunder began. One such monthly thunder was titled "Predatory State: The Black Hole of Social Science." The article has been preserved here. 

A few days later, I received a phone call from Professor ML Sondhi, a former Indian Foreign Service officer who became a JNU don and was then Chairman of the Indian Council for Social Science Research as a BJP appointee. Sondhi invited me for dinner - at the IIC, of course. I took Parth J Shah along as witness. During the course of the meal, Sondhi made me the following indecent proposal:

How can we co-opt you?

My stern reply: 

"I have studied too much Political Science to allow that to happen."

I am most certainly NOT getting aboard this Pirate Ship of State.

It is my firm belief that this Predatory State must be dismissed in toto, cops and all. And by all I include all their "co-opted" professors.

Let us live in the "natural order" of The Market. As a "Private Law Society." Let us also abolish the corrupt Reserve Bank of India, which funds all this corruption with its fraudulent paper notes. Inflationism must be ended permanently - especially so in a country where millions and millions are so desperately poor. I recommend my column on the Gold Standard, and another on Private Money.

Some people might want to be "conservative." To them I address the following question:

Which Department of our The State would you like to see conserved?

And as for the cops, they are nothing but what Bob Marley called "uniforms of brutality." Gandhi made a fatal error after Chauri Chaura. Let us be a wiser nation today. A wise nation that knows what Freedom really means. And where both order as well as morality come from: which is, The Free Market.

Shubh Laabh to all of you.

[PS: On the "natural order," I recommend my column defining "catallaxy." And on how the world can live happily without police forces tyrannising us, I earnestly recommend Professor Bruce L Benson's The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State, of which, I have just learnt, a new edition has appeared.]

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.]

Garbage In, Garbage Out

The Constitution of India, the longest written constitution in the world, has a chapter mandating the "fundamental duties of the citizen." But it says nothing of the fundamental duties of The State it establishes, nor any limit to its powers, for it does not even guarantee the citizenry security in their properties. Even as I write, the Socialist Supreme Court is discussing the merits and demerits of forcible "land acquisition" by our The State.

In all our cities and towns, there is garbage all over the place. Their is dirt, filth and stench. Flies and mosquitoes proliferate - causing disease and even death. Many die of dengue fever in Nude Elly every year, a disease caused by a particular kind of mosquito.

In the meanwhile, our The State pretends to look after our health. There is a Ministry of Health, whose last incumbent, a political flyweight from Madras, banned smoking in public places; and this includes "private places" like restaurants and bars. 

But there is so much garbage in public places!

I discovered another such pretension yesterday as I examined my bottle of Carlsberg beer. The label says: "By Appointment to the King of Denmark." In other words, this sovereign recommends this fine beer to his subjects - and to the world at large. However, just alongside this solemn proclamation, our The State has FORCED the manufacturers to add their mandatory warning:

Consumption of Alcohol is Injurious to Health.

This displays ignorance; not only medical ignorance, but also historical ignorance. In the old days, no one drank water in the cities of Europe, because the water was full of germs. They drank beer - which is boiled before fermentation. They drank wine.

In India, our people do NOT drink beer or wine - because these have been overtaxed; and these high taxes have encouraged tipplers to go for hard liquor instead. Hard liquor on a daily basis is most certainly injurious to the health. You don't need a doctor to tell you that. You know how sick you feel the morning after.

Indeed, as I was travelling from Madras to Pondicherry, I passed the State-owned arrack factory. I remembered the stench from the old days. I drank this arrack once, with some rickshaw-wallahs in Madras - and it was horrible. If trade was free, arrack-drinkers would have Sri Lankan arrack, which tastes better than any Scotch whisky. Take my word for it.

Beer and wine are consumed by poor people in the West. Anthony Sampson, in his The Anatomy of Britain, records that when Labour Party meetings are held, beer is served, while when the Conservatives meet, it is champagne that flows. I read a biography of Michaelangelo once, in which it was mentioned that this great sculptor survived on wine and bread when he was poor.

Let us move on to tobacco. This is something new in India, for we have always been smokers of ganja, which is non-addictive and good not only for the health, but also the mind. It delivers the smoker a "mild euphoria": that is, it makes him "happy." It also expands the mind, which is why sadhus, while lighting a chillum, say "Alakh! Khol de Teesri Palak." Translated: "Shiva! Open my Third Eye." It is the Philosopher's Drug.

Our The State has prohibited ganja and charas - something even the Brits did not do - while unleashing tobacco upon us. And there too, it has FORCED manufacturers to place ugly "health warning" signs on cigarette packets:

Smoking Kills.

But flies and mosquitoes kill too. And they are caused by garbage.

Tobacco does NOT kill. Deng Xiao Ping smoked 90 cigarettes a day - and lived a long and happy life, during which he transformed China, throwing out Maoist Communism and replacing it with (flawed) Capitalism. 


And there is much more to tobacco than ITC cigarettes. There are cigars and cigarillos; there is pipe and rolling tobacco. All these have been blocked entry into our markets by the Customs Department. Personally, I prefer cigarillos to cigarettes - but here in India, you never get them.

I perceived this great hypocrisy on the part of our The State while in the swank Rajiv Gandhi Airport in Hyderabad. There, they did have two tiny "smoking rooms" for people like me. I pointed out to my fellow smokers there that the Hyderabad region is famous for its tobacco. I also pointed out that the last Nizam of Hyderabad chain-smoked the cheroots that his subjects produced. These locally made cheroots are NOT available in this airport. Meanwhile, the poor masses are smoking awful bidis. Open a bidi sometime and check out the tobacco within it, both quantity and quality. If cigarettes were not taxed, no one would smoke bidis. And if they could freely sell their mahua and handia, no forest-dweller would waste time picking tendu leaves.

In either case, we are dying on the streets. Over 200,000 Indians (and quite a few tourists, too) are killed on our unsafe streets and "notional highways" every year. This, while the State Police are working ever so hard on VVIP Security. They are working hard on "security concerns" that range from the Taliban to all the jehadis and terrorists and Maoists and Naxalites. Yet, they cannot look after our health on the streets. 

Making our streets safe requires no "intelligence." It does not require universal ID cards. It does not require phone tapping or e-mail interception or all the other kinds of snooping that these cops of ours are so good at. It requires Science. We must import experts in this Science. We must import experts in road design and engineering too.

And as for the Socialist Constitution of India - it is garbage itself. It needs to be dumped. We need a constitution that mandates duties for mayors - like the collection of garbage and the protection of life on the streets.

We are a very clean people. Our bodies, our homes, our kitchens - they are always spic-and-span. In Pondicherry, they wash the pavement outside their homes every morning and decorate it with a pretty rice-paste design. It is a crying shame that all our cities and towns are such a complete mess. 

This was not the case in British times. Sir Bartle Frere, while Governor of Bombay, received a letter from Florence Nightingale congratulating him on the fact that Bombay had a LOWER death rate than London! In Calcutta, the streets were WASHED every morning, and there are still to be found the hydrants installed for the purpose. Of course, these are no longer working.

Let us then think of a New Constitution. One based on the Inviolability of Private Property. And one which prescribes duties for mayors of cities and towns - while leaving the people Free. 

Free to smoke whatever they like. Free to drink whatever they like. Free to engage in commerce with the world outside. 

Free!

War or Peace? Ideology Matters Most

Our Central State Police Minister has been quoted as follows in this news report:

Home Minister P Chidambaram today said that India lives in the "most difficult neighbourhood" in the world as terrorism infrastructure in Pakistan has flourished "as an instrument of state policy".

Well, we exported Maoism to Nepal - and we also supported the LTTE in its time. Indira Gandhi created Bhindranwale - and Sikh terrorism. So we do not have a clean image either. In Chattisgarh, the Salwa Judum is State Terror.

The police minister, of course, made some noises about peace:

Given the complexity of our region, our government has a comprehensive neighbourhood strategy that is based on political engagement, especially with Pakistan, support for political stability, assistance for economic development and improved connectivity and market access for our neighbours to the Indian economy. A stable, peaceful and prosperous neighbourhood is vital for the security of the people of India. 

All I would like to point out is that the above ideas do not sit well with our governing ideologies: socialism and economic nationalism. It is because we do not believe in The Market that we have ourselves created this horrible neighbourhood. Even till today, 20 years since "liberalisation" began - and has shown such impressive results - classical liberal / libertarian political parties are disallowed in Indian politics. We are WTO-wreckers - not free traders. How, then, can our neighbourhood be peaceful?

As Ludwig von Mises wrote:

Civilization is an achievement of the bourgeois spirit, not of the spirit of conquest. Those barbarian peoples who did not substitute working for plundering disappeared from the historical scene. Civilisation is the product of leisure - and the peace of mind that only the division of labour can bring about. Society is but people trading goods and services amongst each other.

Our The State has always chosen autarky as national policy. We isolated ourselves from the rest of the world, including our neighbours. This is "economic nationalism" - a policy that seeks to aid domestic businessmen by inflicting harm upon foreigners. 

It is economic nationalism in Europe that resulted in two World Wars. It is precisely for this reason that laissez faire is best - because the State is not involved in business, does not protect anyone, and practices free trade and free immigration with all. This is the path we must take. 

This is OUR neighbourhood. It is called the INDIAN sub-continent. We must set the trend here - and export the ideology of peace, trade, free movement of people, goods and capital, and non-interference in internal affairs. So far, for 60 long years, we have been doing the very opposite.

Our police minister said the above quoted words during a meeting with the police minister of the USSA, Janet Napolitano. The USSA, in either case, is no longer "the land of the free"; she is now The Land of the Imprisoned, with the highest number of prisoners per capita in the world. Do read this article by Anthony Gregory of the Independent Institute, titled "Abolish the Police."


Further, the USSA is one nation that can rightly be called "war-mongering." Much of their war-mongering is occurring in OUR neighbourhood - and our The State is in cohorts with them.


But the USSA is fortunate to have Ron Paul - and here is Walter Block predicting that Ron might win the 2012 elections. If Ron Paul - a libertarian well versed in Austrian Economics - is in the White House, he might just set things right in OUR neighbourhood - by pulling American troops out of Af-Pak, and, more importantly, by exporting his libertarian ideology.

Yes, it is ideology that matters most. Without a coherent political and economic ideology, we are lost. As indeed we are. Our ministers make some noises - sometimes this way, sometimes that - but the same old shit continues unabated.

I conclude with what someone just back from Kabul told me:

When there is no Market Economy, what can a young fellow do but pick up a gun and join one plundering gang or the other?

Think about it. 

Ideology matters.

And we libertarians are not allowed into Indian politics because of our ideology. It must be socialism, says the Supreme Court. In which case, wars will continue, internal and external.

Think about it.