Life Without Statistics - Hooray!

Some good news: the government of India’s bureau of statistics is losing data-collecting staff, as they are leaving in droves for better conditions in the private sector.

Very soon, it seems, the nation’s “vital statistics” will be unavailable to the central planners.

Data like “gross domestic product index, index of industrial production, price indices and national surveys” will soon be unavailable.

So bloody what?

Recall Sir John Cowptherwaite in colonial Hong Kong: he refused to set up a statistical bureau and see how Hong Kong prospered.

Such statistics are only important if you want to “plan the economy.”

If you do not want to “command the economy”, leaving all businessmen perfectly free, you do not need statistics.

You do not need statistics on the “national economy” (what’s that?) if you only want to administer justice.

Cowptherwaite ran the police, some courts, and kept the city functional. No statistics are required for the efficient performance of these functions.

The report says that the Indian statistical bureau will try to sell data to private companies. But business decisions are mainly based on profit and loss – and very little else.

Planning decisions are based on statistics – without any reference to profit and loss. This is the worst of all possible worlds.

And note that planning refers to the future, while all statistics are numerical accounts of the past. Every statistic is "the numbers" on something that happened in the past.

Thus, the planner seeks to know the future – but all the “knowledge” he really has is about the past.

Can the future be inferred from statistics?

Of course not!

There are no statistical laws.

There are only laws of Economics (or praxeology or catallactics).

The planner knows naught of these.

And yes, he wants to teach.

Uniforms Of Brutality

As per a news report in the Times of India of today, 3 drunken cops beat up a young man for no rhyme or reason – and the poor fellow needed 375 stitches after the beating!

And the cops were drunk in Ahmedabad, where there is prohibition of alcohol – which they enforce.

When I visited Ahmedabad some years ago, I was informed by a local doctor that the highest incidence of liver cirrhosis was among police inspectors!

As Bob Marley sang, “They are all dressed in uniforms of brutality.”

In India, people do not feel safe when a cop car approaches. They actually feel fear and trepidation.

This country is not ruled by law, it is ruled by coercion.

The law does not safeguard the individual. Rather, the law has become an instrument of coercion.

We don’t need these laws, and we don’t need this police either.

Urbanization... In The Hills

There is a report in the Times of India today that says the Kalka-Simla railway is to be declared a World Heritage Site.

The first time I visited Simla was in 1973, and I took the Kalka-Simla railway both ways - and it was great.

I had already spent 5 years in a Darjeeling school, where too there was a mountain railway that I simply loved.

As far as I know, the Darjeeling Hill Railway is already on the World Heritage list.

We have other hill railways too – in and around the Nilgiris, and up to Matheran in the Western Ghats.

All these railways are over 100 years old – that is, they were built when the automobile did not exist.

They were tremendous feats of engineering. Of the Kalka-Simla railway, the World Heritage Committee noted that it represents “an exceptional technical achievement in the development of the Himalayan mountains because of its length, its altitude and the difficulty of the terrain through which it runs in difficult tropical climatic conditions."

But what did this “exceptional technical achievement” aim at?

This quote is telling: “The railway enabled significant and enduring human settlement.”

That is, rapid urbanization in the previously inaccessible mountains was the purpose.

The Brits built over 80 “hill stations” – new cities and towns – in 50 years, all based on railway connections, in the age before the automobile.

The hill stations, and the railways, were laid in a “hub-and-spoke” arrangement around the principal metropolitan cities: The Simla – Mussoorie belt around Delhi; the Darjeeling – Shillong belt around Calcutta; the Ooty – Kodaikanal belt around Madras; and the Poona – Sahyadri belt near Bombay.

If we in India are to seek a renewed urbanization, the building of many, many new cities and towns, entirely from scratch, so that we can escape our present-day horrific urban conditions, we must emulate the British in India and build “hub-and-spoke” transport arrangements from the big cities to all these new urban centres in the hills.

Of course, the automobile revolution is now on, so highways should come first.

And let every middle-class Indian have two properties: one in a city; and the other in the hills – just as things were in British times when there was such a surge in the supply of new property on the market that properties did not cost much.

Good thought on a Sunday, what?

And read my earlier post: “Bungalows For All… And More”.

Keep On Truckin'

Unlike The Indian Express, who have shown no sympathy for India’s truckers (see their editorial), I remain firmly on the side of truck drivers and truck-owners.

Transportation and trade go hand in hand. All tradeables have to be transported to the most distant markets if really fat profits are to be booked. Kulu apples cannot be sold in the Kulu Valley itself; they must be taken to where apples do not grow (like, say, Chennai) and where they are therefore scarce, for fat profits to accrue. Exotic flowers grown in Coorg or Jharkhand (like anthuriums) must be transported quick to the Amsterdam Flower Market for the highest gains to be made.

Now, in socialist India, everyone will surely agree, the transportation sector sucks real bad. And trucking, its biggest part, sucks the worst.

Protectionism has meant that truck owners must invest in pygmy Tata trucks. We do not see such trucks on the real highways of the West. Now think of the poor truck driver, driving this horrible machine with “double declutching” required for changing gears. And think of the roads he drives on. And also think of how IMPORTANT a role he plays in our economy.

I have no hesitation in affirming that the role played by truckers is a million times more IMPORTANT for our survival that the role played by pyaray Manmohan and all his stupid "planners".

Trucks are the biggest consumers of highways – but the administrative apparatus of the socialist Indian state preys on them because they have monopolized highways – that is, the “notional highways” of India. Trucks are routinely stopped at “check points” every few hundred kilometers for octroi and bribes. They are apparently now being forced to buy premium branded diesel (because the oil companies could not manage to sell premium diesel to car owners, I guess.)

Further, there are highway tolls too – which is “double taxation”. Truckers pay the cess on diesel. This revenue stream is already dedicated to the Central Road Fund. So there should be no tolls on government-built highways. But here there are tolls. There should actually be “freeways”.

An idea whose time has come is dedicated “truckways” with “open road tolling” powered by GPS. These can easily be privately supplied, given the customer base of truckers on all key routes. Yet, this will require upgradation to modern multi-axle trucks, which do not destroy road surfaces. For this, free trade in used multi-axle trucks is required. Our pygmy single-axle Tata trucks will surely not be allowed to ply on these modern truckways because they cause damage to the road surface and private truckway owners will debar them on their properties. Our horrible highways and our horrible trucks go together – and so must depart together as well.

India does not need “education” and “healthcare”.

India needs a REVOLUTION in Transportation.

Shubh Laabh and Shubh Yatra – let these be our slogans.

(Read the news report on the truckers strike here. And the Express editorial here.)

An Ad For An Ad

With inflation crossing 11.7 per cent (bravo to the statisticians who measured it so precisely) it has been reported that the government is coming out with a “slew of ads” as propaganda designed to confuse the public into thinking that this inflation is caused by “global factors”.

They are calling it an “awareness campaign”!

Whatever happened to Truth?

What about Truth in democratic politics?

What are the “values” of the senior functionaries of The State? – the cabinet secretary is quoted in the report.

What kind of people squander public money in a poor country – where there are so many better ways to spend this money – in spreading treacherous lies?

Actually, even this slew of ads will be inflationary, considering that the government will “create money” to pay for them.

Taking into consideration that the government will pay in its own paper notes, and that they will be exchanging “real” ad space for these property-less paper notes, newspaper owners should refuse to accept these ads. They should politely inform the government that they are actually quite broke – in “deficit” – that this deficit is causing inflation. They should voluntarily refuse to accept ads paid for by further deficits.

And if these ads are carried, civil society should release its own ads, telling the government that it needs to tighten its belt – for it is loose spending by the government that is causing inflation in India.

Our ads versus your ads, Manmohan.

And read my “Funny Money” to understand money, inflation, and the ultimate cure.

Against The Nuclear Deal

I opposed the Indo-US nuclear deal in a column published more than two years ago.

And the arguments I made then still stand:

What if there is a nuclear accident?

Will you like a nuclear power plant to be located in your city/town/village?

When there is no relief in torts, how can the average Indian risk nuclear power?

And if nuclear power is generated by the State, how will we ever attain the goal of 24x7 private electricity supply?

With the State in power generation, we will forever be plagued by power cuts.

And why don’t we have free trade with the people of America, so that we can all benefit from buying cheap Californian wine, Harley-Davidson bikes and other American products?

This Indo-US nuclear deal is a deal between the government of India and the government of the USA.

It is just like the deals our government used to routinely have with the Soviets when I was young – all government-to-government deals.

We don’t need such governments, nor do we need such deals.

We need free trade unilaterally – something I was also one of the first to call for.

This Is Not Progress

There are two stories in the papers today that illustrate the fact that India is not progressing.

By “progress” I mean moving forward.

India is not moving forward.

The first story is how Mumbai flooded up as soon as the first (highly predictable) monsoon rains hit the city.

This happens in Mumbai year after year.

And no one is “responsible”.

The buck, as it were, stops nowhere.

There are politicians, there are bureaucrats, there is a corporation, there are other authorities – but there isn’t anyone responsible for Mumbai.

I therefore propose that the first article of the Constitution of the Second Indian Republic shall read thus:

Every habitation with a population above 500 shall elect a Mayor, who will be responsible for the smooth conduct of all business in his area.

We need not write more than that in the Constitution for “smooth conduct of ALL business” means no flooding, no garbage, and the protection of street hawkers and vendors.

Let us continue to the second story that illustrates India’s regress:

High airfares because of high taxes on ATF have drastically lowered the number of new fliers – especially from the small towns, who used to take short-haul trips by air to the nearest city and back.

The unsafe railways, and the even more unsafe roadways, are being “promoted” by official policy.

This is not progress.