On Cars... And Roads

With New Delhi currently hosting the Auto Expo, the news and the views today are mainly focused on cars. Mint has an editorial titled “Green cars, not green politics,” which makes eminent sense. The ToI has an editorial that looks at traffic in our cities, and concludes:

Traffic in most cities is nightmarish, with the World Bank estimating that city traffic has grown by 15 per cent a year for the last decade this when car penetration in India is a low 10 per 1,000 population, as compared to 500 per 1,000 in developed countries. Unless the government acts quickly to close the infrastructure deficit, the dream of mobility for all will quickly turn into a gridlocked nightmare.

I think if traffic is to be scientifically managed, the Bajaj autorickshaw must go. It is this vehicle that complicates matters on our city streets. With India now emerging as a global “hub” for manufacturing small cars – the ToI editorial is titled “Hub of small things” – it is vital that these modern cars replace the silly autorickshaw. Only then will it be possible to manage traffic properly in our teeming cities. Of course, roads will have to be built on a war footing – but you read about that on this blog quite often, don’t you?

The only point that I would like to add today is the statistic quoted in the ToI editorial – that car sales are expected to grow at 16 per cent this year. Such growth has been a normal feature in the years past as well. As this trend continues, it is vital that we wake up to the fact that a sea change has occurred in our lives and on our streets, a change that The Chacha State has not noticed – that fact that more and more Indians are car owners. Volkswagen, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota and Nissan-Renault have all unveiled plans to manufacture more than 100,000 cars annually in India. This is apart from the even bigger plans of Maruti-Suzuki. If the Central Planner wishes to think ahead – a basic function of the planner – then he must think of roads for all these cars.

Roads, more roads, and even more roads – that is what I recommend from the public kitty. We can then manage traffic, achieve a modicum of road safety, and even decongest our cities and develop satellite townships. All this depends on a roads vision – something The Chacha State sorely lacks. Therein lies the rub.

When A Student Nails The State

Inflation is the hot topic of the day, with Mint warning in an editorial that “the virus is spreading.” So far, all talk had been of “food inflation,” but now, the editors of Mint say, prices of metals – gold, copper, aluminum – are showing a dangerous rising trend. The newspaper is also carrying an interview with Pawan Munjal of Hero Honda, who is quoted as saying that he is “concerned” about rising commodity prices, especially of steel and rubber.

What do you make of this?

We all know what the economists employed by The Chacha State have to say on the subject. Here is a report from last week quoting Kaushik Basu:

India does not need to tighten monetary policy now and risk stalling a nascent economic recovery as inflation pressure was mainly caused by high food prices, the chief economic adviser to the finance ministry said

…

Basu added:

Right now, it is a sector-specific intervention that is needed, which is in food sector and that is what the government is doing…

But there is good news in the face of all this mendacity. A young student from Kerala, Shanu A, has published a perceptive piece on inflation and nailed the real culprit – The Chacha State and its central bank. They are the real cause of inflation, he says, and the only cure is sound money. Shanu calls for gold.

You can read Shanu’s piece here – and I recommend it to all, especially students. You guys are the future – and Chacha & Co. are screwing up the future. This para is noteworthy for its forthrightness:

Inflation is purely a monetary phenomenon, no matter how hard the statists try to evade that fact. Intellectuals and politicians would want the public to believe that inflation is an act of God, over which we humans have but no control. Inflation however is a policy, and as any policy, it can be halted. Our government goes on with its inflationary policies because it wants to tax the public, but lacks the temerity to resort to it in so explicit a manner. Inflation is in fact a hidden tax everyone pays irrespective of their incomes. It is a tax, which hits the poor more than it hits the rich. The sections hit most by inflation are orphans, widows and the elderly who live on the buying power of life insurance policies, pensions and annuities. Inflation leads to a re-distribution of wealth from the poor to the state and its parasites.

So I am happy to rest my pen today. It is deeply satisfying when the youth take over. Well done, Shanu.

For Private Law... And Private Guns

I’m back – with a column in Mint titled “For a private law society.” My reader knows that this blog stands for private law. Here is an opportunity to read about this concept. The article concludes:

Law is a very serious thing. It is the protection for every individual. Today, especially in socialist India, the law is but naked coercion, offering zero protection.

Now, talking about protection, it is an inescapable truth that ordinary, law-abiding folks in our country need their own private guns to protect themselves. They cannot depend on the mercenary and predatory apparatus of the State Police to defend them: “A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.”

Thus, it is horrifying to read that our The Chacha State is drawing up plans to make legitimate gun ownership even more difficult for us. Abhijeet Singh of Indians For Guns, a society of which I am an old member, in his recent blog post, addresses the issue. There is also an excellent article by Vikram Kona titled “Right to Protection: A Fundamental Responsibility and Failure of the Indian State” to be found here. Abhijeet says that today is the LAST DAY for citizens to petition The Chacha State against this tyranny. So, if you care for your own safety, do your bit.

Note that Aristotle thus defined the difference between a monarch and a tyrant: the monarch protects his people; the tyrant has to protect himself from them.

Indians For Guns are calling for a “partnership” between civilians and the State. Vikram Kona says:

Whenever the State found itself with insufficient resources to deal with the problem at hand or expedient to its goals, the State did recruit the help of civilians in various forms. Post 1962 Indo-China War, the government initiated Civil Defence Training programmes, providing arms training around the country to raise a last line of defence. Even today, the Sashastra Seema Bal regularly provides arms training to villagers at the borders to fight and harass the enemy soldiers in case of an invasion. At different times, governments in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir armed citizens with government supplied guns and ammunition to fight terrorists! Right at this moment, the government of Chhattisgarh actively supports, arms and equips a counter insurgency movement called Salwa Judum. These examples make it evident that civilians can be trusted to bear arms, be proficient in their use, help preserve peace and security, protect the country, and still remain law abiding.

The prescription is as follows:

The Government must realise that empowering law abiding citizens is not detrimental to peace, stability and security of the country. Au contraire, such proactive measures would fill in the lacunae in governance effectively and efficiently. No one advocates an unregulated, free-for-all arms market. Criminals must be prevented from acquiring firearms but on the other hand, if a person is eligible to vote, has no criminal back ground and is mentally stable, that person should be eligible to get a firearm license without having to go through the bureaucratic rigmarole designed to deny and disarm rather than empower and enable the law abiding. The Government must define the licensing procedures clearly and implement them speedily, fairly, and transparently, without fear or favour. Private initiative should be encouraged in the firearms industry, to introduce an element of competition that is essential to counter the evils of monopoly. This will enhance the quality of products available to consumers and ensure that they are available at reasonable prices. Ban on imports of firearms for civilian use should be lifted for the same reasons and also to make high quality self-defence tools available.

Note that a “private law society,” the subject of my column in Mint today, fits in neatly with private guns, for the citizenry to effectively protect themselves and their properties.

Onwards to a brave new India.

[PS: I was not on a holiday the last week. My computer was down, and it was the engineers who were on chutti. Rukawat ke liye khed hai – if you remember your Doordarshan - and a happy new year >:)]

On Golden Handcuffs, First

My first read of this morning, and an excellent read it was too, was an article by James Ostrowski on LRC today titled “American Justice?”

The article tells how the US justice system has been perverted. At the core of the discussion is the idea of a judicial monopolist – that is, a The State that appoints all judges, and they alone can settle disputes. The article begins:

It is taken for granted that, for the sake of peace, justice and order, the courts must have a monopoly on judicial power within the boundaries of their jurisdiction. Yet, the ability of today’s courts to achieve any of these values with the monopoly power they possess is subject to serious doubt. Even if justice implies a court system with the monopoly power to do justice, the converse is not true. The mere existence of monopoly judicial power does not imply that it will be used justly. Whenever that monopoly power becomes unhinged from true justice, as it did, for example, in Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany, that monopoly judicial power thereby becomes a great evil. One suffering under Hitler’s or Stalin’s “judicial” edicts would have wished to have recourse to some judicial competition, to say the least.

Do read the entire piece here – and reflect on the fact that all is not well internally in the USSA either.

As I went through our newspapers, I stumbled upon something in ET that is truly shocking: that 31 out of 45 MLAs in the Jharkhand Assembly have criminal cases pending against them. This includes the chief minister. The news report says:

The politician-criminal nexus in India is alive and kicking. Proof of this was provided by the profile of the newly elected MLAs in Jharkhand. As many as 31 of the 45 legislators backing the JMM-BJP-AJSU coalition government, which will be sworn in on Wednesday, have criminal cases pending against them.

It’s not just the ruling coalition which is afflicted with this malaise. The Opposition benches in the state too have several MLAs with criminal antecedents, making it clear that the process of criminalisation of politics is proceeding unhindered. The chief minister-designate, Shibu Soren, who had to quit the Union council of ministers a few years ago after being convicted in a murder case, leads the contingent. Besides him, 16 of the 18 JMM MLAs have criminal cases against them…

Now, Jharkhand is a Bhateeja State affected deeply by the Maoist-Naxalite insurgency. So we must conclude that there are criminals on both sides – all using unjust force on others, mainly the common people, with impunity. And we expect Justice from this very same monopolist State. Great expectation, indeed.

So I do believe that we have much to achieve internally, and that too, politically, than Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi has managed so far, what with his “education” and NREGA. Jharkand surely needs something very different from this dole. These are just money transfers from the Chacha Centre to the Bhateeja State that go into the pockets of those thugs who run the Bhateeja State.

It is also not true that the common people are crying out for doles or schools. They are crying out for bijli, sadak and paani, like the rest of us. [Electricity, roads and water.]

They are also crying out for Justice; for Property. And they are heading towards Communism. In the meantime, our monopolist socialist judiciary has banned liberal parties from the fray, from the civilizing processes of politics itself.

Where is India headed?

Well, while the law and order front is terrible pan-India, and nothing can be predicted, the economic indicators are quite clear. The RBI should be tightening monetary policy soon – for inflation looms ahead, the result of the “stimulus.”

I also found Manas Chakravarty’s column noteworthy: he and his associates say that gold has outperformed both commodities as well as stocks this last decade. Onwards to a gold standard, as I had written in Mint.

I say: Let us stay focused on the economy. There are parts of India that are still OK. Let them take the lead and show the others the way to go – internal peace, economic freedom, and sound money. Let us not sacrifice sound money and the budgetary limits it implies at the cause of all this Chacha-Bhateeja “politics.”

Golden handcuffs on the finance minister!

First that - then ordinary handcuffs for the rest.

Away With Chacha's "Education"

The must-read article of this morning is by Rajiv Desai in the ToI – an article on the Right to Education Act titled “Trick or Teach.” Desai argues that the RTE Act is a “trick” – designed to benefit baboons and political thugs.

Desai begins his piece with a bang:

Here is an incontrovertible fact: the majority of children between the ages of eight and 14, rich or poor, attend private schools. Even poor families shun government schools and willingly pay fees to enrol their children in private schools. To cater to this demand, private schools are flourishing, not just in cities and small towns but in villages as well. These schools have been established as commercial ventures. They are of two kinds: recognised and unrecognised by the government. To obtain recognition, private schools have to fulfil impossible criteria…

Desai continues with a blistering attack on government schools:

The government school system is broken beyond repair and everybody knows that, including the poor. Yet the new Right to Education (RTE) Act turns a blind eye and instead seeks to impose impossible burdens on private schools, not just elite institutions but others catering to the common man. Recognised or not, these schools are filling the gap that government apathy and ineptitude has created.

The finale is also very much to the point:

The RTE Act is poorly framed. It is currently being translated into policy under the ministrations of half a dozen bureaucrats. Like all well-meaning legislation, it will only create more problems. Government schools will remain non-functional. Private schools will have to face, in addition to highfalutin government influence over admission policies, the spectre of dealing with low-level bureaucrats and local politicians (read thugs).

Thus, as with the NREG Act, so too with the RTE Act, the only aim of The Chacha State is to increase the powers of sarkaari baboons and associated political thugs.

In any case, neither employment nor education are “rights.” The very idea is nonsensical. The truth is that the entire effort on the part of our rulers is to hoodwink the people while simultaneously assisting the corrupt. Their intentions were bad to begin with.

Actually, why schools, even the State-owned universities are beyond redemption. I once met a chancellor of a private “deemed university.” I asked the man why he used the term “deemed,” which implies some “recognition” from The Chacha State. The reply: We want to distinguish ourselves from the “doomed universities.”

Thus, Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi has got it all wrong, as usual. To progress, Indians need knowledge. They can get this knowledge either from The Market or The Chacha State. As Rajiv Desai says, as far as schools are concerned, rich and poor are opting for private schools. It is this trend that we must encourage.

Away with Chacha-style “education.”

For A New India

I found the lead editorial in Mint today most inspiring, for it talks about India circa 2010, a nation with a per capita income of over US$3500 – if the right policies are followed.

This is quite obviously a post-Chacha world, for the editors go on to say:

Inclusive growth is right now fallaciously equated with government programmes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. These are at best safety nets for the poorest but may have little relevance in an India that has trebled average incomes. The more relevant form of inclusive growth is job creation to help millions get away from low-productivity farming work.

I would have preferred the term “economic freedom.” Millions are already fleeing “low productivity farming work” for opportunities in cities, but these are invariably closed because of perverse policies. The government that actively engages in job destruction cannot have any role to play in job creation.

I would also have preferred to see some mention of property titles – especially in urban areas. In New Delhi, my guess is that over 50% of the population does not possess clear property titles. Most have no postal address. As one such resident of an “unauthorized” locality recently told me: “I have not clear title, but my property is permanently.” In which case, the local government must issue titles forthwith. This is not a very difficult job at all. Think of Munro in Baramahal way back then, with some horses and a tent, going about “mapping the waves of the great oceans.” The job was so daunting then. Now we have satellite images for free on every computer.

Coupled with this emphasis on economic freedom and urban private property, I would also lay stress on aggressive urbanization, itself enabled by good transport connections, and spurred on by economic opportunities in new urban areas, opportunities that will only flourish with complete economic freedom and a hugely liberalized foreign trade regime. That is, an India with hundreds of cities and thousands of towns.

If we follow such policies consistently for a long time, we will not just be a “middle income country,” I daresay we will become a “developed country.” That should be the goal of India, post-Chacha.

On A Flop Called Chacha

Swaminathan’s Aiyar’s Sunday column in the ToI is titled well: “The best of times and the worst of times.” Here he talks of India’s excellent economic performance despite “terrible misgovernance.” However, what is amazing is that our great leader for most of this dreadful decade that Aiyar is chronicling, Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi, is not even mentioned! Should not the man in charge, under whom all this terrible misgovernance has occurred, not take some of the blame?

Let us leave aside all the pretty growth figures and the tales of the IT sector and some of our big companies. Have conditions in our cities and towns improved? Has anything been done to link satellite towns to cities with good roads? Indeed, has anything connected with The Chacha State (or any of its Bhateejas) improved? The only answer is a loud “No.”

Aiyar concludes on an optimistic note:

So, economic reform itself has improved governance in a hundred ways. I believe this explains why economic growth has accelerated despite terrible misgovernance in some areas. For this reason, we can view the next decade with optimism.

This is an optimism I do not share. Our Chacha has squandered all these years, and all our public funds, on all his pet projects – NREGA, education, climate change – while all these leading economic journalists applauded. The fiscal deficit has worsened under Chacha. No move has been taken towards privatization, for Chacha remains a Nehruvian in thought and deed. Recall that Chacha’s finance minister, speaking at a recent trade union event, dismissed rumours of privatization calling them “malicious propaganda” and said that his The State will work to “strengthen PSUs”: I have a post on this.

Thus, with Chacha at the helm, the economic scenario has worsened, and there are no signs that these bozos are in any way going to set things right by doing the right things. They want to continue with The Chacha State as planner and industrialist, as big employer, at the “commanding heights of the economy.” Indeed, the fact that Soniaji chose Chacha for PM shows that she too believes the biggest job of their The State is to run the economy, which is why an economist was selected.

In the meantime, the law and order front has further deteriorated. There is this Maoist-Naxalite uprising. There is Manipur and Kashmir. Aiyar says that our rulers are “clueless” as to what to do about these. Well, they are clueless about The Economy too.

Methinks Aiyar is not really aware of how life in an Indian city has only worsened this last decade. Aiyar has been living in Washington DC for over 10 years now. Sitting pretty in the USSA it is impossible to know what is actually happening in India. Methinks he is also being “polite” to Chacha, for that is our journalistic “culture.”

It is time we shed this culture, called a spade a spade, and judged Chacha to be the gross failure he actually is.