New Year Resolutions

I welcome 2009 with these wonderful words from The Freeman.

A Study In Contrasts

Nandan Nilekani makes the case that city government in India needs to be made effective.

Well, if we build a hierarchy of the different levels of government then city government would be placed somewhere at the bottom in terms of it’s powers and area of governance. 

What about the top level – The President Of India? After the Mumbai terror attacks The President Of India issued a brief statement from Camp Hanoi in Vietnam.  Nothing much after that at least in the newspapers (I never watch the stupidity on TV.)

Compare that to this press release from Buckhimgam Palace after the London train bombings.

There doesn’t seem to be much at the top either.  That post is mostly ceremonial but at least it should be visible, shouldn’t it?

Read On the Web

[XYZ] posits a model of counselling and communicative action as an instrument in order to stimulate the public sphere. The model aims at supplementing the individual’s struggle for a successful social adjustment with more aspirational inputs so as to help one take an informed and balanced attitude towards life as well as society.

Dude!

Job Reservations and Incompetence

A result of a society following bad ideas is that these ideas do not stay inside a box.  Sooner or later they escape like miseries from Pandora’s box and show their influence on all aspects of society.  A result of the policy of reservations followed by the Indian society is that slowly voices are being raised against the hiring policies of private companies – an effect that was never intended when the reservation laws were passed.

The hiring of American pilots by Jet Airways has Indian pilots crying that the jobs should not go to foreigners.  The Indians do not claim that they have the expertise to fly the specific planes for which the new pilots have been hired but rather that they are Indians and therefore thay ought to be hired.

It has often been noted that all reservations create is a sense of entitlement among the so called “lower castes.”  This case proves that other people too are willing to define new castes (castes are primarily based on profession) and expect entitlements in new professions that did not even exist when the caste system was created.

The virus of demanding what one cannot claim on the basis on competence is wider spread in Indian society than commonly thought.

A Moment of Courage

While the hooligans intellectually descended from Shivaji show their sub-humanity by beating and killing non Maharastrians, the people of a town in Mexico offer an example of courage.

An Interview with Lee Kuan Yew

This is a an interview with Lee Kuan Yew from 2005:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,druck-369128,00.html

Reasons To Abandon Capitalism

It is not surprising to watch Sitaram Yechuri trot out the old tired strawman method of making a point.  In this method, you take something that is not representative of an idea, treat it as it it is and then proceed with a demolition job.  In the case of Mr. Yechuri, he takes Wall Street and The Economist as representatives of Capitalism and then proceeds to say that Capitalism has failed.

This is false because Wall Street and The Economist are not representatives of Capitalism.  They are the products of a mixed economy in which freedom exists side-by-side government controls and regulation.

And this is just one of the mistakes that Mr. Yechuri makes, for even granting his premise that “Capitalism” has flaws, it should be remembered that Communism, the ideology he espouses has been a complete failure.  China and India have been able to make progress only by freeing their markets to some degree.  The Soviet Union, the posterboy of Communism, is only a memory printed on old maps.

What then is better, the system that lead the Soviet Union to extinction or the system of free markets which even if it undergoes problems is capable of rising to live another day?

For more on the nature of Capitalism and the financial crisis please read the blogs of Aristotle the Geek and Applying Philosophy To Life.  You might find your time to be well spent.

Why India Should Not Become A Superpower

Many Indians foster the dream that one day soon India will become a superpower.  Here is why this dream should not become a reality.

Superpowers and even minor powers influence other countries with their actions, laws and values.  They have the ability to strengthen the followers of their values around the world.  The result of England achieving greatness was the growth of individual freedom and a reduction in the power of the state in many parts of the world.  The result of the United States achieving greatness was a continuation in widening circles of the same phonomenon.  The result of the USSR becoming powerful was a total loss of freedom for Eastern Europe and violence and mayhem everywhere else the Soviets acquired a foothold.

India so far has escaped becoming as evil as the U.S.S.R. but for all it’s liberalisation is still a country which does not believe that a society in which people are free to exchange ideas and trade is desirable.  The proof can be found in any newspaper.  Here are a few examples from this week:

• We are all familiar with the recent happenings in Singur where the government acquired land for an industrial project only to find itself in a mire.  The obvious solution is to respect property rights and let people trade land freely.

Indian politicians, on the other hand, have decided that rather than take even a small step towards respecting the rights to property and trade they would rather increase their own powers.  Rather than treating people as intelligent, the leaders of this country think of it’s citizens as hapless fools who cannot handle their own affairs – “The committee said it did not think the rural poor would be able to transact in shares or debentures.”

The possibility that the rural poor could perhaps learn given the opportunity seems not to be thought worth the trying.

• We have all become accustomed to living with Hindu terrorism and Muslim terrorism.  We’ve become accustomed to being held to ransom by Sikhs and Gujjars.  Slowly, we are getting used to living with the Marathi Manhoos.

Now womens groups too are getting into the act of restricting freedom by demanding censorship ironically in the name of defending a woman.

Remember both examples are from this week.  This week, which is only half over, is only an average week – the stars are still in their courses and did not predict extraordinarily bad events in the Sunday papers.

Reading about such events every day, year after year, it should be obvious to the reasonably rational observer that India does not have good values to export.  India in it’s present form can export only moral cowardice and all it’s attendant evils such as random violence, censorship and the power of overreaching government.  That is why the India of today should not become a superpower capable of exporting these “values” to the rest of the world.

And I? I do not care if India never becomes a superpower or remains a minor power.  It would be far better for India to become a civilized, moral country with a productive populace who are able to enjoy the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Would Sheila Dixit Have Stopped Apollo 11?

On the 16th of July in 1969, Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins set off on the first manned mission that landed on the Moon and returned safely to Earth.  If Sheila Dixit,  Chief Minister of Delhi, had her way, the Apollo 11 mission would have been deemed too adventurous and the astronauts would have been told to stay home.

At least that’s what Sheila Dixit thinks the citizens of Delhi should do at night.  Commenting on the murder of journalist Soumya Viswanathan, Dixit is reported to have said:

“All by herself till 3 am at night in a city where people believe…you know…you should not be so adventurous.”

This remark closely follows another government minister, Oscar Fernandes, justifying murder.

The Only Way Out Of Singur Is To Restore the Right To Property

Today’s newspaper headlines proclaim that the Tata’s have finally pulled the Nano factory out of West Bengal ending several months of conflict pitting the state government (which acquired land for the factory under eminent domain) against a populist politician who lead an agitation on behalf of  farmers deprived of their land.

Much has been written in the popular media and blow-by-blow events are too well known to need recounting.  It needs “unpopular”, scarcely read media such as this blog to write about the reason behind this situation in which either outcome could only represent a loss for India.

Eminent domain is a doctrine that allows governments to appropriate private property on the claim that they can better decide the purpose to which the property can be put.  The nominal reason given has always been that the property is acquired for the public good.  However, in practice, the reason has often been to hand the land over to some private party on whom the State wishes to bestow a favour – of course, for the common good.  In reality, the State (or it’s current rulers) hope to gain in the form of increased taxes being generated from the new uses of the property or direct monetary gains by the rulersin the form of bribes.  Add to this the absence of constitutionally guaranteed property rights and you have the India of the 21st century.

The original Constitution of India recognized property rights under Article 19 (subclause f) which guaranteed to all citizens the right to acquire, hold and dispose of property.  The evil twin of Article 19 was Article 31.  Article 31 abrogated to the state the right to deprive citizens of their property by authority of the law.  Meaning the government could take over your land and that was your private tragedy.

Like always in a socialist system, Article 31, won and the right to property ceased to be a fundamental right in 1978 opening the way to eminent domain in some cases without citizens having recourse to the courts (Article 300-A which replaced Article 31.)

Add to this situation, more socialism in the form of land use acts and land reform acts and zoning and it becomes nearly impossible for a private party to acquire enough land to create a large industrial complex.  Leading to further land appropriations and deadlocks such as Singur.

The only way out of this imbrolio is to drop entirely the doctrine of Eminent Domain and reinstate the Right to Property as a Fundamental Right which cannot be violated even by the State.  The Right to Property needs to be realized as an absolute right leading to the removal of all laws pertaining to land use or zoning.  This time around, Article 19 must be restored without it’s evil twins, Article 31 and 300-A.

This is the only basis on which conflicts such as those which have embroiled Singur can be avoided in the future.

In the meantime, India will continue to burn in the conflict between agriculture and industry.

Privatise Temple Security

The inevitable happened again.  A stampede at a Hindu temple left a lot of people dead.  And as usual, the government of the state in which this happened is taking flak for not providing security. 

But why should this happen? Why should a government, any government, be responsible for providing crowd control facilities to religious institutions?

Temples that attract large crowds tend to make a lot of money in the form of donations.  This money obviously comes from their visitors.  Let the temples then spend some of this money to hire private security and para-medics to tend to the visitors.

There is no reason why people who don’t go to temples should be forced to part with their tax money to pay for those who do.

Who’s Responsible For the Bank Crisis?

Much has been written blaming financial institutions for the recent financial crisis.  Some have gone to the extent of labelling banks as greedy.  Maybe so, but the part played by home buyers must also be examined.

For years, people have been buying homes without knowing how they are going to pay for them.  They knew that they did not have the money to pay for these homes but the lure of ownership proved too much to resist.  It was too tempting not to “dream The American Dream.”

Part of the blame must be borne by these folk.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  When you consume without creating an equal value to pay for it, you must one day suffer the consequences.

Reservations: Cricket and Real World

India Uncut has a blog entry on reservations in cricket.

No different from the world of caste based reservations, it it? 

Anyway, it doesn’t matter now because in a few hours the Hadron Reactor will be turned on and the World will end.  If you want to make money on the event, go here.