If we had listened to Rajaji and Masani!

As Sauvik has already commented on Jaithirth Rao’s article for demolishing Professor Amartya Sen’s latest book, however, the following paragraphs are quite noteworthy.

• It was Rajagopalachari and Masani (not leftists, but thinkers genuinely concerned about “Nyaya” for the poor) who had pointed out that the fundamental right to property protects the poor more than the rich. The rich never had a problem with the leftist permit-licence “Niti”. The empiricist in Sen should be aware that some forty years ago the Dutt and Hazari Commissions established that moneyed business houses benefited most from the crony capitalism inherent in the policies that the Left would like to revive today. If we had listened to Rajaji and Masani and not to the Left, “property” would still be a fundamental right and the common law principle that the state cannot take from Peter to give to Paul would have prevailed. To attempt to take from a poor peasant to give to an Indonesian chemical firm or an Indian automobile firm would not have been permissible. But since “property” is not a fundamental right our executive branch need have no fears in pursuing reverse Robin Hood policies of taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Then and now it is Rajaji, Masani and their intellectual descendants who have been on the side of both right “Niti” and “Nyaya”.
• Sen has noted that one of the positive fallouts of high economic growth is growth in government revenues which can then be deployed in imaginative anti-poverty programmes like the NREGA. One of the engines of high growth in the last decade and a half has been the computer software industry. Many of us have not forgotten that the Left parties bitterly opposed computers and delayed their introduction for years on end. One could argue that they set the whole growth process back for at least a generation. It is really ironical today to meet an old trade union veteran of the leftist persuasion who sheepishly admits that both his daughter and son-in-law are computer programmers. And that’s just what happened to me the other day!
• Professor Sen: You have just written what could be the most important treatise in political philosophy of the first decade of this century. Please do us a favour and do yourself one. Do not praise the Left and confer on “adharmic anyayis” the respectability they do not deserve.