Professor F. A. Hayek, Mr Jinnah and Kashmir!

In the middle of 2006 I went to Kashmir to present a research paper on ‘Indian Urban Issues’ at an International Conference on ‘Federalism at Work’ the principle organizer was ISS. But what I still remember from that visit is a former Finance Minister of Pakistan addressed a session where he answered a student question:

The question was: How nations become developed?

His answer was “the particular nation become developed when every individual in that country have freedom of life, liberty and property”. Moreover, he stressed by saying that every individual should have choice to act without violating others freedom. I was a bit confused in that time because I was not aware of most of Professor F A Hayek’s works and other Austrian School of Economics.

Now several issues are mounting on Mr. Jinnah after the release of new book by Mr Jaswant Singh

Today The Hindu has published its editorial of September 13, 1948 titled ‘Mr. Jinnah. This was published two days after the death of the founder of Pakistan.

• “Pakistan began with Iqbal as a poetic fancy. Rahmat Ali and his English allies at Cambridge provided it with ideology and dogma.
• Two world wars within a generation, bringing in their train a vast proliferation of nation-States as well as the decay of established Imperialisms and the rise of the Totalitarian Idea, were as much responsible for the emergence of Pakistan as the aggressive communalism to which Mr. Jinnah gave point and direction.”

Mr.T.C.A argues “one does wonder why hyphens were used in the title instead of the usual commas.” If you wanted to know more about the above line you should read the book called “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” by Lynne Truss. I have just completed reading this book, its great learning and of course fun with words and punctuation. You will get answer for the following questions! The full stop is female or male? The comma is male or female? How did punctuation inserted into a language?

But one thing I’m sure there are ‘spontaneous order’ in the invention of punctuation development and the use in it even now. Too there is a war in use of particular punctuation.

So back to Professor F. A. Hayek why Hayek matter again and again because for certain ideas he is the underpinning giant of liberalism!

When asked about "What's the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today?" Economist Lawrence Summers said in an interview for "The Commanding Heights” "What I tried to leave my students with is the view that the invisible hand is more powerful than the hidden hand. Things will happen in well-organized efforts without direction, controls, plans. That's the consensus among economists. That's the Hayek legacy."

Mr Bruce Caldwell who is the author of “Hayek's Challenge An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek” says many interesting insights about Professor Hayek’s ideas, the good, the ugly and the bad!

Mr. Bruce says;

• “I think, of the unique blending of perspectives and viewpoints that would emerge in his own thought, a blending that resulted in a thoroughly modernist critique of the scientistic pretensions of his age and yet simultaneously pointed toward some surprising (some might even label them postmodern) new directions.”