B R Ambedkar, please!

S.Gurumurthy has very interesting article in the BL on global financial crisis and its impact on real economy. The most interesting part is below para:

• "Milton Friedman suggested that governments must statutorily limit the rate of money expansion to the rate of growth of the real economy. That is, there must be direct correlation between money and growth. But now, post 1990, the financial economy has grown 10 times the real economy."

The essence of the above arguments was the pioneering work of Dr.B R Ambedkar in the early 1920s. But nobody had have interest to read and understand from his point of view.

Some readings

Not a bad analysis about the prospects of Modi becoming a Prime Minister of India.

Do four Delhi think tanks matter disproportionately in India?

India’s demographic challenge: Wasting time

Stupidly unfair

Manish has a great piece in today's IE on minimum wage in India. He argues very perceptively that the "The trade union demand is a predictable positioning of narrow self-interest as national interest but the government's acceptance of their demand is unfair, delusional and economically stupid."

Some links

Very interesting interview by Goa Chief Minister particularly his views about Gujarat Chief Minister is very candid and fairly well said arguments.

In the beginning, a National Democratic Front

Mating as marriage' judgment is a shocker

A bit from this article A 10-step programme to tap India’s enormous potential:

• Last week, I made a quick visit to see the chief minister of Gujarat,Narendra Modi. He’d asked me to give a presentation on how India could realize its still-enormous potential. I went through points I’d first discussed in a paper I co-wrote with Tushar Poddar in 2008:Ten Things for India to Achieve its 2050 Potential. It’s striking to me that, five years later, our recommendations don’t need revising (They do need elaborating, and I’ll get into more detail in an updated study and further columns. Modi and I are planning a conference of experts before the end of this year).
• I’ll state no opinion on Modi’s chances of becoming prime minister after next year’s general election—it has been announced that he’ll lead the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) campaign. He’s a controversial figure. Detractors call him a sectarian extremist. I will say this: He’s good on economics, and that’s one of the things India desperately needs in a leader.

A cosmopolitan social reformer

India and identity – In ten pieces

Interesting reading

"The right to food law has been sold as a grand gesture in humanitarianism, in a country that generally prefers emotional tugs to factual thinking."

"The prospects of Parliament legislating a comprehensive law to regulate parties are dim. In the absence of any regulation, the CIC verdict subjecting parties to RTI must be welcomed. More citizen scrutiny of parties and their inner working is surely a good thing"

That is why we need to think about where we walk.

"But I never minded it because I have always believed that a genius has to be different from average persons like me and an ignited mind like B Raman has a right to wear an attitude."

Its time to get out!

Minister for Civil aviation says, very rightly so:

• "Not just the civil aviation sector, the entire service sector is a burden on the government. There are too many constraints and the attitude of government employees is depleting the sector. The catchword is customers should be king, but in this sector, government servants are king. You cannot sack anybody and it's difficult to discipline the staff."
• "We have planned to appoint an ombudsman to address grievances. But I can't say when it will happen. In the government, never ask when,"

Caste and Capitalism

"Ambedkar clearly saw the potential of capitalism in breaking traditional caste and occupational shackles. This did not happen in his time. It has finally happened after the economic reforms of 1991."

Read 1994 book on "Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India"

"Capitalism versus caste: A new order based on the market can sweep away centuries of caste discrimination"

Factious Polity over Prosperity

Here is a brief piece which I wrote in 2012 when the debate on FDI in retail was headline.  The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the below para in his lecture at Raman Research Institute, Bangalore. At that time he was not holding any official post in the government.

• “...those who wish to persist with the old policy framework of India must realise the tremendous social and economic cost they are asking the people of India to pay for their preferences…To argue for greater openness is not to argue that globalisation processes, involving liberalization of trade and capital flows, do not pose risks. Competition can certainly hurt those who are not prepared for it. But a country like India, with its vast human and material resources, and with the ambition of becoming a major global economic player, cannot take such a defeatist view. We ought not to underestimate the capabilities of an India that can produce computer programmers for the Silicon Valley. We must have a coherent strategy to come to term with globalisation, a process we cannot stop even if we do not like it”.

Of that Twelfth June

Shruti has great piece in the today's Livemint newspaper on Indira Gandhi and her polity of drama in Indian democracy. Shruti concludes with the following para:

• "Remembering this verdict, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley should pause to reconsider their role as the incumbent leaders of opposition in Parliament. In the spate of corruption scandals that have been exposed in the last three years, they have not been successful in making the Prime Minister testify before a joint parliamentary committee, let alone in a court of law. It is particularly disappointing as both started their political careers opposing the emergency with Jayaprakash Narayan as their inspiration."

Capitalism, Caste and Society (CCS)

Here is a very interesting interview with two powerful, yet persuasive minds working on mission to do something concretely with the idea of Capitalism, Caste and Society. And thus they say "'Capitalism is changing caste much faster than any human being. Dalits should look at capitalism as a crusader against caste". A bit from the interview:

"What has happened during the past 50 or 60 years is that the state's welfare measures or methods or reservations got slightly misunderstood and also slightly misused by the "victims".

...10 per cent of MSMEs registered with the Government of India are Dalit-owned, which is about 1,64,000 across the country. 

...the silencer in the Tata Nano is produced by a Dalit entrepreneur.

Affirmative action has given Dalits a launch pad. A launch pad is a launch pad. You need that to take off. Ambedkar gave you the launch pad. Now don't run on the launch pad, take off.

Because of economic reforms, globalisation, you can't produce everything under one roof. You will have to outsource work. Most of the Dalit entrepreneurs of today are beneficiaries of outsourcing.

Along with globalisation came Adam Smith to challenge Manu. So that's why for the first time, money has become bigger than caste.

there is an economic process, that capitalism is changing caste much faster than any human being. Therefore, in capitalism versus caste, there is a battle going on and Dalits should look at capitalism as a crusader against caste.

what man failed to do, capitalism is doing. Let us go with capitalism that is changing caste faster than your reforms

People who are working on poverty have a better life than people like us, because if you work on poverty, then you fly. You work on poverty, you live in five-star hotels. If you work on poverty, you are in touch with big foreign funding agencies. So, talking poverty makes you strong, makes you rich.

The inspiration behind DICCI is the economic thought of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. The second is the black capitalism in America."

Aspirations of emerging giants

That is the title of my latest column in the Pragati magazine out today. The special thing about the article are the below paras:

• The difference in fundamental comparisons between India and China are best encapsulated in the prophetic words of Wuttke, who said “Chinese educate for practical life, the Indians for the ideal; those for earth, these for heaven; those educate their sons for entering the world, these for going out of it; those educate for citizenship, these for priesthood; those for industrial activity, these for knowledge; those teach their sons the laws of the state, these teach them the essence of the Godhead; those lead their sons into the world, these lead them out of the world into themselves; those teach their children to earn and enjoy, these to beg and to renunciate.” Whether one agrees or not, it is difficult to better these words, which capture the difference between India and China in its ethos and antiquity. The economic, social and political developments in these two countries have to be seen through the words of Wuttke.
• On the similarities between the two nations, Chie Nakane, a Japanese anthropologist wrote in 1998 that “…their respective great civilizations were formed along the two great rivers: the Indus and Ganges in India, the Huang-he and the Yangtze River in China, all of which originated in the Tibetan Plateau. The modern capitals of both countries, Delhi and Beijing, are situated in the north. In the south-east are situated two large cities, Calcutta and Shanghai, each at the mouth of the great rivers of the Ganges and Yangtze, backed by the fertile and productive areas of Bengal and Jiangsu. Both cities received the first impact from the West, its citizens were earliest exposed to Western culture and the two cities become the centres of modern rich cultures. Similarly, the southern regions of both countries have a high population density: Tamil Nadu and Kerala in India, and Kwangtung and Fukien in China. Further, both countries possess rich granary regions in the inland area of the Punjab and Sichwan. It is interesting that the names of these two regions connote rivers- the Five revers and Four rivers. Both societies possess a certain similarity, being composed of wheat-producing areas in the north and wet paddy cultivation in the south…”

Nehruvian condescension

Good friend Harsh has great article in today's Livemint newspaper. A bit from the piece:

• "It is a construct that manufactures distrust in society and encourages Indians to be suspicious of each other because the state emphasizes our differences, rather than our common heritage, while making us compete for goods and services for which an artificial shortage is created by faulty economic policies. "