Prof B R Shenoy is still deemed too dangerous to be taught widely.

A quote from Sanjeev Sanyal:

"The Left dominance over the intellectual establishment has its roots in the systematic “ethnic cleansing” of all non-Left thinkers since the 1950s. One of its early victims was liberal economist B.R. Shenoy who questioned Nehru’s economics. He was squeezed out of the establishment and persecuted, but continued to write against socialist planning. ... The result of the systematic cleansing was that there were no non-Left academics remaining in the social sciences field in India by the early 1990s. ... Since the 1990s, the more explicitly Soviet-derived material has been removed from curriculums, but they remain heavily dominated by the Left. Thus, economics students are mostly taught material written by Amartya Sen and his stable of academics but exposed only in passing to the thoughts of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman or Jagdish Bhagwati, Sen’s intellectual rival. Even when non-Left thinkers are included, their ideas are lumped together as exotic curiosities to be critiqued, rather than imbibed. Shenoy is still deemed too dangerous to be taught widely. The situation is much worse in other disciplines like sociology and history."

More reading see here.

Property rights for future migrants

That is the article in today’s BS by Sanjeev Sanyal. He argues that the:

“…..public policy should focus less on getting rid of slums and more on rethinking property rights, especially those of the poor……… the first problem with recognising squatter rights is that we create problems of governance by potentially encouraging land-grab. We not only have to think about today’s urban poor, but also about the incentive structure presented to the next generation of migrants. Second, the formalisation is usually done on the basis of a cut-off date. This often recognises the rights of better-off old-timers against those of poorer newcomers. Finally, and most importantly, in next generation cities like Gurgaon, the poor live in the “urban villages” where property rights are very clearly defined and any tampering would cause serious social upheaval. So, what should we do?

Identity as a property right: The single-most important, and sometimes only, asset of a poor migrant is her identity. Without any form of identification, it is very difficult for a newcomer to fit into the urban landscape — no gas connection, no mobile phone, no voter rights, no credit and so on. It is nearly impossible for such an individual to apply for jobs in the formal economy or sometimes even as domestic help. Thus, a reliable and robust system of identification is invaluable. This is why Nandan Nilekeni’s Unique Identity Number scheme may turn out to be a major intervention.

The road to urban and cities: Antidote is road, road road you count now

Sanjeev Sanyal argues that the India “public transport systems do not work efficiently when the city is spread out and commuters cannot easily walk to the bus/metro stop. The existing large cities are already bursting at the seams and we will have to expand existing towns/cities, urbanise villages and build brand new towns…….. it is essential that we revive small mofussil towns as economic, social and cultural centres”.