School education vouchers empower Dalits through choice

My friend and myself have published this new article in the Deccan Herald on "School education vouchers empower Dalits through choice"

"The government can also create a fiscal capacity to finance the school education of Dalit students. There are 20 crore Dalits in India. Assuming one-fourth of them are school going children and the government pays Rs 5,000 to every dalit child every year, this will translate in Rs 25,000 crores only for the state.  However, if we are able to provide a strong foundation to Dalit students with quality in school education, we will be able to negate the caste system and discrimination perhaps in a couple of generations." 

Water Scarcity is caused by Wrong Politics and Policies

This young economist's analysis about scarcity of water in India is completely out of ground-level knowledge. It is a crap to argue for "water rights" and "incentives for farmers" to increase groundwater. It is even worse for "political incentives" and "property rights in water". Do not confuse the property rights with land and water. Its again the mainstream economists folly to do so.

You cannot isolate the role of local community managing the common resources like water bodies conservation, maintenance and making sustainable water bodies management for drinking, irrigation etc. The decades old political system has destroyed the age old reasonably good model of decentralized water management system that were existed for several hundreds years in every villages in India. All these were destroyed in the last thirty years! I have seen at least a 50 of them in the last five years in western part of Tamil Nadu. We have revived more than 30 now!!

M K Gandhi and F A Hayek needed for New India

Sanjeev Sabhlok has very interesting article wherein he says beautifully 

"Hayek’s best-known paper – the exhilarating The Use of Knowledge in Society – expounds an extraordinarily complex theory in plain English. Till the end of his life, such as with his last book, “The Fatal Conceit”, Hayek continued to show socialists that they do not have, cannot have, the knowledge necessary for a society to succeed. His Nobel lecture was beautifully entitled, The Pretence of Knowledge.

But socialists are oblivious to his insights. Full of the fatal conceit he cautioned against, confident in their pretence of knowledge and ability to plan for the “masses”, they reject Hayek without having read him. A senior former IAS officer told me that Hayek is irrelevant since he advocated an unbridled free-market. Such socialists give Hayek a bad rap without having read him, just as Gandhi rejected Adam Smith without reading his work." More here.

As per MKG’s understanding, Indian villages were once small self-sustaining economies/communities where a social system ensured “equitable” distribution of resources and earnings making poverty an alien concept.

Learning vs School Education

The draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 has been a heated discussion now among experts and the concerned about future of education vs learning abilities and disabilities of children.

Here are some of the interesting analysis of different experts:

If you wanted to understand the draft NEP in a nutshell, read here.

19 Major changes in the NEP is listed here.

NEP explained in a plain words here.

While the rest of the world has been dabbling with sweeping reform ideas such as school vouchers (a form of direct benefit transfer, DBT), the draft NEP does not even consider this, even though it could usefully be the central plank of reform to enable accountability.

It adds that private pre-schools often consist of formal teaching and rote memorisation with limited play-based learning. A 2017 study by the Ambedkar University showed that “a significant proportion of children in India who completed pre-primary education, public or private, did not have the needed school readiness competencies when they joined primary school,” says the draft Policy.

“The draft, for the first time, has rightly suggested solutions for early childhood and primary education. The focus on basic understanding of language, and mathematics will help in improving the quality,"

CCS has detailed analysis on New Education Policy: Principles, Priorities &Practices

Multi-linguistics education in India is imperative 

New Discussion about GDP of India

As in the past, there is a heated discussion about the new method of arriving the GDP of India in the last few years.

Here are some of the reading to ponder it wisely:

The great Indian GDP debate, explained in five charts

Subramanian fails the smell test no less than India’s GDP data by Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar

Arvind Subramanian’s attempt to estimate GDP instead of explaining it through cross-country regression fraught with problems by Bibek Debroy

GDP estimation: System not perfect, but it’s better than one based on annual surveys by Bibek Debroy

Passing the tax smell test by Harsh Gupta

Ex-CEA Arvind Subramanian Has Junked Not Only GDP Data, But Also Monetary And Fiscal Policy Wonks

Dr CN Annadurai- Political Economist and Statesman of Tamil Nadu

Recently I have read a new book on Dr C N Annadurai who was a great statesman of Tamil Nadu. This year marks 110th year of Annadurai and 50 years after death. In the first two decades of Independent India he had contributed immensely to strengthening the democracy in India. He was pioneer in cooperative federalism in India.

He is fondly called Anna. He is the founder of a political party and first one to defeat the Indian National Congress at regional level in 1967 in Tamil Nadu.

"Anna was a rare leader. He would have dominated the national political stage if he had chosen so. Instead, he epitomised Tamil pride, personifying honesty, simplicity and caring. He never held a bank account until his aides insisted he open one for deposit of his salary as Chief Minister. Once an old associate brought an industrialist to him for a favour. "Until yesterday you had always brought the poor," he observed, regretting the changing priorities of his follower."

He has written widely both in Tamil and English in his quest to discover the ancient heritage of Tamil language, Tamil history, Indian history and economy etc. Mr Kannan wrote a biography of Annadurai.

"Popularly known as "Anna" or elder brother, Annadurai was much loved. It is said that vendors and servicemen would refuse to accept payment from him. Barely five foot three and devoid of arresting physical features, Anna's unpretentious humanity, affection and intellect marked him out. His versatile pen delivered evocative plays (eliciting comparisons to Bernard Shaw), stories, scripts and essays. His speeches dazzled listeners as much for their kaleidoscopic alliterations, metaphors and his unorthodox syntax use, as for their content. Such was his appeal that on occasion tickets were sold for his speeches."

Dr Anna's speeches in Indian upper house of Parliament are extremely rich in knowledge and lucid understanding of various issues both domestic and international. 

The following are some of the most interesting aspects of his writings related to political economics are listed below, its worth read:

MOSCOW Mob Parade

(This is the first English article written by Perarignar Anna, When he was a student of the Panchaiyappa’s College, in 1933, which was published in the College Magazine)

"Any elementary book on economic will tell us that Land, labour, Capital and Organization are the four agents of production. It is true to say that Capital is as necessary for production, as labour is. But the problem is which of these deserves more consideration. A labourer works hard but the direction comes from the Capitalist. Whether the concern gets profit or not, a labourer gets his annas and never cares for either the prosperity of the Capitalist or the comfort of the consumer, whereas, the Capitalist spends sleepless nights in devising plans, and determining the nature and quantity of the demand that is likely to arise. Failure means to him not only a risk of parting with his capital, but also a good-bye to honour. A failure means an ‘I.P.’ and it is by no means a decent degree. So when through his efforts, the Capitalist gets profit he demands a greater share in it. Or, when the Capitalist is not capable of ‘brainwork’, he hires the services of a ‘D.Com’ and shares the profit with that organizer."

“Carry on! But Remember. . .!!”Anna’s Rajya Sabha Speech-25.01.1963 

Annamalai Convocation Address Arignar Anna -18.11.1967 

"Shelly and Byron, Keats and Coleridge, Emerson and Bacon-they are not foreign to us in the strict sense of the term. Is Tiruvalluvar a mere Tamilian? They are all world citizens – world teachers. And the language enshrining their thoughts is not to be discarded just because it comes from another country. That we are not going to accord a higher status to English is borne out by the fact that we have accepted and are implementing with due caution the principle of making Tamil the medium of instruction in colleges –progressively."

his vision was

"let that goal be,

A world without the
Beggar’s out-stretched
Palm, the miser’s
Heartless, stony stare,
The piteous wail of
Want, the pallid face
Of crime, the
Livid lips of lies,
The cruel eyes
Of scorn,
A race without
Disease of flesh or
Brain, shapely and
Fair, the married
Harmony of form and
Use-where
Life lengthens, fear
Dies, joy deepens,
Love intensifies, and
Man regains his

Dignity."

PEOPLE'S POET- poetic genius of Subramania Bharathi, Dr. Arignar C.N.Annadurai, M.A. Delivered his first English Speech in All India Radio on "PEOPLE'S POET" (Year 1948)

Others on Anna's life and contributions.

Prof Bibek Debroy's Major Translations of Ancient Indian Literature

Prof Bibek Debroy is a liberal economist turned translator of ancient Indian literature

His interview and discussions are very interesting and crystal clear in terms of explain the layman to general public. Here some of those videos

Vivek Agnihotri in conversation with Bibek Debroy

Pallavi Joshi in conversation with Bibek Debroy

Bibek Debroy: Should We Have Lessons From Epics in Textbooks

“I will now give you six different reasons why one should read the puranas and itihasa…

"Everyone knows the story - Manu went to bathe in a river, found a small fish. The fish said ‘save me from the larger fish’, so Manu put it in a small bowl of water. At home, the fish became larger and larger and larger and so on… The simple question then is what was the name of the river and where is that river? The name of the river is Kritamala and it is a tributary of the Vaiga River in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai. And this Kritamala today is a nullah and no one even remembers that it was a river."

“Dharma should never be translated in a very superficial kind of way in English because in different contexts it means completely different things.

Debroy has translated the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata (10 volumes), Harivamsha, the Valmiki Ramayana (3 volumes) and the Bhagavata Purana (3 volumes). He is now working on a translation of the Markandeya Purana.

Prof Dharma Kumar

Author Ramchandra Guha had written about Prof Dharma Kumar in detail in The Hindu newspaper under the title of "Last Liberal". 

Prof Dharma Kumar contributed immensely to the Indian Economic Thoughts. She was professor for three decades in Delhi School of Economics.

The Saga of the DelhiSchool of EconomicsA Sketch by K.L. Krishna 

Some of her most notable works are below, for ready reference.

Cambridge Economic History of India

Cambridge Economic History of India Vol 2

Land and Caste in South India

Author Khushwant Sing narrated some stories shared by Prof Kumar:
  
"I am not Raghavan Iyer who got a first class first from Madras University; I am not Raghavan Iyer who got a first class first from Oxford University; I am not Raghavan Iyer who was elected president of the Student Union. I am not Raghavan Iyer, the most brilliant philosopher of the East. I am merely a spark of the Divine.”’ In his evening meditations, he went over the same lines with a variation of the last line — instead of “spark of the Divine”, he said, “I am only a vehicle of the Mahatmas.”

Skills vs Jobs

Mr Manish Sabharwal has been writing more than a decade now urging the governments to reform the Indian labour market systems, but its going to be long firefighting before achieving the desire goal.

"after reviewing decades of evidence, Nehru would acknowledge that the nutty economics of the 1955 Congress Avadi resolution and slogans posing as policy like Garibi Hatao kept many Indians in employed poverty.

The 67 per cent-plus turnout in our recent election not only reflect the invisible threads that hold India together but capture an aspiration that breaks with India’s economic past. This dua needs policy to pray to the one god of formal jobs."

Skills for managing State welfare in India

More than what employers wanted from job seekers, it is the job seeker who have to self assess what he can do or cannot do with his right kind of skills identified with confidence.

Why Swatantra?

The following are other important articles and books links for the readers to muse how and why the Swatantra demise took place in liberal Indian context:


 Why Swatantra? by C. Rajagopalachari 

The Rise And Fall Of The Swatantra Party

The Swatantra Party: Commemorating the 50th Year.

Swatantra Party@60 from 1959

Ira Pande writes in The Economic Times that:

"Swatantra Party, founded in 1959 by C Rajagopalachari and others and which died out by 1974, had swung away from the socialist, statist path Jawaharlal Nehru had decided to make post-Independent India follow. Private industry, creating wealth and a free marketbased economy — these were like red rags to a Congress bull in the 1950s-70s.

Nehru called the Swatantra Party belonging to “the Middle Ages of lords, castles and zamindars” since many of its members came from the erstwhile landed or princely families of Bihar, Rajasthan, Orissa and Gujarat. Many of its supporters later gravitated to Jan Sangh.

India long felt the need to have a balance between the so-called Left, Right and Centre. However, with Congress determined to turn more and more to the Left, Swatantra Party’s kind of ‘liberal Right’ mutated subsequently into the Hindu nationalism of BJP. Add to this the evolution of dynastic parties, today seen as private limited companies for family and sycophants."

Swatantra Party @ 60

The greatest Indian liberal C Rajagopalachari alies Rajaji founded the Swatantra Party, 60 years ago to fight with Nehru's socialist ideas and project.

The following some of the interesting reading, which is worth to read and ponder for the current political economy of India:

60 Years ago, a Right liberal Swatantra Party had challenged Nehru's socialist Raj by JAITHIRTH RAO 

FNF South Asia has brought out a new book on "How Liberal Is India? New Book Addresses State of Freedom in the Biggest Democracy on Earth"

The full book is available in PDF here.

I have read the Chapter 5 on Why India does not have a Liberal Party? by Kumar Anand.

The following are my comments to the above chapter:

Mr Kumar says in the above chapter "The market does exist for a liberal party. Farmers are waiting.It is up to the liberals to take

advantage of this. (Page 75)"

Since, the property right has been removed out of fundamental rights under Indian Constitute, nobody would like to talk about it because it is a right like any other right under the constitution. So we need to restore the property right back to Fundamental Rights. In India, among liberals, who is convinced to fight for it now? So this is also ruled out that it is not going to happen in our lifetime. Also, the general feeling is that why do we want to get back to fundamental rights? SO there is not demand for it now. First, most fails to understand the urgency of it and secondly the mobilizations to fight for it is not happening.

Moreover, the political market in India is closed within the ambit of "Socialist" values in the Indian Constitution allegedly amended by the Indira Gandhi during the Emergency period. Unless, we liberals remove the word socialist under Indian constitution, the dream for liberal party is not possible in our lifetime.

 

In 1976, "The 42nd Amendment amended Preamble and changed the description of India from "sovereign democratic republic" to a "sovereign, socialist secular democratic republic", and also changed the words "unity of the nation" to "unity and integrity of the nation"."

So, talking about socialism and welfare state is a vital tool for all political parties in India to get engaged with public for vote and other matters.

If you talk about free market in political platform, it is a sin and always favours for crony capitalists,that is how the public memory is now, for long time. And the Election Commission of India will ban the political parties which is not adhering to the socialist values.

Do read this article by eminent lawyer

The purpose of electing the people's representative

The purpose of electing the people's representative in law making bodies like Parliament defeats by people themselves.

"Do the lawmakers we have just elected truly represent us? Nominally yes, but in reality they cannot really speak for their constituents or vote their consciences. M.R. Madhavan, President of PRS Legislative Research, told me the single biggest issue is the anti-defection law: “Once you have voted for the person, the MP has zero agency in representing you.” Why is this so?

Madhavan suggests either repealing the anti-defection law, or restricting it to no-confidence motions or crucial votes where the stability of the government is at stake – and removing the Rajya Sabha from its purview. Will Modi make parliament truly democratic?" 

More here.

Prof CV Raman's Thoughts on Science Policy Development and Free Markets on Post Independent India

For the last 4 and half years, I have not written anything due to community development works by heading the NGO.

Before leaving Delhi in public policy works, I have written a article after many years of research about Prof C V.Raman's Science Policy and free Market Economic Thoughts in Independent India.

This article was published in The Swarajya Magazine on 23rd March, 2019.

Main argument of Prof CV Raman is given below for ready reference:

Raman wrote quite startlingly in an article published in Indian Express’s Special Issue for August 15, 1952 that 

“there is a school of thought in our country which regards the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as an example to be quoted and followed on all matters. There is another school which thought not of the same persuasion, is nevertheless largely inclined that way and believes in leveling down as well as leveling up as the pathway to liberty, equality and fraternity, and would label as reactionaries all those who are not prepared to line up with them. Looking round and sizing up the situation, it seems to me that the real changer before our country in the days to come is the crushing down of individual freedom and initiatives by the steam of roller of government authority. Already, we see indications of this in the popularity of legislative measures having an expropriatory character and the passage of taxation and other bills calculated to kill private enterprise in the field of industrial development. To those who have no faith in personal liberty or personal initiative…the way of maximum freedom of the individual is also the way to the maximum prosperity of people. Indeed, democracy without freedom for the individual is a sham and a delusion…nothing in our present set-up in India disturbs me more profoundly than the manner in which the plea of communal justice is allowed to suppressed individuals of particular communities”.

Books of Mind

Close to five years I did not post anything this blog due to a community experiment with corporates!!

"But even those big buildings have their limits. Books have an infinite capacity for changing the way we think and the way we live, but they are also finite objects with dimensions. You can end up with too many books and then you want to give them away. You’re done with Ayn Rand? But then so are 10,000 other people of your generation, and they have all been giving their copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to the same libraries you’re thinking of. And so most libraries can give you no guarantee that the books you give them will end up on their shelves. After all, they have to invest a certain amount of time in accessioning a book, entering it into the catalogue, classifying it and putting it on the shelves. If it is not read, it will have cost them that much money in time of human labour." More is here.

"A milk delivery boy turned language tutor who teaches students how to speak in English — and, because this is the first time that they are actually encouraged to speak in class, how to think." More here.