On the road to Liberty

Though Indian politicians talk a lot about reform, they are good at spending tax payers money, mostly because they are socialists. Every political party in India should swear allegiance to socialism, according to the 42nd amendment to constitution.There are around 50 parties represented in the parliament, but people of India do not have much of a choice as there is no liberal political party. The petition filed by Sanjiv Agarwal is a case in point. The petition was withdrawn on the grounds that no political part has opposed the insertion of the word 'Socialism".Political parties should take up this cause.My article titled "We're All (Still) Socialists in India" was published in The Wall Street Journal on July 26th 2010. India's politicians love to talk about "reform," but if the recent past is any indication, most of them like spending money more. There's the $22 billion annual bill for food and fertilizer subsidies; the billions spent every ye...

The Commonwealth Games is just a few months away and the transportation system in Delhi is in a big mess-whether it is the metro rail system or the public-sector bus system. Planners blame these problems on population growth and unlicensed private transportation. The blame , however, should be placed on the planners themselves. Restricting the entry of vehicles is not the solution.Entry barries should be eliminated and traffic police should be privatized. My article titled "Fixing Delhi's Demonic Traffic" was published in The Wall Street Journal on July 1st 2010. The Commonwealth Games in New Delhi are just four months away, and residents of India's capital city are bracing for more traffic nightmares as players and guests from over 40 countries pour into town. The city already contends with crumbling public transportation and mind-numbing traffic jams. National and state governments have opened their wallets to meet the exponentially growing costs, arguing the spend...

The sense of urgency Prime Minister Manmohan Singh displays in taking stock of the court verdict on the 1984 Bhopal gas leak is to appease anti-capitalists of various persuasions. Few people care about the real victims of the Bhopal tragedy. There is much outrage over the fact that Warren Anderson, the then chairman of the parent company has not been charged. My article titled Does Anyone Care About Bhopal's Real Victims? was published in The Wall Street Journal on June 14th 2010. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked senior ministers Monday to take stock of last week's court verdict on the 1984 Bhopal gas leak and report back within 10 days. This belated sense of urgency is meant to placate everyone from anti-American groups to anti-industrialists, antitrade advocates and antitechnology believers who are up in arms over the court's light sentencing of executives implicated in the accident. Lost in the public outpouring are the long-suffering victims of the tragedy—and the is...

The new bilateral free-trade agreement between South Korea and India is not all it's cracked up to be: there are plenty of exceptions and the package will take 10 years to implement. Chung-Ho Kim of South Korean, and I argue here that fully free trade is the best possible way of recovering from the global slump, in this article titled " When free trade means so little ", published in the Mint on Aug 6 2009. India and South Korea are due to sign an agreement on Friday 7 August that they say will cut barriers and boost trade between our two important economies. But behind the political rhetoric, the reality of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) is in the fine print. By signing a freetrade agreement that does not actually free trade, our governments are denying us the best tools to fight the global recession. They admit as much by saying it will pave the way for removing more barriers to commerce in the future, even though this agreement has been in th...

The tiger is facing extinction. If the present trend continues, there will be no tiger left in the wild. There is no inherent conflict between commerce and conservation. In India, wildlife is nationalised and is not within the marketplace. The restriction of supply has raised prices and increased profitability of illegal sales. The opportunity to profit will increase supply and eliminate all threats of extinction. My article titled "India's Big Cats" was published in The Asia Magazine on 24th April 2009. It is generally said that the demand for tiger parts is the cause of the tiger’s plight. Consequently, trade in tiger parts has been banned, and hunting prohibited. But prohibition only increases profitability. When trade is outlawed, only outlaws undertake trade. Not surprisingly, over a quarter century of prohibition has failed to secure the future of the tiger. Clearly, it is time to ask whether commerce and conservation are inherently incompatible, or whether c...

The population of blackbucks and Tigers in many parts of the US are much more than that of India as a whole where hunting is not permitted.A large part of the illegal trade in forest products is from South East Asia. Permitting the creation of tiger parks to breed tigers will solve the problem of extinction of species. Attempts to stop illegal trade has only driven up prices. My article titled " Getting This Tiger Problem by the Tail " was published in TCS Daily on June 9th 2005. Every time a celebrity is alleged to be involved in hunting in India, the celebrity becomes fair game. Tiger Pataudi, the legendary former captain of Indian Cricket team, is alleged to have been involved in the killing of a blackbuck in Haryana recently. While the celebrity gets all the attention, most ignore the plight of protected species at the hands of the Indian bureaucracy. If we are really concerned about the fate of wildlife, we need to ask why it is that in the US -- where hunting species s...

Barun Mitra, co-author of Climate change and sustainable development (released 29 November 2004), writes "Not surprisingly, Kyoto does not sound convincing to the world's poor. For what this present debate over climate change has done is to divert attention from the core issue of mankind ó poverty." Mitra discusses a salient economic lesson from history ó "increased consumption stimulates efforts at improving efficiency, which in turn contributes to conservation, economic and environmental... The Kyoto protocol seeks to reverse this relationship by focusing on reducing consumption through punitive taxes and so on, which will not ultimately help conservation goals." My article titled Save the planet and the third world will pay was published In Sunday Times on December 5 2004. The Kyoto protocol was finally ratified a few weeks ago. It seeks to promote energy efficiency and alternatives to fossil fuels, and insists on reductions in the emission of greenhouse gas...

The nation spends 37,000 Rs every minute for the parliament to function properly. There is an increase of 3400 percentage in the cost per MP in the last twenty years. The members of Parliament even collect allowances when they boycott the Parliament. They are entitled to several other allowances too. My article titled " The easy guide to how much money you spend on Parliament " was published in The Indian Express on October 27th 2004. At RS 437 crore in 2003-04, it costs the nation Rs 37,000 per minute to keep Parliament functioning. The 400 hours estimated to have been lost in the last two sessions of Parliament in June, July and August 2004 have meant a financial loss to the exchequer ranging from Rs 88 crore to 207 crore. The time parliamentarians spend discussing budgetary issues has declined from 23 per cent in 1970s to a mere 10 per cent today. And in 2004, the Finance Bill had to be passed without any debate at all. The cost per MP (790 MPs, combining both houses) has...

My article titled "The Green Peril" was published on 9th December 200. Deepak Lal sees the ecological movement as a new form of imperialism. While the green movement claims to have the future of the planet in mind, economist Deepak Lal warned of the new imperialist threat posed by the ecological movement, particularly for the developing countries. Prof.. Lal, who is the James Coleman Professor of International Development Studies at the University of California, at Los Angeles, USA, was delivering the inaugural Julian L. Simon Memorial Lecture organised by Liberty Institute, in New Delhi, on Saturday. The lecture attracted a wide audience, and was chaired by Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Member, Planning Commission. Dr. Ahluwalia introduced Prof. Lal as some one who never minces words. Prof. Lal lived up to that reputation. Prof. Lal noted the parallels between utopian ideas of Marxism, Christianity and the present day environmental movements. He said, "The ecological mov...

My article titled "Tragedy of the Tigers" was published on July 11, 2000 The death of a dozen tigers at the Nandankanan Zoo in Bhubaneswar, has shocked the world. There are estimated to be only 7-7,500 of them left in the wild. Another couple of thousands may be in captivity in Zoos and circuses around the world. Sadly, even Zoos, the last refuge for some of the wild and endangered species is no longer safe for the animals. Unless serious lessons are drawn and drastic reforms in organisation of zoos, as well as changes in the Wildlife Protection Act, are initiated, the days of the tigers and many other wild animals in India will be truly numbered. However, the response to this tragedy of the tigers so far has been extremely pedantic. A committee has been formed to investigate the deaths. And according to one newspaper report, the committee reached its verdict within a day of arriving at Bhubaneswar. It reportedly found that the diagnosis was correct, though perhaps initiated ...

The press release titled "Population: The Ultimate Resource" was published in May 2000. Twentieth Century has witnessed unprecedented demographic changes. For the first time in history, the world population almost quadrupled from about one and a half billion in 1900 to six billion in the span of just hundred years. Likewise, Indian population too crossed the one billion level in May 2000, from about 238 million at the beginning of the Twentieth century. This is particularly significant, since as late as the 1920s, India had experienced a slight decline in population due to poverty and deprivation. At long last it seems that man is successfully defying death and deprivation that were constant companion of his ancestors. Infant mortality rates have fallen, life expectancy at birth have doubled or tripled, and the result is that there are more of us to enjoy life on earth as never before. Yet, there is hardly any sign of celebrations. It is amazing that such an achievement is ...

My article titled "Poverty, Wealth and Waste" is Reproduced from the March 2000 issue of PERC Reports. The original pdf version of the journal is available here . PERC, a think tank based in Bozeman, Montana, USA, is dedicated to Providing Market Solutions to Environmental Problems. In 1986, a waste-to-energy plant opened in Delhi, India, financed by the Danish International Development Agency at a cost of over $10 million. The plant was expected to generate 3.8 mw of electricity from garbage, and its success was to be copied in other Indian cities. However, the plant was a failure. Two years later, the government was spending about $100,000 a year to burn garbage without producing energy. Surprisingly, the principal reason was the fact that there wasn’t enough urban waste in Delhi. It turns out that the waste—paper, rags, plastic, etc.—in Delhi produces only about half the caloric value of a Western city. This contrast tells us a lot about the treatment of waste in rich and...

My article titled "India is that sacred land of cultural union which never sent anyone back" was published in November 1999. "India is that sacred land of cultural union which never sent anyone back", the Prime Minister quoted this line from Tagore, live on national television recently, on the occasion of the release of a special CD containing recitals and songs by the poet himself. It is ironic that the same Prime Minister also wants a "national debate" on whether any foreign-born person should be allowed to hold highest political offices in the land. One does not know whether the PM has lately read that poem of Tagore from Gitanjali (1910). Because just prior to the lines which the PM quoted, the poet says "hethai arya, hetha anarya, hethai dravir o chiin, shok, hun dal, pathan o moghoul, ek dehe holo leen". That is the Indian civilisation has successfully assimilated the aryans, the non-aryans, the dravidians, the chineese, the shaks, the hun...