On the road to Liberty

The current campaign against corruption provides a golden opportunity to Dr Manmohan Singh to lead from the front. There is an urgent need for speeding up the process of economic, administrative and judicial reforms, not only to push the economy to a higher growth path, but also to help reduce the scope for corruption. Being the Prime Minister of India, he must spell out the options before the country. Then it would be for the people to decide in a democracy. Typically, corruption, or rent seeking, is a consequence of the gulf that exists between supply and demand for any goods or services due to regulatory interventions. Despite, two decades of economic reforms, the regulatory and policy environment in many areas of the economy continue to be quite restrictive, and discretionary powers prevail. It is particularly in those areas where corruption continues to prevail. The current focus on corruption should help us investigate these details and come up with systemic reforms. Any a...

Many of today’s anti-corruption protestors believe that they are participating in the second freedom struggle from misrule. Ambedkar had warned against extra-constitutional means of protests. But today, in the name of Gandhi, many believe that constitutional processes are expendable. Actually, It is good that Gandhi is back in the public memory. If this provides an opportunity to try and understand him, it will be even better. While the tumultuous protests we are witnessing today seem to cluster under the umbrella of Gandhism, how Gandhian is the Anna Hazare led movement? In this article " Gandhism redux? Wanna be Gandhis and the original Gandhi " , I attempt to understand Gandhi and his relevance today.

In the past few months, the debate over black money and corruption has been raging across the country. Some social activists and the government have been at loggerheads over the scope and structure of a new anti-corruption authority being proposed. There have been claims ranging from tens of billions of dollars to over a trillion dollar, money that may have been illegally acquired or wealth that evaded taxation. But the issue of corruption is not just about policing, but should be about about policies that help generate black money in the first place. The current focus on the Lok Pal, as a super cop, is only diverting attention from the real roots of corruption. I have co-authored this article with my friend Mohit Satyanand. One version of this article is posted in the Liberty Institute website, " Chasing Black Money: In search of red herrings " .

The growing scandal over a newly built apartment tower in Mumbai, and the collapse of an old building in Delhi on the night of November 15, killing over 60 people reflect the peril that haunts Indians everyday - lack of secure property right, and strangulating regulation. The result is the pyramid of corruption that weighs heavily on citizens, and retards India's progress. This kind of systemic corruption cannot be dealt with by symbolic resignation of a minister. A shorter version of this article has been published in the Wall Street Journal , on 17 November 2010. Just a week ago President Barack Obama received repeated applause from Indian Parliamentarians for saying that India has risen, not merely rising! In the week since, Indians have been witness to the scourge that has held India back, corruption, with a capital C. President Obama’s host in Mumbai, Mr Ashok Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, resigned due to serious allegations of malpractices surrounding an apartment ...

The excitement of the forthcoming Commonwealth Games is building up in Delhi. The spot light is not on sporting performance, but the construction delays, cost overruns, and allegations of corruption. These are symptoms which have affected many other projects. I believe, the legacy of these games could be that all such projects would be put under similar scrutiny. Below there is a table giving the official break up of expenditure on account of the games, and related development project. A version of this article was published in the Wall Street Journal Online, on 10 Aug 2010, titled " India's Political Games ". Indian politicians played games in Parliament, this week, as they debated the chaos surrounding the Commonwealth Games set to open in Delhi, on October 3. While dozens of members of Parliament from many political parties had their say, the chairman of the CWG organizing committee, Mr Suresh Kalmadi, who is also a MP from the ruling Congress party, chose not to sp...

An interesting new law aimed at simplifying land titles and land records, has been proposed by the government. The draft of the Land Titling Bill 2010 , is now on the website of the Department of Land Resources. In the following article I look at the some of the problems in laws and regulations governing land, and assess the possible impact of the new proposal. I also suggest a few key points that might make this innovative law really transformative one. A version of this article was published in the Wall Street Journal Online, under the title " India lands in a mess ", on July 13, 2010. Tthe proposed property-rights bill could have far-reaching, positive implications for the economy. Bollywood star Amitabh Bachhan cannot buy a piece of farm land outside Mumbai, the city he made his home 40 years ago, because he has first to prove that he or his family are farmers in his home state of Uttar Pradesh. A businessman ended up paying twice for a piece of land in a Himalayan mounta...