On the road to Liberty

In this article, I look at the political dimension of various environmental concerns. This is particularly relevant since the annual meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), opened in Cancun, Mexico, this week. Last week, the first global summit on tiger conservation was held in St. Petersburg, Russia. What is common to such diverse environmental agendas is that they offer enormous opportunity to political leaders to escape accountability. After all, if one claims to speak on behalf of the tigers, the animals won't make any demand. Likewise, if one claims to speak of protecting the interest of future generations 50 or 100 years later, the leaders can be sure that the future generations will not be able to hold them politically accountable for any misdeed. Such agendas tend to be political blank cheques! Please read and comment. Can the climate save the tiger! This week, the annual summit organized under the auspices of the United Nations Fr...

Brazil, China and India have all provided glimpses of their potential. Brazil has been talked of as a potential economic super power for over a generation now. China has greatly enhanced its prospect over the past two decades. India’s economic promise is beginning to attract attention in the past decade. While the prospect of economic growth and prosperity look promising, the potential is clouded by fundamental weaknesses regarding the property rights regime that could mar their prospect of fulfilling their own promise. This is an article I wrote after a trip to Brazil to attend a conference, in May 2007. Going beyond land: The Case for Securing Property Rights in Brazil, China and India Land is an emotive issue in most societies. But land is also the most basic of economic assets. Therefore, the way land rights, or property rights, are protected provide a good indication of the economic health of the country. On a recent trip to Brazil, I was surprised to see the intensity of fe...

June 5, is World Environment Day. This is a good occasion to look at some of the impacts of environmentalism on the people. This article looks at the widening divide between the environmental crusaders and ordinary citizens. A shorter version of this article titled "Let them eat cake or air!-Green Crusade Against the People" appeared in The Economic Times newspaper on June 5, 2000. This famous statement supposedly made by Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France over two centuries ago, has come to symbolise the divide between the elite and the influential on the one hand and the common man on the other. The current battle in Delhi to clean the city's air has once again brought to light this age-old divide. Let's look at some facts. Over a quarter of this capital city's population about 12 million live in slums. Between a third to almost forty percent of the population do not have access to clean drinking water and sanitation facility. Yet for over two years, the iss...

My press release titled "War Against Tobacco threatens Liberty and Economic Development, warn International Experts" was published on 6th May 2000. In a new book, War on Tobacco: At What Cost? international experts point out that the cost of the new war against tobacco is unacceptably high, both economically, and politically. Deepak Lal, Coleman Professor of International Development at University of California, Los Angeles, and one of the two contributors to this volume, reviews the recent World Bank report on tobacco and finds that contrary to the Bank’s claim, there are significant positive effects of growing and using tobacco. Mr. Gurcharan Das released the book at a function on 6 May, 2000, in New Delhi. Prof. Lal summarised his paper. Dr. Shreekant Gupta of Delhi School of Economics, commented on the paper, and the meeting was chaired by Dr. Bibek Debroy of Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies. There was a livey question and answer session at the end. The prog...

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 ...

Celebrating 6 Billion: More the merrier When political freedom is secured and the market is unrestrained, more people increases demand, and therefore also the supply, and at the end there is more available for consumption than ever before. People are the ultimate resource, they just don't come with a mouth alone, but also a mind and a pair of hands. It is time to party and cut the cake on the arrival of the 6 billionth person on this planet, writes Barun Mitra. A shorter version of this article title "6 Billion and Growing" in The Economics Times, on 12 October 1999. • Problems of Plenty! • More people, Higher consumption, Falling prices! • Free but expensive to priced but cheap • Rising value of labour • Policies, not population, responsible for poverty • Breeding inequality • More the merrier! • History of World Population Birth of baby is usually a source of great joy. Therefore, on October 12, the date symbolically designated to mark the arriv...

My article titled "Going Beyond Good Intentions: A look at Amartya Sen" was published in April 1999. In the battle over economics, the victory of the market forces seemed decisive. It had not been easy. Since the days of Adam Smith, the world economy had to cross the turbulent waters of colonialism, mercantilism, socialism, fascism, and communism before liberalisation, globalisation, privatisation, became accepted part of our general vocabulary. But even before the process of consolidation is over, it now seems that free market ideas are faced with insidious threats as never before. Indeed, the popular appeal of socialist ideas was not primarily based on economic principles but on its ethical and political ones - an egalitarian worldview. (Discussions rarely focussed on the morality of the methods that would be necessary to create such a world order.) On the other hand, the advocates of free market rarely went beyond economics and utility, and generally ignored the moral basi...