On the road to Liberty

There is a fine difference between a resource and waste. A waste becomes a resource when someone is willing to pay the owner to acquire it; it remains a waste if the owner has to pay someone to dispose of it. I look at the debate over ship-breaking in this article, " Breaking the set notion ", published in the Hindustan Times, on 13 January 2006. More than 150 years ago, the French economist and legislator Frederic Bastiat had written “There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.” The present debate over the decommissioned French aircraft carrier, Clemenceau, being sent to Alang in Gujarat for dismantling and recycling highlights the relevance of Bastiat’s idea of “what is seen and what is not seen”. Clemenceau is a 265-m long ship, weighing about 26,000 tons. Recycling it could open ...

The "Project Tiger" was launched thirty years back. But, there are only a few thousand tigers in the wild, and half of them are in India. The policy of prohibition of trade has hurt tiger conservation in India. The situation is similar in China. The officials of China are are considering harnessing a limited form of commerce for the cause of tiger conservation. At the same time, in India, the tiger crisis has expanded India’s bureaucracy.It is necessary to have a successful wildlife economy to build awareness of the value of environmental resources.This will result in the thriving of legal trade. My article titled China and India Move in Radically Different Directions was published in Perc in Fall 2006. NEW DELHI, INDIA—More than thirty years after the launch of "Project Tiger," the most high-profile conservation program in the world, barely 5,000 to 6,000 tigers are left in the wild, over half of them estimated to be in India. Since the 1970s, India has enacted to...

WTO ministerial meeting was being held in Hong Kong, this month, and as in the past, this time too, anti-trade and anti-globlisation groups were protesting outside on the streets. In this article, "What can India learn from Hong Kong" , published in the Far Eastern Economic Review, in December 2005, I look at the experience of Hong Kong, a city that has thrived on an unilateral free trade policy, and was not even negotiating at WTO! There is more than a little irony that the World Trade Organization ministerial is being held in Hong Kong this month. Hong Kong is the epitome of the success of unilateral free trade policies: A few pieces of rock, devoid of any natural resources, the territory today ranks among the most prosperous places on earth. Hong Kong’s success is rooted in the institutions of rule of law and economic freedom. The territory did not negotiate any free trade deal. It just declared it unilaterally, and the rest is history. Yet the contrast between the succe...

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...

The Kyoto protocol results from the flawed reasoning that there is a conflict between commerce and conservation. The Kyoto protocol would only throw the world's poor to a life of even more poverty. The usual victims of natural disasters are the poor as of their vulnerability. Contrary to the popular belief, they consume too little energy. My article titled " India and Kyoto " was published in TCS Daily on April 13th, 2005. Among environmentalism's most fundamental flaws are the beliefs that commerce is the enemy of conservation and that energy conservation will automatically lead to a cleaner environment. The Kyoto Protocol is the epitome of this flawed thinking. It seeks to promote energy efficiency and alternatives to fossil fuels by insisting on reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases in the industrialized world. The hope is that this will help stabilize climate. Even Kyoto proponents, though, admit that meeting the protocol's emissions' targets will...

India's compliance with TRIPS will not hinder the poor's access to essential medicines; rather, it is the government's hold on the healthcare sector that makes equitable healthcare impossible. My article titled Misdiagnosing the diseases of the poor was published in The Indian Express on January 28 2005. The present debate over the Indian patent law, despite the passion, is underscored by the desire to score political points. Consequently, most of the arguments have been disconnected from reality. India has been a proving ground for those who oppose patents on pharmaceutical products. We scrapped all product patents in 1972. As a result, India is now home to over 20,000 pharmaceutical companies producing copies of drugs developed óand patentedó elsewhere. However, access to medicines remains pooró suggesting that patents are not the key determinant of access that their opponents claim. In India, medicine represents between 10 and 15% of total health care costs. This will...

The world responded actively to the tragedy in South and South East Asia. Aid, financial and otherwise poured in from all parts of the world. Unfortunately, thousands of people perished as the response to the tragedy was not fast enough, and the blame should be placed squarely on the politics. My article titled " The Politics Of Relief " was published in TCS Daily on January 6th 2005. The tragedy in South and South East Asia has shaken the world. Barely ten days after the tsunami swept thousands of kilometers of coastlines, killing an estimate 150,000 people and displacing millions, world leaders gathered for a mini summit in Indonesia to take stock and promise more money and technology. The UN is to lead the effort. The international community is estimated to have pledged over USD 2 billion in relief and rehab. The overwhelming grief of the victims is being matched by an enormous outpouring of sympathy and support. Money and material are pouring in from all across. But the r...