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| As a member of FTI I'm posting this press release for wider dissemination: On the important occasion of the Republic Day, the Freedom Team of India has released its new website (http://freedomteam.in) and an eight page brochure. The Team, established in 2008, aims to provide a forum for policy, strategy, and leadership development. It aims to find at least 1500 outstanding leaders in India to contest elections in the coming years under the banner of freedom and world-best policy. The forty leaders and observers currently on the Team used this occasion to call upon all potential leaders across India to come together to achieve real freedom for India. Doing so will involve launching a systematic assault on bad governance through the democratic channel of elections. As a Team member said, “It is perhaps high time that our educated classes finally woke up from their deep slumber of sixty years. If America can re-invent itself even after 230 years, then surely India, a much younger country – but with the wisdom of eight thousand years of civilisation – can do much better. We have the capacity and power to change India so no that one has to ever sleep hungry, or feel discriminated or disenfranchised. We want an India where, in the words of Tagore, ‘the mind is without fear and the head is held high’”. The Team’s approach differs from that of others in three distinct ways. One, the Team is focused purely on equal freedom as a philosophical stance. Thus, no half-way compromises with freedom are acceptable, such as reservations and caste-based preferences of any sort, or subsidies for religious occasions or religious organisations. This clarity of philosophy does not allow any bad policies. For instance, the Team does not accept socialism, casteism, or mixing religion with politics, unlike most existing political formations in India. Second, everyone on this Team is an equal. We do not have official roles like President or Secretary. Members work as a team (each with independent opinions, which are welcome) and take the lead on projects where they can contribute most. Finally, FTI members will (mostly) not contest elections until they are fully prepared and organised for it, with sufficient time devoted to the communication of the Team’s message to the people. The Team will, in this way, guarantee high quality candidates under the banner of freedom at the hustings in the coming years. If you can’t join us at the moment, then please support us by passing this media release around. | ||
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| By Sanjeev Sabhlok, published in Freedom First, Mumbai, January 2009. For a wealth-destroying event of the magnitude of the global financial crisis (GFC) to have taken place despite celebrated economists running Western economies tells us that ‘standard’ economics has failed at a most fundamental level, like theories which said the earth is flat. Instead, the ideas of thinkers like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek (the economics Nobel prize winner of 1974) of the Austrian school of economics, who repeatedly warned about the dangers of state-induced distortions in money markets, have been fully vindicated. Unfortunately, the economics taught today continues to ignore these great economists’ insights. Current economics is more inclined to side with Marx who dreamt of state-controlled credit in the hands of a national bank. It is time the world asks these ‘standard’ economists the blunt question: why must free societies have Marxian central banking? Unfree financial markets People exchange goods and services in the free market at a mutually agreed price. The unit and medium of exchange, money, is also created by these markets. For instance, notes issued by private banks in medieval Europe, being commitments to pay specified amounts of gold to the bearer of these notes, were readily accepted as money. This system of money creation and banking, based on the ‘gold standard’, arose spontaneously from freedom. However, in 1694, the British government, in financial distress, found a convenient way to produce money from thin air by giving sole rights to produce money to the newly established (private) Bank of England, and receiving an advance of £1.2 million in return. This anti-competitive distortion of previously free money markets became very popular among later governments. Some enlightened governments did allow free banking for a while: for instance, in Sweden between 1830 and 1902. Indeed, this (Swedish) free banking episode eliminated booms and busts and dramatically reduced bank failures. But Sweden soon abandoned free banking because it demands great discipline from governments which would rather follow Robert Mugabe’s inflationary footsteps, instead. The free market also ordinarily determines the price of money, which is the interest rate that this money commands in a competitive marketplace. This market-based interest rate perfectly matches the society’s time preference of consumption. But central banks are established exclusively to interfere with this free determination of interest rates by distorting money supply and fixing the price of money. Naturally consumers and entrepreneurs are confused in these economies. We can see why Americans save so little and borrow so much. By deliberately preventing the time preference of society from being disclosed through the market, and by (often) forcing interest rates to fall below their market rate, people are motivated to consume more and save less. Sensible persons won’t save when their savings don’t earn much interest or even earn a negative interest after inflation and taxes. They would rather borrow at low interest rates and consume in excess. Americans are quite rational; it is their politicians and central bankers whose heads need a check up. Betrayal of freedom Like other socialist planners, central banks are prone to imagine that the solutions to the world’s problems lie inside their presumably super-intelligent but in reality deeply flawed and ill-informed brains (we are all similarly endowed: that is the basic truth about human frailty). Fatal conceit afflicts them as they try to ‘fine tune’ the economy by randomly tinkering with money supply and its price. Alan Greenspan (whom the great philosopher of freedom, Ayn Rand, erroneously considered as her disciple) wrote in the 1960s that the US Federal Reserve (Fed) had ‘nearly destroyed the economies of the world’ in the 1920s, and that ‘a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy’s stability and balanced growth’. This was, no doubt, good thinking. But strange things happened between 1987 and 2006. As Chairman of the Fed, Greenspan changed colours. Not only did he not liberate the money markets, he kept interest rates artificially low, particularly between January 2001 and June 2004. Had he recalled the Austrian trade cycle theory (which Ayn Rand endorsed) he would have realized the great dangers of administering the price of money. His artificially low interest rates persuaded entrepreneurs worldwide to build things like houses and car factories in great excess, leading to the same over-investment that led to the roaring 20’s and thence to the Great Depression. Greenspan thus did exactly what he had earlier decried. Freedom was betrayed by the man once considered its great votary. It is now time to stop this stupidity of having a controlled product (money) in otherwise frees societies. Central banking, the illegitimate child of mercantilist monarchs and communist utopians, must be abolished. We must get free banking, instead: based on the gold standard. US government’s socialist interventions These massive failures of the Fed were greatly exacerbated by American welfare socialism. Nationalised Fannie Mae was created in 1938 to funnel federal funds into home loans, artificially boosting the demand for housing. It was (notionally) privatised in 1968 but remained guaranteed by the US government. Freddie Mac was later created in 1970 to allegedly provide Fannie Mae with competition. American welfare socialism worsened with Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act which required all banks to give loans to people without income or on low income, over-riding good lending practices. Fannie May and Freddie Mac (FMFM) were thereafter ‘leaned upon’ by successive US governments to buy the sub-prime mortgages issued by banks. Then started what can only be (in polite terms) termed as government-supported fraud. FMFM started guaranteeing sub-prime loans issued by Bear Stearns and also directly sold such debt to foreigners. Catching and punishing those who make false or misleading claims about a product is a primary function of the government, but the US Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (charged with supervising FMFM) did nothing to block these falsehoods. Activities of a similar nature were also unfolding in the private marketplace in relation to financially engineered products. For instance, Credit Suisse Group Sellers misled markets about the risks of its securities by touting the AAA ratings it got (bought?) from Standard & Poor’s. Self-regulation dramatically failed in the financial sector. In addition, urban planning laws in many parts of the USA prevented urban boundaries from expanding even though thousands of new housing loans had been issued. This caused house prices to skyrocket. All these bad policies, together with low interest rates, fuelled a major housing bubble which has now burst. The main lesson we can draw from the GFC is that economic booms and busts are always created by government interference, mismanagement, and incompetence; not when markets are free and held to account. I fear that worse things may be in store for the USA, including the possible collapse of the US dollar by about 2018 given its massive unfunded social security and medicare obligations (the only way to save USA would be for other countries to follow even worse policies!). After destroying and socialising its financial system, the USA government has now started throwing its taxpayers’ money at failing companies. In a free society each business or company must take responsibility for its own decisions; if it becomes insolvent it must declare bankruptcy as part of its accountability. If any value is still left over, private investors will buy it out. Using taxpayer funds to bail out companies that no one wants to touch, amounts to theft of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. Also, by rewarding incompetents, it creates disincentives for prudential management. Lessons for India Despite being founded under the banner of liberty, America has never been completely free. But its badly regulated money and financial markets, coupled with its socialist response to the GFC, shows that it is no longer fit to talk about freedom. This makes it even more important for India to show the way. India’s Reserve Bank should get out of the business of creating money and fixing the price of money. It should become an independent regulator of a private money and banking system. Its current functions should be unbundled: coins and notes should be issued only by private banks; the lender of last resort function should be performed by private insurance companies. Reforms on these lines will disclose the market’s true interest rate, and price risks transparently, thus enabling uninterrupted economic growth. Good fiscal policy would have to accompany such reforms, including policies to minimise inflation, but I’ll touch upon these related policies in a separate article. The Freedom Team of India India needs leaders urgently to take it to freedom. I’d like to request you to consider joining the Freedom Team (freedomteam.in) to lead India. The task is clearly becoming more urgent than ever before. | ||
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| The following article was published in Freedom First, November 2008. http://freedomteam.in/mag/ By Sanjeev Sabhlok The Freedom Team of India is trying to bring together 1500 like-minded liberals willing to contest elections as a coherent group from 2014 onwards. The Team aims to ultimately offer the Indian people a choice both of good candidates and good policy. As the Team continues to grow, albeit slowly, I want to start discussing issues which could inform the policies offered by the Team. I begin by looking at urban policy. Productivity gains from urbanisation In 1776 Adam Smith wrote about division of labour as the major driver of productivity in free societies. While the assembly lines seen in factories are a good example of this division of labour, specialisation is now an even more widespread part of modern life. Another driver of productivity, highlighted by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, is social capital arising from the vibrant associations and networks of like-minded people. Both these drivers of productivity require people to live close together, and thus form the motivation for urbanisation. The average Indian, however, has not yet benefited from these productivity-enhancing features, with only 28 per cent of Indians living in urban areas today, compared with 44 per cent of the Chinese, 78 per cent of the Americans, and 86 per cent of the Australians. Before we examine how urban areas can be managed to cope with increased urbanisation, we should ask whether it is feasible for a country like India to live predominantly in cities? How is it possible, we wonder, to feed a huge urban population? The answer is that a relatively small population should be able to produce all the food we need after we reform our agricultural policies. Such reforms should lead to increased mechanisation and productivity. Since agricultural reforms will require a separate discussion, let us, for the moment, assume that it is possible to increase agricultural productivity to feed up to 600 million additional urban dwellers. In addition, let us assume the existence of good education and health policies with the result that rural migrants to urban areas stand a real chance of being productive. We also assume incremental and organic growth of urbanisation, not a forced approach. Local governance at the heart of urban reform We all know that today, even with our extremely low levels of urbanisation, our urban areas are in a bad shape. My sister owns an IT company in Delhi and travels all over the city daily. She was complaining the other day to me that it now takes her two hours to cover the distance which took her an hour ten years ago. Such congestion not only hurts businesses but also reduces social capital as it becomes increasingly difficult for people to associate with each other. So how can we start improving our urban areas? We need to increase urban infrastructure and improve the urban environment while avoiding the congestion which can quickly reduce the gains from urbanisation. Three principles can inform the governance arrangements for urban reform: good incentives, accountability, and subsidiarity. The principle of subsidiariaty says that ‘a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level’. This tells us that state governments must stay out of urban management, which is a local matter. This should be in the hands of local councils that service, say, about two lakh people each. For instance, New York has 51 councils and Melbourne has 28. So Delhi should have 60 councils. Instead, we have mega-municipalities which have little or no local representation and are far removed from ground realities. For the states to create the third tier of government at the urban or rural level it was not really necessary to amend the Constitution. But with the 74th amendment there can now be no excuse for the states to avoid creating such a third tier. Unfortunately, the states still refuse to do so. Instead, tenured generalist bureaucrats without the foggiest idea of good policy and without any accountability to anyone, are charged today with ‘managing’ our cities using their exaggerated notions of personal wisdom and perspicacity, with no participation from the citizens. This needs to change. The state governments must create a framework of laws for the local councils to implement. This framework should link urban and rural councils and reduce the dichotomy between these two. The framework must delegate key functions like land planning and zoning, land acquisition, local (third tier) roads and parks, libraries, community halls, and waste disposal to the councils. Food and other inspections should also be dealt with by councils. The state can retain the role of coordinating the records of land use and ownership. To fund these services, the councils should be empowered to raise land taxes and rates, and to recover unpaid dues from recalcitrant residents. Councils which want to attract wealthier residents will then provide better infrastructure by charging higher rates. Since all the infrastructure needs of urban areas cannot be funded through rates and taxes, the councils should be empowered to issue long-term bonds to fund these needs. Citizens will then be free to pick the council that best suits their budget and preferences. The competition between councils will generally keep the rates low and the services high. It is important for the councils to have sufficient representation. The ratio of representatives to citizens must be in line with international best practice. For instance, Delhi should have 300-600 elected councillors including 60-odd mayors. Of course, these political representatives would need to be held to account through elections held every three years. In addition, the state government would need to retain a judiciously exercised power to dismiss corrupt councils and order new elections. To ensure a clear line of sight of accountability, elected councillors would have to be fully empowered to hire the chief executives of their councils on a performance-based contract at market rates, and to fire them for non-performance. This contract should be based on an understanding of the principal-agent problem and the use of the right incentives. These chief executives, in turn, would need to be empowered to hire (and fire) the best professional land planners, environmental scientists and landscaping specialists. This approach, followed in many developed countries, achieves the best results for the community. Coordination issues, and migration How will the councils in large cities coordinate their diverse plans? The association of councils will be able to coordinate most issues, including long term plans for the relevant city. The state government can help if asked to. These professionally managed councils will also be able to manage the migrations from rural areas effectively. Since new migrants generate wealth, the councils will likely complete for new migrants by providing relevant infrastructure to make best use of the new migrants’ talents. In brief, this model of responsive and accountable decentralised government, based on the principles of freedom, will lead India to dramatically better cities and ensure that it can meet the forthcoming challenge of mega-urbanisation and wealth creation. * * * As usual, before closing this write-up, I would like to urge you to consider leading India. Consider joining the Freedom Team (freedomteam.in). Write to me. Contact Sanjeev at sabhlok AT yahoo DOT com | ||
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| The following article was published in Freedom First, October 2008. http://freedomteam.in/mag/ Sanjeev Sabhlok This month I want to focus on a topic on which great confusion prevails in India: the issue of capitalism. I wrote to an eminent Indian economist seeking comment on my draft manuscript of The Discovery of Freedom (sanjeev.sabhlokcity.com/discovery.html). Without yet reading the manuscript, he wrote to me that “completely unbridled capitalism has rarely been followed. I am not sure whether it should be followed. It needs an overarching architecture based on local culture, traditions, history and legal system, among other things.” I though this response was unwarranted. My manuscript already discusses the institutions of freedom at great length. So that couldn’t possibly be an issue. We both agree that good institutions like tolerance, democracy and justice are crucial. Thomas Hobbes showed why we need a strong state to defend our life and liberty; capitalism is therefore founded on the rule of law and the enforcement of justice. But I find unwarranted and gratuitous the suggestion about not following “completely unbridled capitalism”. Since this perspective reflects widely held misconceptions, I thought it might be worthwhile to examine it more closely. Whatever else is true about capitalism, this much is clear that never did John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, Ayn Rand, F.A. Hayek, or Milton Friedman advocate unbridled capitalism or freedom. It seems that socialists like Marx and Nehru have badly sullied the reputation of liberty. The socialists have repeatedly alleged that capitalism caters to so-called ‘capitalists’ and gives them unbridled powers to exploit the weak. But that is totally false. Philosophers of liberty have always insisted that freedom comes with responsibility and justice. Adam Smith opposed mercantilism and monopolistic industrial interests. David Ricardo wanted more competition and free trade. Adam Smith and J.S. Mill advocated labour unions to face the economic power of the owners of industry. By repeating lies against liberty long enough, socialists have made it appear that the system of natural liberty encourages corruption and things like the sub-prime crisis. But what are the actual facts? Capitalism begins by looking at human nature. The fathers of capitalism, Hobbes and Locke, pointed out that since human nature is far from perfect, some people will always try to cheat, mislead, and misuse their powers. So if anyone cheats, then systems of justice should catch and punish the cheats. Thus everyone must be held equally to account and no one is to be above the law. In this manner, by ensuring all crimes are punished, capitalist societies are today among the most ethical on this planet. Capitalism is also a system of continuous improvement. Lessons from events like the sub-prime crisis are quickly learned and such events prevented from happening again. Some events are complex and finding their causes can take time; but overall, capitalism is a political and economic system founded on democratic choice, law and order, and continuous improvement. And since the governance of capitalist societies is built on the system of checks and balances advocated by Montesquieu and Thomas Jefferson, the concept of capitalism being unbridled simply does not arise! We know from history that the rulers of the West did not like capitalism one bit since it insisted on equal freedom for all. Many people like Locke, Voltaire, Burke and Mill had to fight the vested feudal interests to win freedom for ordinary peoples everywhere. And so our quarrel cannot possibly be with capitalism. Our quarrel must be with socialism. In socialist societies, based as the spurious concept of economic equality, state-sanctioned corruption is the norm. After having worked in the Indian and Australian bureaucracies for a total of 26 years I can say with confidence that there is almost no corruption in the West today. On the other hand, corruption is endemic in socialist India, where not one politician is completely honest and few bureaucrats completely so. For very fundamental reasons, no society can run ethically on the ideas of socialism. But did this eminent economist express concerns about ‘unbridled’ socialism? No! For capitalism has become the customary whipping boy. Protect the criminal and point fingers at the saint: that seems to be the norm. Consider and compare, for a moment, how life is defended in India and in the West. Employers in India are, for all practical purposes, unaccountable for the safety of their workers. Hundreds, if not thousands of lives are lost in India every year in preventable workplaces ‘accidents’, even as capitalist societies like Australia have astonishing low rates of worker injury. While working for the safety regulator in the state of Victoria I found that not only are safety laws in the West strongly focused on employer accountability, but negligence is punished severely. If I was a mine worker I would be scared to work in socialist India but would happily work in capitalist Australia where my life is well protected. So who is really unbridled? Who is really immoral? Is it socialist India – where the governments are totally corrupt, where industrialists are gifted monopoly powers by the corrupt state, and where lives of workers are treated with disdain – or is it the capitalist West where governments wage a systematic battle against all forms of corruption and irresponsible behaviour? Clearly, it is not capitalism but socialism we must be afraid of. It is time that India looks at the facts. We must not be afraid to use the system of natural liberty which was invented by the Englishman John Locke just because it was invented in England. After all, the West happily takes advantage of Indian thinking by using the number system we invented. So let us listen to what Locke said. Freedom Team of India Without security of life there can be no freedom. One of the strongest indicators of a free society is therefore the absence of organised killings of citizens. The endless spate of killings in India is telling us that we are not yet free. When Muslim and Maoist terrorists momentarily pause their mayhem, fascist Hindus appear on the scene to kill Christians; and so on… until it has become hard to distinguish what is happening and who is killing whom. Life and liberty are on the back foot, fighting for survival. Our education system has clearly failed to imbibe the basic virtues of good citizenship. In a democracy those who have grievances should participate in the political process and change things they don’t like. If that doesn’t work, they can lodge their protest through non-violent civil disobedience. But there is a total absence of good leaders in India today to guide the people. In this situation, if liberals don’t unite to lead India then they or their children could well get caught in the crossfire of misgovernance. Why is it that in 1959 an old man aged eighty could start a major political party (Swatantra Party) and give battle for our liberty, but people today have given up without trying? I would like to thank those who have written to me in support of the Freedom Team (http://freedomteam.in). For those who have not yet got involved, I suggest that you to do so. Working together, we can defend life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone in India. Contact Sanjeev at sabhlok AT yahoo DOT com | ||
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| The following article was published in Freedom First, September 2008 http://freedomteam.in/mag/ By Sanjeev Sabhlok Last month I introduced myself to you and spoke about the need to organize politically. Not having a national liberal party in India is a major gap that must be filled, whether the party wins elections regularly or not. Each generation has to fight for its freedoms. Gains made by previous generations can be quickly frittered away. For example, as a result of Nehruvian socialism we now have even less freedom than our 1950 Constitution said we would. In addition, our governance is in shambles; but without good governance how can anyone be free? If a business were to perform this badly, it would have been bought out by a competitor long ago, but countries depend on citizen ‘shareholders’ to keep their governments on leash. If anyone was waiting patiently, so far, for Korea or Japan to bail out India, let me say – that won’t happen and is not desirable! The buck stops with squarely with us. We can hark back to ancient Greece for lessons on how to become citizens. These people were natural-born leaders. Actively participating in civic affairs, they ensured that their leaders were accountable to them. Even with their small overall population, these citizen-leaders led to an outpouring of art, philosophy and science that was never to be seen again till the Renaissance. Being a citizen is therefore a very important role in a democracy. I introduced you last month to the Freedom Team of India (FTI: see www.freedom.sabhlokcity.com), a platform started earlier this year. FTI aims to bring together at least 1500 outstanding citizen-leaders who will, upon agreeing on a common strategy, contest elections by 2014. Only those willing to contest elections are being invited to the Team. For others, I have other activities to suggest – which I’ll momentarily talk about. FTI’s goal is to form governments both at the centre and in the states, thus bringing good governance and freedom to India. But this will remain wishful thinking unless you, India’s citizen-leaders, take your country’s destiny into you own hands. Why not have a Food Team? Why care for liberty at all? Why do we need a Freedom Team and not a Food Team or even an Equality Team: alternative titles which may appeal more to the ‘common’ man? While Freedom First is not the place to preach freedom to the converted, it may still be worthwhile to remind ourselves why liberty is the supreme good. We care for freedom for many reasons, but particularly because it works. Poverty bothers us a lot. We know it is not good for anyone. Lack of education among poor children hurts our soul even more. We know that by failing to educate our children well we are effectively destroying their future. The good news, of course, is that freedom has done more for the poorest of the poor over the past 250 years than any other system of political organization. Erstwhile poor nations like England, USA, France, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, just to name a few, have become economic giants though free trade, free markets and good governance. But freedom is also good because it encourages us to take responsibility for our lives. In doing so it leads unerringly to an ethical society. Capitalist countries are the most honest on the Transparency International surveys. On the other hand, socialist India and pseudo-communist China are hopelessly corrupt. Freedom also increases education and hence innovation in society. It reduces the demand for large families as parents spend time and money in educating their fewer children. And last, but not the least, freedom improves the environment. Ideologies like socialism which put Equality on a pedestal are unnatural. Nature has designed us for great passions and deeds of competition and cooperation. No burden of attaining equality was put upon us. Our soul is built for success. If a 12-year old child were to tell me that his goal is to become only as rich as the average Indian when he grows up, I’d wonder if that child’s head was in the right place! We want to see great ambition in our children. We want them to aim for gold medal in every race. Even the thought of equality saps our energy. Capitalism thus challenges us to be the best we can be. Nothing less is expected of anyone. Freedom sends a shiver of life and excitement coursing through our veins. Only if each of us aims for individual greatness will our nation collectively become great. For all these reasons and more we must have the Freedom Team of India, not a whimpering, groveling, Food or Equality Team. Freedom is the best. It is the most basic need of our soul. And so let’s have it – right now! It is our birthright! Lessons from July Two incidents from July stand out for comment: the bomb attacks in Ahmedabad and the no-confidence motion in the Parliament. The ‘rupees in Parliament’ incident brought great shame to India, confirming India’s reputation as a world leader in corruption. And we can also be sure that nothing pleased Pakistan and China more than to see India divided so badly even on a matter as important as obtaining nuclear technology. The Ahmedabad bombings confirmed that the radicalization of youth by misguided religious fanatics of all denominations has now reached a tipping point. A group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility, citing support from the Koran. Enlightened Muslims always emphasise that the Koran forbids the killing of innocents. Assuming that this is true, surely the great Muslim community of India can do more. Are all young Muslim children being taught the right things? And how about excommunicating terrorists and handing them over to the police? At the same time, the police and justice systems in India are creaking with the weight of politicization, incompetence, and corruption. These problems are, however, readily fixable by adopting world-best models. Reforms are of the essence now. They will bring equal justice to everyone in India irrespective of religion. For the medium and long run there is only one solution, though: to have strong, secular leaders, determined to punish those who kill or injure any Indian. That means level-headed liberals must rise and lead. Socialist and communal forces have not only destroyed our freedoms, they have brought India to the brink. Freedom Families in each home If you cannot contest elections, you can still do many other useful things. This effort can’t go far without editors, organizers, planners, and finance and IT experts. Even the smallest contributions of time and expertise will add up into a formidable movement for freedom. Everyone must get involved. You should start a Freedom Family by inviting a few young people for a cup of tea. Talk to them about the value of freedom and good governance. Aim to multiply these Freedom Families so each house is a node for one such family. Ask these Freedom Families to network with the larger movement for freedom through FTI and its leaders. I look forward to hearing what you propose to do for your own country. Contact Sanjeev at sabhlok AT yahoo DOT com | ||
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| Time to bring in a totally different level of governance in India - a review of Breaking Free of Nehru: Let’s Unleash India! I recently received an advance copy of Sanjeev Sabhlok’s book, published by Anthem Press in December 2008, soon to be available in bookstores in India. Sabhlok worked for eighteen years in the Indian Administrative Service before resigning and migrating to Australia where he works in the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance as a Senior Manager. Heavily praised by Gurcharan Das, the author of India Unbound and former CEO of Proctor and Gamble India, who believes that this book ‘must be read by every Indian’, this indeed is a very important book that can potentially change India’s future. Half the book is freely available for preview on the internet. This should perhaps not be taken as a book in the traditional sense (even though it displays considerable scholarship, reflecting the doctorate that Sabhlok holds in economics from USA) but a political pamphlet. Sabhlok critiques the corrupt governance system of India with startling vigour and points out how the socialist policies of India (India continues to be a socialist republic even today) and hypocritical political system which favours the corrupt have, together, led to serious underperformance as a nation. The book discusses a vast range of issues. Issues not be covered in the book in detail due to constraints of space are covered in Online Notes which are freely available on the internet. Sabhlok believes that policies must be informed by the principles of freedom and justice (the system that operationalises these being capitalism). A key feature of capitalism is its emphasis on morality. The immorality of socialism both as a theory and practice is intense and overpoweringly depressing. According to Sabhlok, Nehru was the ‘Messiah’ of socialism in India. India’s love affair with socialism is not yet over. Sabhlok asks us to break free of Nehru because his policies have proved too expensive for India both in lost opportunities and lost lives. Perhaps thinking some readers are may be put off by the title of the book, Sabhlok addresses potential concerns in the preface and first chapter. Sabhlok then outlines the history of liberal and socialist thought in India. He evaluates a number of things we take for granted about India’s governance, pointing out pitfalls of the socialist arguments that Nehru stood for, even as he finds much to support in Gandhi’s views. Sabhlok depicts a free society as a society with a few key properties that include migration inwards from less free societies, less terrorism, and greater wealth and innovation. I liked Sabhlok’s simple discussion of the market system which often eludes even those of us well grounded in the theory of markets. The invisible hand is one of the hardest things to explain, and Sabhlok does an excellent job of it. His approach reflects the Austrian school of thought, most recently represented by Hayek. He finds collectivist identities unsustainable for the most part, and incompatible with modern thought and civilisation. Therefore a strong flavour of individualism and individual responsibility permeates his book. He then discusses the ills of the Indian Constitution and discusses land ceilings, reservations, and the uniform civil code. Sabhlok takes an analytical approach to issues with all his conclusions derived from the principles of freedom and justice. He asks us to take a fresh look at the Indian Constitution and to make the Constitution a robust protector of our freedoms. Chapter 4 looks at the cause of political corruption in India, and proposes a range of well argued reasons why politicians in India are necessarily corrupt. Coming from a strong ethical perspective, Sabhlok is unable to support even people like Manmohan Singh, who are commonly perceived to be people of integrity. The reason he offers is thought provoking – making us reflect on the extremely low level of political integrity found in India, and makes for compelling reading. The next chapter deals with the reform of the bureaucracy. This is a particularly enlightening chapter for those not familiar with the differences between the Indian bureaucracy and those in developed countries like Australia. Given that Sabhlok is perhaps the only Indian civil servant to have extensive public sector experience in two countries, his views are worth paying attention to. At least to me it is now clear what kind of reforms are needed in India. The last chapter of the book is a bold, almost clinical, perspective on the nature of changes Sabhlok would like India to put in place. His narrative is based on a thought experiment: of how, as a hypothetical Prime Minster of India, he would establish – along with his imagined Cabinet – new norms and practices of governance. It is here that his extensive experience comes to the forefront. We learn the exact method by which the incentives that operate in India’s governance system can be changed, and how, like a jigsaw puzzle, the necessary change can be put together systematically. In summary, this is a book full of new and innovative solutions grounded in classical liberal principles. This book is an eye-opener, and should open up urgently needed debates for a change in India. An excellent book. By Dinesh Malhotra | ||
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