Yogendra Yadav has diagnosed my critique of the seven-point (or rather, point 7.1) Mission Jai Hind as a psychological condition: rooted in being a victim of Communism and Cold War anxieties.
I’d defer humbly to the view of any experienced shrink. Especially, if there is one who has been keeping track of my symptoms and conditions over the decades, evident in my published work. Yogendra hits the bull’s eye about my deep grudge with Communism.
There is no fear worse than ignorance. That’s where my fear of Communism is rooted. In decades as a political journalist, Communism is what I have learnt the least about. I spent my school and college years wrestling with botany-zoology-chemistry (having gratefully left physics and math behind in Class XI). In the small towns of Yogendra and my home state, then under Chaudhary Bansi Lal’s rule, campus politics was unthinkable.
So, the fact is, I was spared the usual campus tryst with Left thought. I am not even sure the Left has ever won a seat in a house of any consequence in India’s most non-revolutionary state — Haryana. No grudges here.
Also read: Shekhar Gupta ko gussa kyun aata hai? He is a victim of Communism and Cold War anxieties
Rewinding the Red
What I have imprinted on my head—and I had salted it away for my memoirs—is something Bansi Lal said in a public rally in Rohtak when George Fernandes was bringing the Railways to a standstill in early I974.
Nobody quite knew what the colour of Fernandes’ Union’s flag was, and I know the perils of confusing a Lohiaite with a Communist, but this is how Bansi Lal’s view unfolded…
Apparently, some Communists were holding a crucial election rally, but their top orator had a runny stomach. The fellow comrades said, if he didn’t come out to speak, the election will be lost. And then a wise comrade came up with a solution.
“Take this,” he said, offering a piece of red cloth to the Great Orator, “tie it like a langot under your dhoti, and come to the rally. You will be fine.”
“Tera kya dimaag kharab ho liya hai bhai (have you lost it?),” asked the senior. But the wise comrade said: “Yeh laal jhanda hai. Isko dekh ke Birla-Tata ki badi-badi factoryan band ho gayin, tera pet kya cheez hai (This is the Red banner. It has shut down the factories of Birla and Tata, your stomach is nothing).”
Crude, you might say. But everybody judges us Haryanavis. Also, something that would leave an impressionable 17-year-old with deep anxieties about Communism, isn’t it?
It got worse. This was the peak of the Cold War, so the mailman routinely delivered to many Indian households propaganda literature from both the US and Soviet embassies.
We so looked forward to the Soviets sending in collected works of Marx, Engels, etc. simply because these were brilliant for our tiny bookshelves bereft of any hardcovers because we could never afford anything other than pulp. So, an entire row of Communist equivalent of the Bible, all Testaments, sat on the top shelf, proudly sharing it with a framed portrait of John F. Kennedy, which had arrived in mail from the US Embassy several years earlier. Since those volumes on Communism were so forbidding, Kennedy was like the tiny Hanuman Chalisa booklet in your wallet, to keep your fears away.
The fear and victimhood lodged only deeper as I went on to study journalism at Panjab University, where Yogendra taught subsequently. He didn’t teach me, so please don’t hold that against him.
It was the Emergency (the real one, not what the 31 worthies in this 7.1-point charter invoke), so there was no politics at all on campus. But one of our classmates was a pucca bearded Comrade, a magnet for the women. I did once bet Rs 10 to him on whether E.M.S. Namboodiripad was dead or alive, and lost. Wouldn’t I feel scarred for life? Ten rupees was a lot of omelettes in 1975.
Sixteen years later, I went to see EMS, former Kerala chief minister, in Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram). In 1991, I was writing an article along with my colleague Ramesh Menon on the literacy drive the Left Front government had launched. I told EMS about the bet I lost. The old man took it brilliantly. He looked at me in mock horror and fear, then stuck his arm out, and said, “Please, please you check (my pulse). It is possible that you were right and I am dead.”
I could see finally that Communists could be funny, even laugh at themselves. Although they also give you plenty to laugh at them about. In 1988, I wrote my first story on Left politics after spending a week in Calcutta (Kolkata). Why were India’s Communists not changing when Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping were transforming the Soviet Union and China, I asked Saroj Mukherjee, the redoubtable Communist Party of India chief in the state, in his office. “Because my Communism,” he said, throwing up his arms in pride, “is purer than that of Deng and Gorbachev.” That conversation is available in India Today’s beautifully maintained archives. Along with his picture speaking to me, under giant portraits of Lenin, Marx and Stalin.
Here I was, scarred by Communism in my teens, in my twenties and then thirties. So you are so right, Yogendra.
Half diagnosis
Prozac, one of the first proven medications for many mental health issues, came to the market around this time. And perfectly timed with it was the therapy for Communism and Left thinking. The Cold War ended, Soviet Union disappeared, the Berlin Wall fell, Gorbachev moved to American liberal campuses and Deng made his immortal ‘it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice’ turn.
What didn’t change was Indian Communism. But that never mattered. India’s curse was its political socialism. That’s why just when the Cold War was ending and the states liberated from the Soviet Bloc were going out seeking Western ‘capitalist’ investments, India, under V.P. Singh, and the most disastrous daily-wage coalition in our history, was reliving his Raid Raj fantasy. Madhu Dandavate, as finance minister, made that statement only an Indian socialist (not even Communist) would have in 1990: “I am not against FDI. But I will not go out looking for it.” This, addressing India’s leading industry chamber.
By the end of 1990, India was staring at a balance of payments crisis. An old socialist like Chandra Shekhar had the smarts to fly out and mortgage India’s gold to escape default. Soon enough, the Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh minority government was at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on bent knees. They delivered the Prozac for India’s 43-year socialist depression, the 1991 reform.
Yogendra Yadav’s psychoanalysis of what bugs me is brilliant. Just that he’s got his virology, or the identification of the bug, wrong.
Also read: Lenin’s dead and desecrated. But rules on in Indian economic thought, from Rahul to Modi
The fairytale of Communism
India’s good, or maybe bad, fortune is that it was never ruled by Communists. Bad, I say, because if it did, even for a little time, generations of Indians would remember its economic excesses, as we do the Emergency’s political ones, and swear: never again.
I was taught this by a bright, jobless computer engineer driving his Trabant (remember those) as an illegal taxi in Prague, 1990, when Václav Havel’s crowds filled the avenues chanting ‘At Jize Haval (Long Live Haval)’ and I was covering the unravelling of the Soviet Bloc for India Today. He cursed the Communists, and I reminded him that they were still winning some elections in India, especially in some of our most intellectually-endowed states and that the ideology still had much sex appeal on some campuses.
“That’s because you’ve never been ruled by Communists,” he said. Your Emergency, he said, took away your political freedoms, you realised these were valuable and fought back to regain them. Your economic freedoms have been stolen from day one by stealth, under the cover of morality by (Nehru-Indira) socialism. You don’t even think of fighting for economic freedoms, because your country never experienced any. We had economic freedoms, Communists stole them, so we value what we have won back.
Also read: Mission Jai Hind, and why some of its key points are a bad idea for India
Wrong end
I have already said my piece on the fantasy of this 7.1-point charter here. I see the need to change nothing. Except to add, that there are 11 economists among the signatories. All eminent, much published, peer-reviewed. Yogendra has probably read them all. How would he characterise them: Left, Right, socialist? If, in this virus, they see what they have waited for almost three decades now, an ally to reverse 1991, they deserve a push-back. Especially from the generation of Indians who benefited from that reversal of India’s fake, old Socialism.
India needs more resources, and wiser economists will have ideas on where to find these. Raising tax rates on income won’t work now because those you tax at 43.5 per cent plus DDT plus LTCG plus 18 per cent GST plus, maybe, 150 per cent on fuel, won’t have much income in a recessionary year. You go after the assets they’ve built in the past with their hard-earned, tax-paid earnings, you will need Mao Zedong, the Gang of Four, the Cultural Revolution and the confiscatory Red Guards. Nut cases raise tax rates in a crippling recession.
My fight is not with Communism. I don’t hide behind anything, especially with a friend and sparring partner who is open to disagreement. I find Communism more entertaining than dangerous in India. My argument is with the political economy that you and your co-signatories believe in. You are not hypocrites. You’ve honestly spoken your minds and put your signatures on the document.
Again, I believe you are right in your diagnosis, but your prescription is snake oil. India’s problem isn’t that it has too many rich. Nor is that why India has too many poor. It is that India has too few rich. Why, how and where to remedy that, is a continuing argument. Povertarianism is not merely an economic thought in India, but the dominant political ideology across parties. You want to know more about our intellectual and political elites’ self-serving glorification of poverty and demonising of wealth, please do check out this 2001 National Interest, inspired by Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai.
One thing for sure That Sekharji is follower of SOFT MODIBAD, I do not know why Yogendraji has doubt on this issue.
Another important thing about Shekharjee I have noted that he values opinions ONLY OF JOURNALISTS / POLITICAL ECONOMISTS close to US STATE DEPARTMENT. Those who supported GENOCIDE / MASS KILLINGS in VIETNAM / YUGOSLAVIA / IRAQ / LIBIYA. We can go back little further down our the history, then we can include INDIA also in this list.
Interesetingly most of the US Presidents by their actions killed more people than Stalin could have imagined. Please Shekharji refer to to acrchive materials of STATE DEPARTMENT USA and RUSSIA. But Shekharji would still call Stalin a THUG like the otherday he called TITO a THUG a frontline soldier in the 2nd World War. Great if Sekharji would throw some light as to in which category he would put Modiji and Shahji if TITO can be called a THUG ???
I read the report being referred to. I also watched the video and read the Yogendra Yadav article. I’ve been reading a lot of what is being written on the site and watching the various segments released on Youtube. This is just to give you background.
I’m a product of these campuses. I believed all the things my teachers taught me. Then one day and uncle of mine, who worked at the RBI under Dr. Singh asked me what I thought was better, Capitalism or Communism. I thought about what would be the right answer to this question. The Education system indoctrinates you into only wanting to give write answers to questions. I consider myself to be a model student. “Communism.” I replied. Equality, it sounds better on paper, right? My uncle smiled at me said, “The how come all the states that have tried to implement it failed?”
The only people who think Communism is the best way forward are those that live in theories and books. There is a lot of difference between what people say and what they actually do. Theory is important in its own way, but over-reliance and dependence on theory without adapting it to your practical reality does more harm than good. Knowledge is create by people to assist people, and not the other way round. I now have a lot of respect for people that have developed their own opinions and thoughts, as opposed to just repeating something that they read in a book and reiterated it, because it sounded cool. It does get you a lot of female attention though, I’ll give you that
One of the senior lecturer has said to our class (in 1973 ) – Communists are the human species who stop learning and their mind stops developing after the age of 25. How far that is true can be vouched safely by reading the articles churned out of the leftist minds. The Almighty God has put two sided mind — Left and right — in human species. It is disuse of one side that is real crime. SG Sir, Forgive them they don t know what they are writing.
May be I am naive. But China and Cuba to name a few ,prospered under parties which calls themselves communist. Most highly prosperous Scandinavian countries are socialist and govt holding in most big companies there is 70-80%.
Ever intellectual prescribes snake oil because he has no guts to change the system
What a reply Sirji…The thing or ideology that dont change with changing times and priorities are destined to see the doom. Ideology will remain though.
We also grown up in one of the Communist states with the scar and anxiety that carried a generation whole to a bleak future.
1.Opposition of English language in Primary. 2.Long opposition of Computers in Office practice 3.And your Tata-Birla Dur hatao think is a folklore.
We are not with you… 31st eminent leftist no matter How much magnetism in campuses you invoked in your College days.
Sooooo true Shekhar ji. I m from Assam and words like ‘ capital’ , ‘ business’ are vulgar in our society.
Hahaha ha… Great reply Sirji.
What we had in India was ‘Socialism with Indian characteristics’ or Capitalism in disguise of Indira Socialism, promoting handful capitalist, corrupt system exploiting poor, concentration of political power in hands of upper caste, crumbling public welfare services. Definitely Socialism model in India has failed its vast population. However with a billion and half population, India will face only anarchy with free hand capitalism. In such, Dengs Chinese model of socialism with capitalist charateristics which prospered an equally large population should be worth a look. Also to appreciate is Democratic Political model of communism which could finally be an olive oil for India’s social equality and prosperity.
The left leaning under educated jhollawallas were a weapon used by congrass to spread anti HINDU discourse with fake history. These people had absolute control over benefits and promotions in centres of learning and used their power brutally to crush any view that differed from theirs, all with congrass political support. Their great leader CITAROME the guy who looks intellectual with simple clothes and curly hair desperation to get into Rajyasabha with congrass help has exposed them as a “B’ team of congrass . And with out congrass in power they are like headless chickens. So just ignore.
So being a communist you have been telling Indians , all your life , “ You have got nothing but Blank ( phoka in punjabi ) water . The government squeezed all electricity from IT . “ Some communist intellect ? WOW !
Under Modi there is neither political nor economic freedom and he is certainly not a communist, which shows you don’t need a red langot to expose yourself in public.
Good rebuttal. I wonder why Yogendra Yadav has taken it upon himself to defend the indefensible manifesto. I suspect he is the author of the communist manifesto, and the eleven economists just trusted him and signed the document. Hence, they are keeping mum, not defending themselves.
Well said Sheckar Gupta
India is a big ‘ Intellect Black Hole’ that is the only reason why moribund Left parties ( include TMC in this ) still manage to find a foot hold on our political landscape. The need is to exorcise these once and for all. I hope some enterprising parliamentarian will manage to get a legislation passed Banning Communist parties in India.
The exorcism can’t happen at once. It is a gradual process and we are seeing it happening. With the left winning less than 10 seats in LS and the present state of TMC.
The government is not the mai-baap, and our powers that be are already squandering taxes collected from us, not on education &infra, but on freebies to get votes once again….
The government is not the mai-baap, and our politicians are already squandering taxes collected from us, not on education &infra, but on freebies to get votes once again….
Brilliant
Sekhar Gupta says nobody who went through the Emergency would ever vote for the same dispensation in India. And yet within 3 years the same ruler Indira Gandhi was voted back to power. After her death her party continued to rule till 1989, in the 90s and again from 2004 foe 2 more decades.
As for the communists, the CPM led front ruled for a record 34 years winning 6 consecutive elections. The best period ever in the state. And India was ready for a communist PM when Jyoti Basu was the unanimous choice for the post, but CPM did not want it. PM position was given up due to ideological/political reservations. These things clearly do not matter to Sekhar Gupta. I wonder what is Gupta’s real problem with the communists and leftists.
Shekhar seems stuck with the word Communists. Ours is the about the only country where they have come to political power or lost it through democratically fought elections. So communism or socialism in our country have developed its own genre not to be superficially dismissed by referring to Stalin or Mao even Lenin . Any one who hears a CPM parliamentarian speak must object, if at all, on specifics. Even Shekhar has not been specific in responding to Yoginder Yadav and others ‘ suggestionns. Wish he did.
Arrogance of power led to downfall of left in Bengal. Politics of industrialization should have been handled carefully and intelligently. There they failed miserably because of over confidence and arrogance.
With due respect sir, India’s famed economic freedoms post 1991 have mostly arrived for the crony capitalists – those who get huge bank loan bailouts and sneak into the Petroleum, Telecoms, Power and Airports/Infrastructure sectors by dodging around laid down policy. Sure, a lot of good has happened economically, millions have graduated to the middle class but the functioning of our most important institutions like Election Commission of India, Supreme Court of India, and the mostly ‘rubber stamp’ Parliamentary majority, pliable media houses leave gaping holes. We are not a true democracy where minority voices are heard with respect and understanding, we are a 24*7*365 political circus, bizarrely played out on raucous TV channels.
It is amazing that 31 celebrated individuals came up with ‘Mission Jai Hind’, which suggested Government expenditure at an unbelievable scale but not even one specific idea of how to get the earnings from. Even the revised wording says ‘use emergency measures’ – leaving it to the government to figure out what and how, but not on how to spend (for that government is either stupid or ignorant). There is enough space to discuss and debate government actions or no actions – but to recommend only expenditure without the ideas of earnings – is like buying an expensive car without being capable of even paying back the EMIs.
All of us want to be rich (with ethical means) and want to spend lavishly – just that we don’t know how to earn first. This is not an individual phenomenon I am talking about – this is this country’s phenomenon. ‘India is a poor country with very few rich people’ is the reality – just because few are filthy rich doesn’t change the reality that every day, at some part of the country poor have been dying. If not dying, living miserable lives – otherwise who would leave their own home in the village and go to the city to live at the roadside or matchboxes like houses. Because there is no other news – you see them, the media sees them, nobody saw them while living on the footpaths of the biggest cities of India – did they sleep on the footpath just to get run over by luxury car every now and then? (because only then they became part of the news). The funny part is, this became news only if the car was a Merc, Audi or BMW and lately Jaguar – not worth news material if the car was a Suzuki or a Tata.
We are expressing at the current situation as if nobody knew that we have migration from very poor states to little better of states. These people leave their family back home and visit them once or max twice during the year. Mark my words, this will pass, in a few days, in a few weeks, in a few months or max in a few years. – Poverty in India won’t pass. It will continue to live on in India until we as country pursue Wealth and enable Wealth Creators at massive scales. Yes, there will be the cost of this, but I don’t mind it – I mind people dying of hunger and living miserable lives than any cost there would be. I am tired of listening and reading of what should be done for ‘poor’ without having any conversations on how to make India a rich nation or I would say ‘Richest Nation’.
They are simply advising to create demand. Rest may take care of itself.
Game, set and match. Wow, what a lovely read.
Shekhar is right,,,,, if india taste one time commie goverment than in india everybody hates them…..
They ruled in bengal and ruined it’s infrastructure and industries of bengal….. In Kerala they sucess because of Kerala person work in large number in foreign…… They crippling today in Kerala because of foreign currency decline day by day. …. Also he is right on india does not sense economic freedom…… I hope one day we can…. And that’s the day we not fear of socialism and communism …… And push back is even greater than they thought…… Thanks Shekhar giving best reply to yogendra…… And that time he does not say u modi bhakt…..
Good rebuttal Shekhar.
I had requested one, yesterday.
Though I do not agree with you 100% all the time, I find it interesting, reading you.
Looking forward keenly to have your memoirs in my hand.
Do not delay it for long.
I hope many such ingenuous, brilliant and intellectually ingenious pieces of disagreements and discourses will be written on all leading platforms for us, the youth, who haven’t seen much of anything, yet feel the burnt of everything.
Agree with d.kumar , 11% own 89% !!!.
We don’t want povertarianisn and we will all be comfortable when 89% is owned by 60 % or maybe a little more . Nobody wants your hard earned taxed money . We are talking about
hardly earned money
AND
untaxed money .
We are talking of reducing disparity NOT of distributing your head earned tax paid money . Why can’t we peg the maximum salary level to that of lowest rate of earning . Bring both nearer and nearer to convergence . We see the opposite happen and the literates using clever verbiage to obfuscate this . The journalists have sadly lost the respect earlier enjoyed for truth and just society .
For once Shekharji, I agree with you 100 percent.
What a rebuttal. Your’s was the easy part, though, since you are not offering any remedies unlike Yogendra’s 7.1! Any thoughts on why Kerala has emerged as one of the best governed state and the people of Kerala the most civilized.
Kerela has emerging as a good state in human development has got nothing to do with communism. This was because the rulers who ruled before independent ensured women empowerment, literacy, good medical colleges etc. It is because of communist rule that, inspite of having the best human resources in India all kerelites have to migrate as soon as they finish their education. Cut the flow of gulf money and you will see how long communist will survive in Kerela. Communism is the biggest curse of Kerela. Moreover communism in Kerela is a farce, they are nothing but a political front for the Christian evangelist.
Brilliant write-ups, love SG or hate him but he sure has finesse to get his point home
Socialism ,Communism & Religiosity are all venom, envisaged as medicine , though which provides a ‘stoned’ like kick to those in power. There is no mystery as to the best system , a system of educated citizenry governed not by governments ,but by ‘social transactions’ ,those societies which have rigid social transactions will get ahead(japan,china ) , those with lax social systems ( Africa , UP , Bihar ) will have their laloos & xyz as symptoms of their system.All of our leaders are symptoms of our social transactions ,it is a mistake to assume the converse. Donald Trump , is representative of vast majority of American ‘social transaction’ system , communists ruling in Kerala have very little resemblance to Lenin , stalin ,they are all beef & pork eating ,neo capitalist waiting for their visa to ‘business land ‘ .
He still didn’t answer the central question of YY.
To quote YY: “Do we or do we not need additional resources for a large economic stimulus and relief package? He could either say that we don’t need such a package beyond what the government has already announced. Or show that the government already has these additional resources. If not, there is no running away from the difficult question: where will this scale of additional revenue come from?”
I expected Shekhar to take the central question head-on. Alas! He didn’t. Where will the additional revenue come from?
EVERYTHING WELL AND HUNGY DORY….I COME FROMA STATE WHERE COMMUNISM IS STILL RELEVANT EVEN THOUGH I NEVER SUPPORTED THEM. BUT THERE ARE MANY POSITIVE CHANGES IN AREAS OF EDUCATION, HEALTH & SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE WHICH WAS MADE POSSIBLE ONLY DUE TO A STRONG PRESENCE OF LEFT IDEOLOGY IN KERALA. THE PROBLEM IS ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS AND IF THERE IS ABSOLUTE POWER COMMUNISM IS WORST. BUT THAT DOESNT DEMEAN WE HAVE TO FULLY REJECT IT. THANKS TO YOUR IDEOGOLIES IN HARAYANA, WHICH STILL HAVE THE WORST FORM OF CASTEISM & FEMALE KILLINGS (BOTH ARE THE WORST OF KIND OF DISCRIMINATION WHEN COMPARED WITH ECONOMIC FREEDOM OR POLITICAL FREEDOM). BETTER YOU ALL (BOTH SG & YY) MAKE YOUR STATE A BETTER PLACE & PREACH MEDICINES OR WORLD /INDIAN MATTERS.
Guptaji, the problem is not with communism or simply congress or socialists or communists – the problem is with statism. All Indian politicians – whether right wing (read present PM) or liberal (read Indira Gandhi) have preferred rigid state control. That form of control leaves no room for individual enterprise or genius – result is chronically underperforming economy. The only years where economy performed somewhat better were from 1991 to 2008 – where we saw a light touch rather than a heavy hand. Hence we must learn from this and avoid giving such large majorities to any party. It leads to a particular brand of Indian hubris which maims our economy. This is the lesson we (citizens of India) must imbibe and implement by 2024. Voting for Modi is fine – large majority voting for Modi is lethal for economic health of India.
Keeping people poor has served most if not all of the worthies who signed this manifesto. Not one of them asks why the govt has so little to distribute and give.
Our best response to pandemic and other calamities will be to help the economic growth, more jobs, more deregulation.
But these worthies are intent on keeping the pie small and then offer outdated, outmoded and lazy arguments to bleed whoever has any assets to death.
My simple query to them: when you bleed everyone dry and there is no pie left…what will you suggest next time? Go and attack other countries – nationalize all internation wealth? Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam!!
Communism prescribes control of resources and their use by state which itself is ruled by people(political elites). These political elite consider themselves above masses in intelligence and believe that only their way of thinking could lead to general welfare. The underlying philosophy is against individual’s economic freedoms and negates the very idea that individuals self interest could promote collective benefit.
Hence the key thing is Individual Freedom which Communism can never offer.Capitalism offers economic freedom which is also constrained for masses due to huge inequalities of wealth and education.. In a complex society like India where there are huge inequalities due to caste legacy , rural urban divide etc. may not advance until or unless individual freedom does not have meaning for masses. The mere adoption of capitalistic methods won’t help. The role of culture(western v/s Eastern) must also be debated.
Fascinating discussion. SG & Yogendra please keep enlightening us. Haryana should be proud of you two.
Shekhar Gupta is so right. West Bengal was the most happening industrial state and Calcutta was the most happening city till the 60s. Then came the communist ideology. The state has not looked forward ever since. Ask any Bengali who was forced to leave the state because of economic reasons, what is his/ her opinion of communism or Left economic policies. And as far as these, Yogendra Yadav certified eminent economists are concerned, it was the economic policies devised by them, their teachers and mentors that delivered for decades the Nehruvian growth rate of 2-3%. They have got their 15 minutes of fame, which was actually their intention. Time to close the chapter and move on.
This is bloody brilliant.
I might add. Indian socialism is worse than chinese /russian communism. Atleast Chinese and Russians created a literate population. Nehru kept them deliberately in dark
Communism is more lethal than corona virus. It will destroy man, mankind, our cities and livelihoods. Communism is the greatest weapon devised by man to destroy the world. I will tell my children become anything other than a communist.
Agreed sir. But at least Mr. Yadav prescribed snake oil and did that in right earnest. We cannot doubt his sincerity. But at this juncture, I think that indecision and debating without any action is more harmful than the snake oil.
After a long time I am enjoying verbal fights between to LIBRANDUS. Both want to prove they right and other is wrong. They can never think that both of them can be wrong. Enjoy folks enjoy arguing two stupids liberandus.
The intellectual discourse in India can easily be compared to the LANGOT story. We kept on talking about the color of the shirt, the matching tie, the style of the jacket, the world order and everything else which had nothing to do with the ease of living with dignity for a common man. The privileged ones kept on ensuring the growth of the ringside supporters.
Let us all accept that we screwed up things big time. If the COVID-19 brings all that out in the open it will be at a cost not one can imagine.
any logic of how 11% own 89 percent of india wealth …what kind of equality ,what kind of rationality and what kind of processes ensure that ? do you ahve a solution or you and i will die with this question
Most people like you make a mistake that the wealth of the richest is for them only. In reality it’s certainly not. Why the same people don’t think that the wealth of India is of the government of the day and not the of the people? It’s simple if you apply your mind on the difference between owning and using of wealth. As government’s wealth is ultimately used by people. So is with the wealth of the richest. Their wealth is also ultimately used by people. The wealth of Big industrial houses like Reliance, Tata’s and Birlas is no different from that of governments. You may even think that governments are worst waster of wealth. The important point here is not whether riches are 11% or more, the important point should be how their wealth is being used.
Also it belongs to the shareholders. Ambani does not own 100% of Reliance industy
You create more billionaires by economic freedom . Rob Peter to pay Paul style JNU economics doesn’t work. It never will
Solution is stop making babies. At least spare future generations from a life of poverty.
Brilliant second half. I can see your passion SG ji. Without economic freedom, all other freedoms are worthless. Something our political economy refuses to acknowledge despite knowing it to be true. Those talking about inequality in India don’t realise that we simply don’t have enough wealth to redistribute to the poor. Stop redistributing before creating wealth. It will only hamper us.
Coming to the covid induced economic crisis, I humbly request the commentariat, the bureaucracy, “Eminent” economists, not to use their head while giving solutions. We have seen your solutions which kept India poor for decades. Simply copypaste from what other countries are doing (with minor changes to suit our needs).
That’s exactly what is jarring many people, that, on one hand,”we simply don’t have enough wealth to redistribute to the poor”, and on the other hand whatever little wealth is there, is getting concentrated in very few hands! So the poor are left absolutely with nothing! What you are saying is, “Stop redistributing before creating wealth”, and in the meantime, let all the wealth go to very few people!
Great Sir, you proved your Typos are your Weapon. By the way, we used to call them as Confusion Party of India because of their tie-ups with opposition parties whom they were fighting with teeth & nail and half baked policies.
Very interesting article in reply to Yoginder ji’s comment.
Thanks
Nagesh Rao
What can the poor chap do, Mr Gupta? Snake oil is all he has! Leave him alone. Don’t get behind the left-behinds Lefts.
Brilliant come back to the petticoat commies