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    Tue, 20 Aug 2002 12:43:56 PDT
From: sateesh narahari <sati_home@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: The Curse of India's Socialism
To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
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Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 12:43:56 -0700 (PDT)

All good arguments, except till you realize that
majority of indians were poor even before
independence. 

Sateesh


--- "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com> wrote:
>
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB1029790639190441115,00.html
> 
> 
> The Wall Street Journal
> 
> August 20, 2002
> COMMENTARY
> 
> The Curse of India's Socialism
> 
> By CHRISTOPHER LINGLE
> 
> In a classic case of deflecting blame for their own
> shortcomings,
> politicians in India have identified the size of the
> population as the
> country's biggest problem. This position was stated
> in a unanimous
> parliamentary resolution passed on the 50th
> anniversary of independence.
> Half a decade later, it is a belief that still
> resonates with many. Yet it
> is hard to imagine a more cynical view. If left free
> from the extensive
> interference of various levels of government, the
> energy and creativity of
> the Indian people could soon allow them to be among
> the richest on earth.
> 
> Indians are not poor because there are too many of
> them; they are poor
> because there are too many regulations and too much
> government intervention
> -- even today, a decade after reforms were begun.
> India's greatest problems
> arise from a political culture guided by socialist
> instincts on the one
> hand and an imbedded legal obligation on the other
> hand.
> 
> While India's political culture reflects the beliefs
> of its founding
> fathers, there is the additional matter of the
> modified preamble to its
> constitution that specifies: "India is a sovereign,
> secular, socialist
> republic." It was Indira Gandhi who had the words
> "socialist" and "secular"
> added in the late 1970s. At the same time, she also
> amended the relevant
> section in the Representation of Peoples Act to
> require that all recognized
> and registered parties swear by this preamble. Since
> all parties must stand
> for socialism, no party espouses classical
> liberalism (yet there are
> numerous communist parties).
> 
> While one can appreciate the difficulty of
> abandoning ideas with such
> honored lineage, the fact that socialism has been
> widely discredited and
> abandoned in most places should prompt Indians to
> reconsider this
> commitment. Despite evidence of its failure as an
> economic system, many of
> the socialists who carry on do so by trying to
> proclaim that their dogma
> reinforces certain civic virtues. A presumed merit
> of socialism is that it
> aims to nurture a greater sense of collective
> identity by suppressing the
> narrow self-interest of individuals. However, this
> aspect of socialism lies
> at the heart of its failure both as a political tool
> as well as the basis
> for economic policy.
> 
> Let's start with the economic failures of socialism.
> Most of the grand
> experiments have been ignominiously abandoned or
> recast in tortured terms
> such as the "Third Way" that defer to the importance
> of markets and
> individual incentives. Unfortunately, it took a
> great deal of human
> suffering before socialists abandoned their goal of
> trying to create an
> economic system on the basis of collective goals.
> 
> Socialist ideologues are impervious to evidence that
> their system inspires
> even more human misery in the civic realm. This is
> because socialism
> provides the political mechanism for and legitimacy
> by which people
> identify as members of groups. While it may suit the
> socialist agenda to
> create them-and-us scenarios relating to workers and
> capitalists or
> peasants and urban dwellers, this logic is readily
> converted to other types
> of divisions.
> 
> In the case of India, competition for power has
> increasingly become
> identified with religiosity or ethnicity, as is
> evident by the rise of the
> Bharatiya Janata Party, supported by radical
> Hindutva supporters. As
> elsewhere, political parties based on religion are
> by their very nature
> exclusionary. These narrow concepts of identity work
> against nation
> building since such a politics forces arrangements
> that cannot accommodate
> notions of universal values.
> 
> Socialism also sets the stage for populist promises
> of taking from one
> group to support another. This variety of political
> posturing by the
> Congress Party was used to build a coalition of
> disaffected minorities. In
> turn, the BJP built its power base on a promise to
> restore power to Hindus.
> And so it is that India's heritage of socialist
> ideology provided the
> beginnings of a political culture that evolved into
> sectarian populism that
> has wrought cycles of communal violence. Populism
> with its solicitations of
> political patronage, whether based upon nationalism
> or some other ploy, is
> also open to the sort of rampant corruption so
> evident in India.
> 
> At issue in India is nothing less than the role of
> the state. Should it be
> used as a mechanism to protect the freedom and
> rights of individuals? Or
> should the state be a vehicle for groups to gain
> power? It should be clear
> the latter approach would lead to the destruction of
> India's democracy
> while the former will allow it to survive.
> 
> It is undeniable that India's public policy guided
> by socialism has
> promoted divisions that contributed to social
> instability and economic
> destruction. This dangerous game has only served the
> narrow interests of
> those who seek to capture or preserve power. That
> India is a "socialist"
> state, specified in a preamble to the constitution,
> makes this binding
> commitment evident in the nature of interventionist
> policies that have
> wrought slower economic growth causing great harm to
> the poor and unskilled
> who have lost access to economic opportunities.
> Socialism also introduced
> forces that are destroying India's hard-earned
> democracy. A paradigm shift
> in the nature of Indian politics is needed so the
> state ceases serving as a
> mechanism for groups to gain power and instead
> becomes an instrument to
> secure rights and freedoms for individuals.
> 
> Mr. Lingle is professor of economics at Universidad
> Francisco Marroquin in
> Guatemala, and global strategist for
> eConoLytics.com.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -----------------
> R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
> <http://www.ibuc.com/>
> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> "... however it may deserve respect for its
> usefulness and antiquity,
> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found
> agreeable to
> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of
> the Roman Empire'
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork


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