Praxeology: My Reflexions on India

Since coming to power the Narendra Modi government, in the economy sector, was helped by one big factor i.e., the low international crude oil price. Helped because crude oil import represents top import bill for the Indian government. Being the only major source of conventional energy, without which the economy cannot work, oil is the most crucial product for India. As India produces very little of its oil, it is mainly reliant on crude imports from the Middle East. And the Middle East is again facing Gulf war type of prospects after the US President Donald Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear treaty. Instead of passing the benefit of this low international crude oil price, the Modi government pocketed all the profit in the form of higher excise duty on petrol and diesel. Thus the Indian consumer was deprived of low petrol and diesel prices. The excuse for this policy was to use this siphoned-off money for so-called “welfare” activities. Now with rising oil price, pe...

The Arvind Kejriwal government in New Delhi has just guaranteed unemployment for many unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled workers by passing a tough minimum wage bill recently. As newspapers reported , President Ram Nath Kovind has given his assent to the Delhi government’s Bill to amend the Minimum Wages Act under which employers violating labour rules in the city will now face fine ranging from Rs 20,000-50,000 and jail term between one to three years. Last year the Kejriwal government increased the minimum wages of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled workers by 37%. According to this new Act, for an unskilled worker, the minimum wages is Rs 13,350 per month while for semi-skilled, it is Rs 14,698. The minimum wages for skilled persons is Rs 16,182 in the national capital.  Why we are terming this minimum wage act as a guaranteed unemployment act for the workers? A little understanding of how market determines wages of workers will go in a long way to understa...

James C. Scott has rewritten the history of the “civilization” in his recent book Against the Grain . He turns the mainstream narrative of civilization on its head with the help of evidences coming from various fields of sciences. In doing so, he rewrites the history of man himself. In rewriting  the mainstream narrative, Scott has twofold goals in his mind: first, the more modest one of condensing the best knowledge we have of these matters and then second, suggesting what it implies for state formation and for both the human and ecological consequences of the state form. The mainstream narrative of civilization that James Scott turns on its head goes like this: Domestication of plants and animals led directly to sedentism and fixed-field agriculture. Sedentism and the first appearance of towns were typically seen to be the effect of irrigation and of states. Sedentism and cultivation led directly to state formation. Agriculture, it was assumed, was a great step ...