Praxeology: My Reflexions on India

Of late I am noticing increasing incidents of the thug government forcefully stealing poor peoples' - mostly farmers - land all over the country e.g., Singur  (West Bengal), Sanand (Gujarat), POSCO (Orissa), Greater Noida (U.P.), and other smaller cases in Gujarat and other states which goes unreported and thus unnoticed.  This land grabbing has a nice cover-up name - land acquisition. But, this is not an acquisition of any sort.  In all these cases poor land owners are not willing to sell their land to the government. The reason they don't want to sell their land is because that land is their Home, it is their only source of income, it is their life's wealth, it is the place where they are living since ages. In short, it is their private property. Many of the farmers who willy-nilly have to sell their land are also not happy with the price which government is paying them. And when the buyer is not voluntarily ready to sell his land and seller still forcefully takes his...

A couple of days ago famous industrialist Ratan Tata commented about the lavish life style of another billionaire business tycoon Mukesh Ambani quoting his 27 storied Mumbai house viz., Antilla. Tata said that Mukesh Ambani's house Antilla represents the rich Indian's lack of empathy for the poor . His remarks: "The person who lives in there should be concerned about what he sees around him and [asking] can he make a difference. If he is not, then it's sad because this country needs people to allocate some of their enormous wealth to finding ways of mitigating the hardship that people have."  Is Ratan Tata right in his remarks or is he misguided in his judgements? Is he aware about the role of an entrepreneur in an economy or is he ignorant of this basic economic fact? Or is his remarks has some underlying assumptions which make those remarks perfectly apt for Mukesh's lifestyle? Let me deal with these questions one by one. I take two scenarios to carr...

Recently prime minister Manmohan Singh visited Afghanistan government to meet president Hamid Karzai. This visit was in the wake of recent event of the murder of Osama-bin-Laden by the US government. During this visit he pledged to donate US$ 500 million to the Afghanistan government for the said rebuilding infrastructure works. He announced that the total commitment from the Indian government to transfer the funds to Afghan government is approximately US$ 1.5 billion. In this region Indian government is the biggest funding institution for the Afghan government. This whole transfer of funds by the Indian government raises many questions in my mind, and should raise in every Indian citizens' mind too. First, what is the real motive - and not just stated - of giving this large sum of money to the Afghan government? Second, who actually is going to pay for it and in what form? Is it morally and legally right to give this money to Karzai government? Third, who will actually benef...

Indian central bank RBI ( Reserve Bank of India ) and the Indian Central Government is cheating upon its citizens by breaking their promises. What promises the RBI and Indian government have made to their citizens which they are breaking? To get the answer of this question we need to analyze the currency note printed by RBI and guaranteed by the Central government. Below is a scanned picture of 100 rupee note. The orange circle contains the text of the promise made by the RBI governor to the bearer of that note. The text reads: I promise to pay the bearer the sum of one hundred rupees . Below the text there is a signature of RBI governor D. Subbarao. 100 Rupee note printed by RBI and backed by Indian Central Government The yellow circle contains the text of the government backing of this note. It reads: Guaranteed by the Central Government . As is evident in the RBI currency note, RBI and the government have made a promise to pay the said sum (in this case 100 rupees) to the b...

Since last time when I wrote my blog on India's political corruption, there has begun a huge new anti-corruption movement under the leadership of Gandhian Socialist Anna Hazare . Since many of my students asked me about my opinion on this issue, here I am presenting my thoughts on this whole Anna Hazare movement and its Jan Lokpal Bill. As I said in my blog on how to kill corruption , without removing the system of State with its politicians/bureaucRats it is impossible to remove the corruption from this or any other country. If people think that by introducing the Lokpal bill they are going to see the back of corruption monster then they all are day dreaming. Such naive thinking is a result of years of pro-State brainwashing in State controlled schools.  I also wonder how many people have actually read the Jan Lokpal Bill before joining Anna Hazare and his movement. If they have not then I strongly advise them to do that first. The bill is suppose to give immense powers to the...

Joseph Stiglitz , the 2001 Economics Nobel laureate professor from Columbia university recently addressed the students of University of Michigan at the 2011 Critical Issue Forum. The excerpts of his speech are available here . During the Q&A session with the students and other luncheon participants Stiglitz addressed the critical issues which USA and world is facing today. During his address Stiglitz dished out as many as possible economic absurdities. Regardless of his economic accolades of world's renowned economist, a Nobel prize winner, former world bank chief economist, chief of Clinton's economic advisory team, he demonstrated the shallow depth of his economic knowledge. Below I expose his absurd economics, which is hallmark of most of the mainstream economics, especially the Keynesian brand. Absurdity no 1 : It is well known fact that the US economy is right now bankrupt and is facing a huge budget deficit of US$ 14.2 trillion . When asked by audience about how t...

In this crisis ridden world, economies around the world are experiencing high bouts of inflation (see here ), and India is no exception in that. Indian economy is facing the effects of severe inflation in the form of rising food and energy prices (see here , here , and here ). Indian government is either clueless about the cause of this inflation or is pretending to be clueless to fox the people from seeing the true cause of this rise in prices. Moreover it is trying to shift everyone's attention from the true cause of inflation by creating scapegoats like consumers (high demand), hoarders, speculators, food drought etc. This is an age old trick which all governments use to fool its populace when it embarks on the inflationary path in full speed. In this blog I will expose Indian government's lies and will explain the true cause of inflation. Why inflation? Inflation is increase in the supply of money due to government's money printing process through its central bank (RBI ...