Praxeology: My Reflexions on India

In India, few days back in Chappara village of Bihar 23 children died after eating poisonous mid-day meal food in their government primary school. The Indian government launched the Mid-Day Meal scheme in 1995 ( the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education (NP-NSPE) ) and one of the stated objectives of this scheme is to, improving nutritional levels among children ! What a wonderful way of improving nutritional levels of children. Only government officials have the chutzpa to call their scheme a nutrition scheme which feeds poison to children and kills them. This incident got lot of reporting and attention simply because of the large number of deaths. Government primary schools everyday provide such stale and spoiled food to children in mid-day meals. I am myself a victim of this scheme so I know it very well (I was a Surat municipal school board student up to standard 3, and I have myself seen lizards and cockroaches in my mid-day meal). During my M.Phil. resea...

Road Accidents in India According to the available data on road accident deaths, India is on number one spot in the world . Surely this is no reason for celebration of being number one in terms of dead people on Indian roads. Every year more than 1 lakh people die on Indian roads and highways e.g., in 2011, according to the report of Ministry of Road Transport and Highway , Government of India (see here ) , there were total 4.98 lakh road accidents out of which 1.42 lakh were fatal. This surely is a huge waste of human lives; a big tragedy about which no one is talking or seriously thinking. Even the most contentious issue of Kashmir, where in two decades of freedom fight 47,000 lives were lost , pale in comparison to lakhs of annual accident deaths on public roads. Newspaper and mainstream media TV channels scream on top of their voice for non-existent threats like Bird or Swine Flu, which kills few hundred people every year, but they remain silent on the ever so pres...

Beginning with this article on the question of whether we need national armies and its national defense or not, I am going to explore the world of private alternatives of the so-called public goods like national defense, roads and highways, education, health etc., etc. Some of my readers are demanding that with the criticism of the present Statist system, I also discuss its (private) alternatives. I am already discussing the alternative system of free market capitalism in most of my posts, and with these series of small articles, I will expand the discussion to other more difficult areas. Difficult because most people have never seen a free market private sector working in these areas, and their narrow perspective and imagination holds them back from envisioning such system today. In the outset of this writing, let me tell you all, that not only the private alternatives of all the economic goods which the government provides [sic] are available, but they are, as expected, much more eff...

The Indian rupee has fallen to its all time low against the US dollar in the foreign exchange market last week after a double whammy blow, first from the RBI, and then the US Federal Reserve FOMC policy announcement on Thursday. The Indian finance minster is urging everyone not to panic and worry much about the weakening rupee , but there are reasons to worry. In my latest economic report I discuss the causes of rupee's depreciation against other foreign currencies, particularly the US dollar.     

I have just finished reading very important work of Columbia sociology professor, Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community . This work is important because it draws our attention towards some major flaws in the philosophy of classical liberals and their Individualism. Individualism is the major philosophy rivaling the philosophy of collectivism. Individualists are pitched in a fierce battle against the collective powers of centralized States. The battle is between 'Freedom' on the one side and 'Political Power' on the other side. This book is divided into three parts: 1) community and the problem of order, 2) the state and community, and 3) community and the order of freedom. Although this book was written and published in 1953, the thesis which Nisbet developed is still relevant today. I think it is more relevant today than it was in his time. Nisbet's warning against the rising power of the centralized State is haunting us today more than ever. This is the reason ...

Alexis de Tocqueville was a 19th century French political thinker and a historian. He is best known for his excursions in, then newly born democratic country, America (United States of America). In 1835 and 1840, he published his famous work, Democracy in America , on the basis of his observations of the American society and its democratic political state during his travels. In this book's later parts - vol 4, chapter 6, What Type of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear (Liberty Fund edition) - he warned the people of the world about the kind of possible despotism that can arrive in a democratic country. I am reproducing his warning here because his prophesy turned out to be totally correct. As Robert Nisbet, after reproducing the same paragraphs of Tocqueville in his The Quest for Community , said, here, in these paragraphs, lies one of the most astonishing prophesies to be found anywhere in political literature . Here is Tocqueville writing in 1840: "I think that th...

RBI is all set to launch its plastic rupee notes on an experimental basis in Kochi, Mysore, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar and Shimla. Initially they are going to issue one billion pieces of 10 rupee notes. RBI governor Subbarao gave this reason for his choice of plastic notes: the central bank was trying to introduce plastic currency, as they have longer shelf life . It is estimated that every year something like 20% of total paper notes (some 2 lakh crore rupees) get soiled and had to take out of circulation to dispose it off. RBI is saying, that introduction of plastic (or polymer) currency notes will help them tackle this problem of soiled notes! RBI is giving another excuse, that because other central bankers - Australia is the pioneer [sic] - are already experimenting with plastic notes, so they will also imitate them. Another reason, which seems to be the major one, is that, these notes can be produced at a faster rate than paper notes! No wonder RBI and other central planners want to use...