In the book, “The Great Indian Dream”, there are many things which I disagree. I don’t know whether I am totally correct but I simply do not agree. I will highlight some of those points here and leave the points which I think are correct for the later post.
1. Sacrifice your Lipstick for his Toilet.
A comparison has been made such as some $ Billion is spent in Europe on Ice Cream and an equivalent amount is required to provide food for all in this world or something like that. Some $ billion is spent on cosmetics alone in the US while an equal amount is required to provide health and sanitation to all. If communism/socialism means that I do not eat ice-cream so that some poor person eats his meals OR I do not use cosmetics so that somebody has a toilet then sorry, I am against communism and for that matter this becomes a very basic human instinct.
People who advocate this thought should play Caesar III. It’s a computer game about town planning which teaches you how the demands of people go on increasing one after another. Once the people get water & food, they need entertainment, and then they need education, sanitary facilities like baths and barber shops. After all that they need pottery, furniture & wine. The list ends in this game but in real life it goes on. As a person evolves from his hutment to the mansion, you have to let him have his wine otherwise he runs away from the city to explore better pastures. And it’s not at all the case that the poor remain poor. If given proper opportunities, education, sanitation then they too can come up from the abject poverty and that’s where the government comes in. Sadly, it doesn’t.
So basically, the demands of everybody are equally practical & valid. There’s nothing wrong in enjoying your money if you have. If you can help others come out of their misery, please do but the Government’s failure cannot be my loss.
2. We are Born Communist
The book then makes an equally ridiculous comparison. He says, everyone is a born communist at heart. When in a family we never play the ‘Survival of the fittest’ game. Everyone earns according to his ability and everybody gets according to his need. Apply it to the whole nation. The most basic flaw in the argument is the fact that a family relation cannot be extended to the nation or even the neighborhood! For God’s sake! You cannot apply the law of Induction here! The family is bound by blood relation, love relation and that can never be true for anybody else.
.
3. Don’t sell PSUs. Manage them professionally.
Who in India will take that? This, especially after years of bleeding and crores of rupees have been lost in red tape, bribes, wrong policies and losses in the PSUs. And all this was tax payer’s money, the so called ‘Rich’. Still petrol/diesel continues to be subsidized while the Oil companies show losses every quarter. The customer must be made to pay for what he uses. If I cannot afford petrol at 70/- for my bike, I will definitely use it conservatively.
Privatization is not the problem. Selling off of the PSU for peanuts to the aides of politicians is the problem. Anti-Trust laws should take care of large monopolies and the wealth would then not accumulate in the hands of few.
4. Non-Profit private enterprises.
Mr Chowdhari explains how non-profit private enterprises (Some 1 between 10 villages) can solve India’s problem just like the Towns – Villages Units in China. This idea however ideal fails on two counts. You cannot expect thousands of private enterprises to mushroom across India on a ‘Non-Profit’ basis. Secondly, to implement such a scheme you would require a dictatorship like china.
5. Bill Dates
By referring to Bill Gates as Bill Dates and trying to tell that how greedy man can become, the book fails to recognize the immense value organizations like the one Bill has does to a society. While maintaining a monopoly in the OS market, it has created thousands of jobs across the globe, given thousands of dollars as tax to governments the world over and has done immense technological advancement. Not to mention the odd thousand dollars given for AIDS relief by the foundation. Even if that was for personal gains, it was indeed dollars. In the process what if he becomes the richest man in the world? Envious?
If somebody can explain me the rationale behind these points, then please.
I am waiting for it.
1. Sacrifice your Lipstick for his Toilet.
A comparison has been made such as some $ Billion is spent in Europe on Ice Cream and an equivalent amount is required to provide food for all in this world or something like that. Some $ billion is spent on cosmetics alone in the US while an equal amount is required to provide health and sanitation to all. If communism/socialism means that I do not eat ice-cream so that some poor person eats his meals OR I do not use cosmetics so that somebody has a toilet then sorry, I am against communism and for that matter this becomes a very basic human instinct.
People who advocate this thought should play Caesar III. It’s a computer game about town planning which teaches you how the demands of people go on increasing one after another. Once the people get water & food, they need entertainment, and then they need education, sanitary facilities like baths and barber shops. After all that they need pottery, furniture & wine. The list ends in this game but in real life it goes on. As a person evolves from his hutment to the mansion, you have to let him have his wine otherwise he runs away from the city to explore better pastures. And it’s not at all the case that the poor remain poor. If given proper opportunities, education, sanitation then they too can come up from the abject poverty and that’s where the government comes in. Sadly, it doesn’t.
So basically, the demands of everybody are equally practical & valid. There’s nothing wrong in enjoying your money if you have. If you can help others come out of their misery, please do but the Government’s failure cannot be my loss.
2. We are Born Communist
The book then makes an equally ridiculous comparison. He says, everyone is a born communist at heart. When in a family we never play the ‘Survival of the fittest’ game. Everyone earns according to his ability and everybody gets according to his need. Apply it to the whole nation. The most basic flaw in the argument is the fact that a family relation cannot be extended to the nation or even the neighborhood! For God’s sake! You cannot apply the law of Induction here! The family is bound by blood relation, love relation and that can never be true for anybody else.
.
3. Don’t sell PSUs. Manage them professionally.
Who in India will take that? This, especially after years of bleeding and crores of rupees have been lost in red tape, bribes, wrong policies and losses in the PSUs. And all this was tax payer’s money, the so called ‘Rich’. Still petrol/diesel continues to be subsidized while the Oil companies show losses every quarter. The customer must be made to pay for what he uses. If I cannot afford petrol at 70/- for my bike, I will definitely use it conservatively.
Privatization is not the problem. Selling off of the PSU for peanuts to the aides of politicians is the problem. Anti-Trust laws should take care of large monopolies and the wealth would then not accumulate in the hands of few.
4. Non-Profit private enterprises.
Mr Chowdhari explains how non-profit private enterprises (Some 1 between 10 villages) can solve India’s problem just like the Towns – Villages Units in China. This idea however ideal fails on two counts. You cannot expect thousands of private enterprises to mushroom across India on a ‘Non-Profit’ basis. Secondly, to implement such a scheme you would require a dictatorship like china.
5. Bill Dates
By referring to Bill Gates as Bill Dates and trying to tell that how greedy man can become, the book fails to recognize the immense value organizations like the one Bill has does to a society. While maintaining a monopoly in the OS market, it has created thousands of jobs across the globe, given thousands of dollars as tax to governments the world over and has done immense technological advancement. Not to mention the odd thousand dollars given for AIDS relief by the foundation. Even if that was for personal gains, it was indeed dollars. In the process what if he becomes the richest man in the world? Envious?
If somebody can explain me the rationale behind these points, then please.
I am waiting for it.
2 comments:
Parikshit, first of all, great to see you thinking about these issues...
I haven't read Arindam Chaudhary's book - but that had its own good reasons. But I did read your write-up, and have some responses...
1. Lipsticks and Toilets - I agree with you... until the point where you say "if you can help others come out of their misery, please do but the Government’s failure cannot be my loss." Does this mean that poverty alleviation and the welfare of those who don't yet demand pottery wine (in C3 terms) is only the Government's job? What is the government anyway? What is a nation? Isn't it supposed to start with me and you?
2. "From each according to his ability and to each according to his need"... good lord I almost fell over laughing when I read that concept the first time (this was in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - a book you HAVE TO read). This Chaudhary dude is screwed up man! This concept will never work because "those that need" will always need more, without deserving it, and "those that are able" will always resent the looters and moochers as Rand calls them.
3. This one I am really not sure about. Privatization is not a silver bullet that will cure everything... best to take the P in your LPG up thoughtfully, and case by case, right?
4. Non-profit Private Enterprise? The term seems an oxymoron.
5. The richest kid is everyone's favorite punching bag. That's an old school rule. Bill Gates may or may not deserve the wealth he has, and Windows may or may not be the best OS in the world... but no one can take away from him and from Microsoft the fact that they have achieved something unparalleled in human history in terms of wealth and product monopolies.
Give Bill Gates a break - I'm not saying he's a saint... but he isn't the devil either. He's just a guy. With a lot of money. And he's charitable too.
-=-=-=-
In summum, this guy Arindam Chaudhary seems quite a jackass from where I stand!
Hi Hrishi.. let me clear some of the points which you have mentioned.
1. "if you can help others come out of their misery, please do but the Government’s failure cannot be my loss." -- This essentially means that charity cannot be made compulsory, it is every person's prerogative. The state, owing to its failure should not impose ideas.
2. About Privatization, yes it has to be taken on a case by case basis but the basic problem with privatization is about the way it is carried out.
And yes Arindhan chowdhary has also mentioned some good ideas in his book about eradicating povery, food for all, education for all, sanitation for all etc but this would have been already possible if the politicians had a will to do so and Mr Chowdhary's ideas however good, are only another means towards it.
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