The Reluctant Leader* might do well to read a little more widely
In one of his recent essays, Prof. Art Carden mentions one of the main reasons why political leaders routinely dismiss capitalism:
Under capitalism, the common man does not need an intellectual vanguard or a group of virtuous surrogates to make his decisions for him or to defend him against the rapacity of his fellows. He can do just fine without our help, thank you very much, and would be much obliged if we would go back to our ivory towers and leave him alone.
The idea that great statesmen are not needed — to say nothing about being wanted — can no doubt be galling to many who decry capitalism for its excesses. For the people who derive their self-worth from being paternalistic, this is a sorry state of affairs indeed.
Read his essay in full here.
I wonder whether that might partially explain Smt. Sonia Gandhi’s views on capitalism (as discerned by Vir Sanghvi):
…there is one area where she (Smt Sonia Gandhi) does care and where Manmohan Singh has had to bend his pro-market views to include her reservations.
Long before global capitalism fell into disrepute, Sonia Gandhi was an agnostic on the market. Oh, she was certainly a complete non-believer when it came to communism or a state-controlled economy — she knew that this did not work. But equally, she did not believe that the market was the perfect solution either.
She believed that the market worked inefficiently, that it benefitted a small minority out of proportion and that it ignored those at the margins of society.
…Sonia Gandhi believes that her primary responsibility is to India’s poor. When the market benefits them, she will support it. But when it seems to primarily benefit Wall Street bankers and our own fat cats, she will be much less enthusiastic.
Sadly, there does not seem to be anyone in her inner cirlce to explain to her what Art meant when he concludes:
The fundamental problem with government intervention is not that our leaders lack sufficient wisdom to guide the global economy. The fundamental problem is that such wisdom is impossible.
Sigh.
* Title courtesy: Sh Vir Sanghvi
Related Posts:
Unbridled Capitalism? – Guest post by Sanjeev Sabhlok
Dear Shantanu
Thanks for this. Very Hayekian view here. I fully agree with it.
I’d like to know what Sonia has read in relation to economics and political theory. My suspicion is little or nothing. At least Thatcher had read Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”. Politicians who don’t understand themselves and their own limitations are generally the worst enemies of the common man. We have seen that repeatedly through history. And on top of that Sonia presides over India’s most corrupt organisation. Ignorance plus corruption equals disaster. India can’t escape from continuing misgovernance unless it generates leaders who understand their own limitations first.
Regards
Sanjeev
Sonia is busy filling her coffers and will do anything to stay in power. There is no love for poor or anything here. Who are these sycophants trying to delude?
Yes we all know that since independence we have been inundated by politicians of various parties who feather their own nest, nepotism is rampant in politics and it has crept into adminstration as well. Bureocrats, Central as well as state are big robbers.
What we need is a altruistic benovalent dictator to clean thecorruption and than let the Panchayat NGO run the country with transparency.
Poor people in India are getting poorer while rich are becoming richer.
Stop nepotism in politics, administration, specially in the religion (these are parasite sucking blood from poor in the name of religion-they are fake most of hem if not all) universities as well as local council. Remove the corruption.
It can be done if the silent majority stand united and say “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH” It is time we do something positive (not window fressing with hollow words) Do it now before there is revolution. Poor will stand up what they have to loose.
Faculty of theology and no comparative religion. Prof Ashok Rathore.
Overestimating the ‘bahu’, are we?
Certainly after hearing her speaking (no, not in Hindi, but in English) one doesn’t feel she has the ability to think anything worthy… surely there is somebody manipulating the Nation (and of course – Media)…
Rathore’s link to Yeshu Darbar talks about miracles and healing alongwith teaching agriculture in deemed Christian university!!!
http://www.aaidu.org/yDarbar/yDarbar.htm
“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Matthew 6:21.
India’s treasure is in its agriculture. So the above statement is carried on.
From
http://www.cephas-library.com/catholic/catholic_vaticans_billions_1.html
Avro Manhattan’s books are all available on net. Go thru them. Scroll on this site below and you will get to read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Manhattan
From A legacy best forgotten by Tavleen Singh:
…As a dutiful daughter-in-law, Sonia Gandhi always remembers the late Mrs Gandhi on her death anniversary. She takes flowers to her samadhi, listens to religious hymns on nationwide television and makes a special effort to attend commemorative events. This is admirable…
It is when she goes beyond the personal and tries to steer us back towards the policies of her late mother-in-law that conscientious columnists like me are forced to raise a small voice of protest.
Sonia Gandhi is the most powerful politician in India so what she says is taken seriously.
…So when Soniaji invokes her mother-in-law’s name, as she did on her death anniversary last week, to hold her up as a role model for young Indians, she needs to be careful.
Let me give you some extracts from the article Soniaji wrote in praise of mama-in-law in her party magazine, Sandesh, last week. “…Her contributions are numerous and continue to resonate. It was her bold political leadership that made India self-reliant in the production of wheat and rice that brought prosperity to lakhs and lakhs of farmers, transforming rural India.â€
The dutiful daughter-in-law went on to praise Mrs. Gandhi for her “compassionate†leadership and for bank nationalisation. Soniaji believes bank nationalisation is the reason why India was not hit so badly by last year’s credit crunch.
When I hear this kind of drivel from India’s most powerful politician, I consider it my duty, as a responsible political columnist and as someone who lived in Mrs Gandhi’s time, to set the record the straight.
Indira Gandhi was a charismatic politician with an amazing ability to convince ordinary Indians that she was their one and only benefactress. Not a quality to be sneered at and I am not sneering. But, when I try to remember anything good she did for India from an economic or political point of view I come up with a very short list.
Certainly, I would not credit her with improving the lives of Indian farmers. They lived in desperate poverty then. And, the reason was that under Mrs Gandhi rural India was given charity instead of development.
…And, with all her talk of ‘garibi hatao’, India remained as poor when she was killed as when she first became Prime Minister.
Politically, she made serious mistakes that created the secessionist movements in Punjab and Kashmir and that exacerbated them in the Northeastern states. Her creed was secularism but in her time there was at least one major Hindu-Muslim riot every year. Her foreign policy was paranoid and so viscerally anti-American that we supported the Soviet Union even when it invaded Afghanistan. It’s lucky for her that she did not live to see the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the Berlin Wall coming down because she may not have known what to do next.
By 1984 when she had ruled India for nearly 20 years, she succeeded in turning India into a country in which everything was in short supply and everything second-rate.
…for Soniaji to continue praising this policy decision exhibits her own ignorance of economics.
In the end may I humbly submit that it has taken India 25 years to recover from Indira Gandhi’s legacy and we have still not fully recovered. To go back to it now would be insanity.
@ Shantanu –
Thanks for the above link, but I found Shekhar Gupta’s op-ed article in the Indian Express to be more illuminating and more balanced –
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-idea-of-indira/535497/0
There was also a recent Forbes Article on Indira Gandhi, which also makes a similar point that she was getting ready to ditch the Soviets and move closer to the Americans.
Cheers
And, yet another completely different take on the damage Indira can do to today’s Congress!
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/recalling-indira/536057/0
On the reluctant leader:
“The assumption that Sonia Gandhi can do no wrong has to be challenged by the public, the media and the political class…She should no longer be treated as if she is a morally superior person whose good faith and integrity have to be implicitly accepted.” – Sh B Raman
You make it seem as if all the sins besetting thia country are the fault of politicians alone. 🙂 That is a simplistic explanation, however comforting.