On Journalism – Good and Bad – Manmohan’s Sudden “Politics,” Two Ridiculous Columns On Modi’s Gujarat, And On “Letting History Be Our Guide”

The opening lines of Dileep Padgaonkar’s piece in the ToI of today on what he saw India’s “parliamentary opposition” doing in Delhi during the bandh (market shut-down) they called to protest, in the purported interests of the “common man,” foreign investments being allowed into supermarkets and civil aviation are a very good example of journalism as ought to be properly understood; that is, a “Fourth Estate” separate and distinct from all the others, having most certainly nothing to do with “party politics”:

Bizarre is a limp word to describe the spectacle one witnessed at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi last Thursday. Here, for example, were Left leaders sharing the dais with the notables of the BJP, a party, which, in their eyes, mocks at their hard secular beliefs. What they heard on the occasion should have made them squirm in their seats. One speaker hailed Mamata Banerjee - the scourge of the Left Front in West Bengal - in the most glowing terms. Another argued that the government's renewed zeal for economic reforms would allow China - a country the CPM holds in the highest regard - a back-door entry into India to enable it to exploit the country's markets and natural resources and, by and by, reduce Indians to the status of serfs.

In any case, the photographs I saw yesterday – of “politicians” from each and every “opposition party” in this centralized, socialist “multi-party democracy” ganging up for this tamasha told the same story.

Before proceeding to my example of bad journalism, allow me to dwell on two important conclusions that must be drawn from this bandh:

First, that everything about socialist politics begins with the unjust use of force – as with factory strikes.

Forcibly shutting down markets, in which all interactions are consensual and based on voluntarism, is nothing if not UNJUST.

UNLAW!

Second, the poorest day labourers get hurt the most when all markets shut down – not the traders and shopkeepers. Day labourers survive on “daily wages” – and thus, on any such bandh, which are called ever so often, they get screwed the most.

This, once again, proves the point I have been making about socialist intentions when they intervene in markets and actual outcomes:

In each and every single case, their interventions actually hurt the poorest in society.

I have listed umpteen examples in this recent post, but I could add minimum wages, rent control, and progressive taxation, including that of “capital gains,” to this list.

Indirect taxes, of course, are REGRESSIVE – and these constitute the bulk of our socialist The State’s TAKINGS from the poorest.

As for their phony welfarism financed through monetary inflationism – it is precisely the “false philanthropy” of all socialists that Bastiat warned about in The Law.

The example of bad journalism I found today is this column by R. Sukumar of Mint – in which he reveals himself as a “CONgress hack.”

Mint being a “business daily,” and Sukumar being its editor, what truly astonishes is the total absence of “economic analyses.” His column is purely political – and a “political apology,” to boot.

It is only when mainstream business dailies endlessly opine in favour of whatever the government-of-the-day is doing that they can continue on their chosen ERRONEOUS path.

The “real opposition” all bad governments need – and fear – is that which comes from the “para-parliament” of the Free Press.

“All governments rest on OPINION,” as David Hume pointed out so very long ago.

The “opinion business” is therefore the MOST SERIOUS BUSINESS there is.

During this bandh, prime minister Manmohan Singh’s SUDDEN POLITICS of “addressing the nation” on his government’s “administrative decision” to allow FDI in retail and aviation etc., is, if anything, PROOF OF THE FACT that our “parliamentary democracy” is a sham.

As prime minister, his first task ought to have been to take on the combined opposition inside the House.

Then, their debates would have been watched live on taxpayer funded Lok Sabha TV – and reported in all the newspapers as well, in each and every regional language, that too.

The bulk of the citizenry would then have come around to accepting the view that would prevail – which would surely be that of the government, because there were also pictures as well as reports of traders and shopkeepers in Delhi itself OPPOSING this bandh, and saying their businesses could happily co-exist with supermarkets, and even gain from them.

All that I have written above gives us a sense of what the “elected” government-of-the-day and the “wanna-be-elected” opposition are about.

Now, think of what their armies of “appointed” personnel must be like: IAS-IPS, Forest Department, EducRATS, Taxmen, Armed Forces, and the JUDICIARY.

These elected, wanna-be-elected, and permanently appointed comprise the personnel our PREDATORY The State.

Much for everyone to PONDER.

Since the Hindu chauvinist BJP leads the opposition NDA, let us move on to two really absurd columns on Narendra Modi’s Gujarat I found today, relevant especially because Modi is their “poster boy,” having featured recently on a Time cover as well, fully endorsed by “establishment” USSA, whose embassy in Delhi is CLOSED as I write!

The first of these columns is by Arvind Panagariya in the ToI – and I wonder how, sitting so far away in USSA’s Columbia University, he knows Gujarat is doing so hunky-dory. The best evidence against such a view is this statistical analysis of VIP constituencies, which include LK Advani’s Gandhinagar, the CAPITAL of this province. It shows Gandhinagar to be worse than sub-Saharan Africa!

Do read my posts under the label “Gujarat” published during my tour last year. In particular, the one on their “horrendous prohibition of alcohol.”

The other absurd column on Gujarat was in Mint, by Aakar Patel, a Gujarati himself. Read the opening lines:

Here are some things you need to know about the Gujarat elections.

1. The Congress has not won a majority in Gujarat since the Babri Masjid was taken down by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) warriors. This is the single most revealing, most important fact of this election. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement was the event that transformed politics in the state. Gujaratis subscribe to the BJP’s anti-Muslim message in full. Those killed by Muslims at Godhra were ordinary Gujaratis returning from kar seva in Ayodhya. Gujarati voters anticipated such a party as the BJP, which would reflect their distilled sentiment.

To this Gujarati, thus, “democracy” means “majoritarianism” – while LAW is all about INDIVIDUAL LIBERTIES AND RIGHTS. Where majorities kill minorities there is only UNLAW – which is exactly what Gujarat’s horrendous prohibition of alcohol is also all about.

UNLAW WRITE LARGE!

In a previous column, this guy Aakar Patel had ridiculed the erstwhile “royals” of India’s “Princely States” with much bogus History. But if YOU check the records, you will find that this province had some 200 of these – and, most importantly, in 1947, there were NO HINDU-MUSLIM RIOTS IN GUJARAT.

I have traveled through Baroda – and only very faded glimpses of its past "royal" glory remain. The city is now a MESS – like all the rest. I checked outRajpipla during my recent tour, a lesser-known “Salute State” that is also a MESS.

This ought to call for a huge amount of “historical revisionism” about the dubious role played by Sardar Patel during the years 1947-1950 – for it is he who ensured that all these “royals” were forced to sign “Instruments of Accession” by which the IAS-IPS, whom he gave “constitutional status,” became the new rulers.

HISTORY also tells us much about the openness of the small principalities of old Gujarat: all trading freely across the Open Sea with Arabs, then the Portuguese – who had Daman and Diu on this very coast – and then the English, who first landed at Surat (another MESS today, ask me).

Gujarat’s openness to Parsees fleeing persecution is also HISTORY.

I could go on about Porbandar – but I’ll stop for now. Do check the records, though – for this port city ruled by another of those little princes is where Gandhi was born.

The word bandar means “port” – and it amazes me that a Bania born in a port could be the Chief Propagator of swadeshi, the doctrine that foreign trade is against the “national interest.” This is what caused cronyism – thereby cheating all workers as consumers – and the curious fact is that other meaning of the word bandar is MONKEY!

Nothing more to say, except that MY OPINION remains the same: little coastal REPUBLICS, free trading and self-governing.

And the HISTORICAL EXAMPLE I have studied and written about is that of the Olde City of London – the “One Square Mile of Liberty” that built the British Empire with its merchant marine, and where the Honourable East India Company was established.

Do read my essay on this Olde City in the online work Natural Order from the right-hand bar – and note that this example of Capitalism did not establish any “office of profit.” The Lord Mayor has never received any salary; on the contrary, he had to spend vast sums of his own money to uphold the splendour of his office, and his City.

All that is paraded around these days as “political science” is nothing but HISTORY, anyway – as I wrote in a recent post.

Law is also HISTORY – it comes from the past, it is “found” in judicial decisions in similar disputes that have already occurred, and is never “made anew,” as with LEGISLATION.

So, PRIVATE LAW – which means LIBERTIES and not “political rights.”

(Which means none of the 45 or more "Human Rights" the UN declared to be "universal" in the 1940s - and almost all their MEMBER STATES' police forces violate these! Call this "collective security"?)

PRIVATE MONEY.

REPUBLICANISM.

CATALLAXIES.


I leave you with the following words from Ludwig "King" Mises' Nation, State, and Economy to help you think things over:

Liberalism, which demands full freedom of the economy, seeks to dissolve the difficulties that the diversity of political arrangements pits against the development of trade by separating the economy from the state. It strives for the greatest possible unification of law, in the last analysis for world unity of law. But it does not believe that to reach this goal, great empires or even a world empire must be created.

In other words, "small is beautiful." Not only in the size of a "body politic" but also when looking at "private economies," where the BIG CORPORATES are just HOT ASHES, while all the street hawkers and vendors are the TREES.



Yes, History says "small is beautiful" - and ONE SQUARE MILE OF LIBERTY is all that it took to build a WORLD EMPIRE ruled by LAW: "An empire of laws and not of men," is what they called it.

The "world's biggest democracy" - well, that's quite like the United Nations Security Council, if you ask me. Phone 'em for your missing "human rights"!


REPUBLICANISM - read about Geneva, whose republicanism Adam Smith admired, a "free city" for centuries, and where Rousseau lived and wrote his weird thoughts on "democracy" and how the LEGISLATOR is to "remake man"!

Bastiat quotes and DEMOLISHES Rousseau many times in The Law. 

Wish my foreword to Bastiat's The Law published in 1994 by Liberty Institute was online. Anyway. It was written especially for Indians. Plagued by UNLAW!