1. the 3G scam

2. many fertilizer scams

3. food grains – procured poor quality grains at very high prices. Now rotting

4. DGCA scam

5. Can get any loan for any amount from a PSU bank scam

what is common to all these scams is simple. There is one babu who has a secured job. He has an indexed pension and the ability to do whatever he wants with our money and lives. If we do not act now, it may be too late.

Nepotism, corruption, …and what have you is so bad..that I am afraid to take a flight – on my way to the airport – who knows which joker is flying my plane. All this was predicted by Ayn Rand in ‘Atlas shrugged’ long, long ago. If you have not read Ayn Rand, please do.

Not that I believe all that she says – there are many shortcomings, but her view on the government, bureaucracy etc. are spot on. Even C Rajagopalachari told Nehru ‘Raja bane vyapari, praja bane bhikari’ – and we are seeing that happen. Our angst against corruption is not strong enough….and I wish it was stronger, much stronger. On Facebook you will find many people have signed up for the second dandi march today. Let us remember Rabindranath Tagore and pray..’

Where the head is held high…and the mind is without fear…..’

http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_time-for-a-dandi-march-against-corruption_1523580

  1. GOvernment were unfit to companies or business now we have shown that our government are unfit to even govern. WE have following anarchic laws which have phased out elsewhere WWE go on centrailise the powers when a government for the people should really de-centralising them.HOw good we are at governance can be seen from the pheltro of ID card issued by each department:- Voter Card , Pan card, Unique Identy Card, Health card, ESi card etc. Each card comes at a cost and only the card manufacturer are benefitted.. Each every ministry behaves like they are independant and there is no co-ordination between them. The second issue is to reduce the layers of Governance, because each layer multipys the corruption instead of reducing.

  2. Nisargadatta, who was running a beedi shop for livelihood, somewhere in Mumbai, when he was alive, used to say that ‘Rama Rajya’ or ‘Perfect society’ is a myth. The world has always been a rotten place except for few temporary periods of perfection.

    History of nations, economic and financial history echoes what he said.

    Not that one should not fight against corruption. One can and one should, but however nothing much changes over ages.

    I just thought I can share a quote of Nisargadatta (inspiration- Parag)

    “Things get destroyed by their own perfection. A perfect society is necessarily static and, therefore it stagnates and decays.

    From the summit all roads lead downwards. Societies are like people-they are born, they grow to some point of relative perfection and then they decay and die”.

  3. “Things get destroyed by their own perfection. A perfect society is necessarily static and, therefore it stagnates and decays.

    From the summit all roads lead downwards. Societies are like people-they are born, they grow to some point of relative perfection and then they decay and die”.

    Agreed Muthu.

    Unfortunately we are not learn this big picture in schools & collages. We always taught to be perfect in life.
    It is only experience of life that teaches us that. It is better if the person learns this early in his life.

  4. so, i am amazed.why isnt there any hullabaloo over free laptops,grinders or doodaahs being promised by the parties in TN elections? are we a kleptocracy? lets abolish the constitution and not pretend we are better than the chinese then.atleast they dont pretend they are a democracy.
    wait,didnt Hayek say that these systems like ours seems all nice,but actually facilitate the rising to the top of the worst people?

  5. Pravin- Talking about TN elections, one journalist of a vernacular magazine was asking me yesterday about the economic impact of freebies. We tried making some back of envelope calculation as to how many ‘Ration cards’ are in TN, what would be the cost of each item multiplied by all card holders etc.

    Where we got struck was how the party which may come to power is going to procure the cattles promised in the election manifesto for the card holders. Other things can be manufactured… Cattles?

    Where the card holders in the city would keep their cattle folk? A person I know has kept the free TV he got in the toilet because his house is very small, he already owns a TV and there is no other place to keep!

  6. Subra…Corruption exists because we as people (by embracing wrong ideas) have granted the state the ability to license and that is not capitalism.
    Fertilisers should not have even come into our agriculture without the government brining them, subsidizing them and handing out special privileges to select domestic and foreign companies. (I say this as practicing farmer). You do not need petroleum based chemicals to produce yield. This intervention by the government is making our farmers life poor and miserable.
    Prices are high coz of the inflation…. And inflation as you very well know is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon and is created by the government. Inflation is an increase in money supply and credit, the effect is rising prices. Government is able to increase money supply at will , coz there exists a central bank, which is not necessary for any economy to operate. Again there is inflation only coz there is big government and a funding partner in the RBI.
    And of course the central bank is readily available to print money and hand over to our bureaucrats who give all the ideas to the politicians to loot all of us via various schemes. This concoction of a bureaucrat and a politician is what is causing the problems.
    Notice the common theme here the all powerful government doing things over and above its brief, increased centralization, the planners wanting plan every aspect of our life and a central bank funding all these activities. This is not because of capitalism but socialism or you can call this crony capitalism.
    The problem is too much intervention, pervasive and heavily centralized government not capitalism. By spreading myths about capitalism we are causing greater damage.
    The solution is not more control rather more freedom and freedom to exchange is nothing but capitalism, mind you I’m not suggesting that there won’t be fraud in a free society and there should be laws to protect individuals against fraud and force from each other and also the government.

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