Modinomics and its Incoherence

Modinomics are the economic policies of India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. His followers or voters believe that Modinomics is a much-needed panacea to India’s economy. Unfortunately, there is no coherent difference between Modinomics and other “socialist” policies. Devotees of Modinomics believe, “lesser evil is better than bigger evil”, whereas liberals believe that Modinomics doesn’t make social-economic sense. There is no difference between both sides because their virtual goal is to maximize state power and social demagogy in a euphemistic way, at the cost of personal freedom, individual volition and cultural liberty.

• Modinomics is an immoral economic approach to individual freedom and socio-economic libertarianism.
• The established narration is socialism (government owning the resources, controlling, regulating and manipulating the means), which is totally against the hyperbole of free market capitalism.
• The Indian economy led by PM Modi and his “expert” team is consciously ignorant of economics.
• The matrix of Modinomics is again hopelessly inured and infatuated with etatism or statism.
• It is said that PM Modi is a pragmatic modernizer of “government running the economy”, but in reality his government failed to minimize the government’s role. His favorite rhetoric “minimum government, maximum governance” convinced the ultracrepidarian class, youngsters and global investors, but the result is “maximum government, minimum liberty”.
• Although his government has taken grim steps to outlaw the unnecessary laws, bureaucratic instruments and interventionists, Modinomics is still an old wine in a new bottle. His government is still run by the economics of “moral hazard” policies, “too big to fail” mechanisms, albeit his government iterates “recapitalization of public units” dialogue. 
• His followers strongly hold the opinion regarding his Fabian way of enriching the economy but their forgiving-forgetting attitude doesn’t distort the truth of economics.
• Modinomics, unlike the previous system of governance, suffers from ‘Emporiophobia’ (fear of free market),‘Aurophobia’ (fear of gold savings) and ‘Apoplithorismosphobia’ (fear of deflation). 
• Considering his government’s ‘selective silence’ on major economic issues like property rights, civil liberty, secessionism, economic expropriation, indirect taxation, capital structure, border trading, etc., it is right to ratiocinate that his government is a turban-less Keynesian. 
• Modinomics, along with the economic system of India and its paid politicians, still repeats high-sounding terms like “freedom of the investors” and “stable growth” which sedates the madding crowd. The terms “private” and “freedom” no longer mean what they are. They are cruel deceptions that fool the mind yearning for human freedom. 
• The fact is that in India we still have massive regulations and regimentations. This is necessary, we are told, because it is “in the public interest.” Terms like “public interest” and “common good” are code words that mean police state and reduced liberty. How has Modinomics liberated the Indian economy?
• With this reverse propaganda, the opposition has been neutralized. True words, true meanings of patriotism (example: bolo “Bharat Mata ki Jai”) and freedom have become the farce and illusion that cover fascism. 
• PM Modi has attracted the millennials in droves, based on the lie that “UPA’s socialism is immoral but his brand of socialism is moral” because it guarantees “liberty of opportunity”. 
• Modinomics is also embedded with obscure ideas when it comes to deciphering trickle-down economics, social spending and international economy. 
• His government voices out that the Indian economy would balance between growth and development but fails to understand that growth and development are conventional and outdated concepts, in the current changing environment. Neither growth nor development improves the real essence of economic liberty. In fact, they both crush the schema of economic freedom.
• Catallaxy, market voluntarism and property rights can be considered as sound solution(s) to counter the fascism of Modinomics and ‘Sickularism’. As long as Modinomics doesn’t divorce its romance with/from eminent domain, public monopoly and crony capitalism, it would stand indifferent in this whole paradigm. 
• The time has come to apply deductive reasoning against such economic philosophies advocated by the politicians than falling for rhetoric et al. Simply put: “Modinomics rewards sloth and penalizes hard work while Voluntarism rewards hard work and penalizes sloth.”

 

Read the original article - June 2016

Gandhi's 100 teachings

Here are 100 teachings drawn from Gandhi's writings. 
There will be greater opportunities to put them to good use.

1. A civilization is to be judged by its treatment of minorities.
2. A Government that is evil has no room for good men and women except in its prisons.
3. All faiths constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect.
4. All fear is a want of faith.
5. All other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
6. A nonviolent resister cannot wait or delay action till perfect conditions are forthcoming.
7. A nonviolent revolution is not a program for the seizure of power. It is a program for the transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer of power.
8. A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
9. By our actions we mean to show that physical force is nothing compared (to) moral force.
10. Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil.
11. Civil disobedience without constructive programs is bound to fail.
12. Cooperation with good is as much a duty as noncooperation with evil.
13. Do not undertake anything beyond your capacity, and at the same time do not harbor the wish to do less than you can. One who takes up tasks beyond his powers is proud and attached. On the other hand, one who does less than he can is a thief.
14. Do not worry about what others are doing! Each of us should turn the searchlight inward and purify his or her own heart as much as possible.
15. Each step upward makes me feel stronger and fit for the next step.
16. Every one of my failures has been a steppingstone.
17. Every right carries with it a corresponding duty.
18. Everything is done openly and aboveboard, for truth hates secrecy.
19. Evil can only be sustained by violence.
20. Exploitation is the essence of violence.
21. Faith does not admit of telling. It has to be lived and then it becomes self-propagating.
22. Faith is nothing but a living, wide-awake consciousness of God within.
23. Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.
24. For a nonviolent person the whole world is one family. He will thus fear none, nor will others fear him.
25. Freedom won through bloodshed or fraud is no freedom.
26. Given the opportunity, every human being has the same possibility for spiritual growth.
27. God is conscience.
28. [God] reveals Himself daily to every human being but we shut our ears to "the still small voice."
29. Good government is no substitute for self-government.
30. He who is ever brooding over results often loses nerve in the performance of duty.
31. I am a Christian and a Hindu and a Moslem and a Jew.
32. I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes.
33. I believe in the essential unity of man and, for that matter, all that lives. Therefore, I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him; and, if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent.
34. I believe that no government can exist for a single moment without the cooperation of the people, willing or forced, and if people suddenly withdraw their cooperation in every detail, the government will come to a standstill.
35. I can retain neither respect nor affection for a government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immorality.
36. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, "unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind."
37. If a father does an injustice, it is the duty of his children to leave the parental roof. If the headmaster of a school conducts his institution on an immoral basis, the pupils must leave the school. If the chairman of a corporation is corrupt, the members thereof must wash their hands clean of his corruption by withdrawing from it; even so, if a Government does a grave injustice, the subjects must withdraw cooperation wholly or partially, sufficiently to wean the ruler from his wickedness.
38. If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
39. I hate privilege and monopoly. Whatever cannot be shared with the masses is taboo to me.
40. Individuals or nations, who would practice nonviolence, must be prepared to sacrifice [everything] except honor.
41. In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
42. In nonviolent resistance, success is possible even if there is only one nonviolent resister of the proper stamp.
43. In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that He should allow such things to go on. (written in September 1939 at the start of World War II) 
44. Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.
45. It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
46. It is a million times better to appear untrue before the world than to be untrue to ourselves.
47. It is not nonviolence if we love merely those who love us. It is nonviolence only when we love those who hate us.
48. It is sinful to buy and use articles made by sweated labor.
49. I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.
50. Love is the law of life.
51. Love never claims, it ever gives.
52. No human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption.
53. No man could be actively nonviolent and not rise against social injustice no matter where it occurred.
54. No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can, give it as much of your care and attention as you would give to the thing you regard as most important.
55. Nonviolence, in the very nature of things, is of no assistance in the defense of ill-gotten gains and immoral acts.
56. Nonviolence is never a method of coercion, it is one of conversion.
57. [Nonviolent] struggle is impossible without capital in the form of character.
58. Nothing enduring can be built on violence.
59. Our aim is the establishment of the kingdom of Righteousness on earth.
60. Peace has its victories more glorious than those of war.
61. Real disarmament cannot come unless the nations of the world cease to exploit one another.
62. Recall the face of the poorest and the most helpless man whom you may have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?
63. Religions are different roads converging on the same point.
64. Religion which takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.
65. Rights that do not flow directly from duty well performed are not worth having.
66. Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.
67. Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.
68. Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid. The valiant in spirit glory in fighting alone.
69. Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak.
70. That line of action is alone justice which does not harm either party to a dispute.
71. The acquisition of the spirit of nonresistance changes one's outlook upon life. It puts different values upon things and upsets previous calculations. And when it is set in motion, its effect can overtake the whole world. It is the greatest force because it is the highest expression of the soul.
72. The best politics is right action.
73. The danger is greatest when victory seems nearest.
74. The fabled godly Elephant King... was saved only when he thought he was at his last gasp.
75. The first principle of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.
76. The fullest life is impossible without an immovable belief in a Living Law in obedience to which the whole universe moves.
77. The highest moral law is that we should unremittingly work for the good of mankind.
78. The movement of noncooperation, if it may be considered a revolution, is not an armed revolt; it is an evolutionary revolution, it is a bloodless revolution. The movement is a revolution of thought, or spirit.
79. The problem is a world problem. No nation can find its own salvation by breaking away from others. We must all be saved or we must all perish together.
80. There is a power now slumbering within us, which if awakened would do to evil what light does to darkness.
81. The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress.
82. To believe that what has not occurred in history will not occur at all is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.
83. To benefit by others' killing and delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religious and nonviolent is sheer self-deception.
84. True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and fearlessly following it.
85. Truth never damages a cause that is just.
86. Violence is suicide.
87. We are all children of one and the same God and, therefore, absolutely equal.
88. We hug the chains that bind us.
89. We leave things to Fate after exhausting all the remedies.
90. We may attack measures and systems. We may not, we must not, attack people. Imperfect ourselves, we must be tender toward others and slow to impute their motives.
91. We may not be God but we are of God -- even as a little drop of water is of the ocean.
92. We must combat the wrong by ceasing to assist the wrongdoer, directly or indirectly.
93. Western democracy as it functions today, is diluted nazism or fascism. At best it is merely a cloak to hide the nazi and fascist tendencies of imperialism.
94. What is possible for one is possible for all.
95. When we disobey a law, it is not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience.
96. Where Love is, there God is also.
97. Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.
98. Whilst... [conscience] is a good guide for individual conduct, imposition of that conduct upon others would be an insufferable interference with their freedom of conscience.
99. Whomsoever you follow, howsoever great he might be, see to it that you follow the spirit of the master and not imitate him mechanically.
100. You should be pioneers in presenting a living faith to the world and not the dry bones of a traditional faith which the world will not grasp.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem 

brings us face to face with another problem ... Martin Luther King, Jr.

India's Freedom & Liberalisation

• India was at a crossroads 70 years ago when it made choices that were enshrined in the constitution, so that its workers and peasants were freed from class and caste oppression.
• Nehru said at the midnight when India woke up to freedom. “To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.”
• The zamindars and landlords finding that open defense of landlord's interest was no longer feasible, switched over to communalism for their class defense.
• Pakistan's falsity of religion-based nationalism and a state was founded on theocracy. It was one area where the Hindu right-wing emulates its sworn enemy and India was sought to be converted into a theocratic state called Hindu Rashtra. 
• M.S. Golwalkar, RSS supreme leader for more than 30 years minced no words: “The non-Hindu peoples in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture…. In one word, they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less no preferential treatment—not even citizen’s rights.”
• It is no accident that the Hindutva forces had nothing to do with anti-colonial struggle and independence. Infact, the RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar had so little sympathy for the anti-colonial struggle that he thought that the British would have to be invited back shortly after Independence in order to govern India. Today they laud Ambedkar today for sheer opportunistic reasons.
• The first major victim of this narrow cultural nationalism of the Indian right-wing was the Father of the Nation. After being driven to the margins of Indian politics in the wake of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the right wing RSS and its latest political incarnation, the BJP, is at the helm of India, now.
• The slide started post-Nehru and was complete in 1991, when the Congress went back on its promises and ushered in the neoliberal order. The Congress ceased the cause of workers and peasants ostensibly called national interest, but in reality for the material prosperity of the merchants and manufacturers. Now with the BJP unburdened by the legacy of any egalitarian struggle, the free people of India are under the onslaught of neoliberalism and rabid communalism.
• Ambedkar argued that the political equality, guaranteed by the constitution, would get jeopardised if there was no corresponding movement towards social and economic equality. The first setback to independent India's was its inability to carry out any significant land redistribution. The top 15 per cent of landowners continued to hold the same percentage of land area as before. Dalits, the landless class, who had been denied the right to own land under the old system continued to remain landless and therefore both socially and economically disempowered. By the end of the 1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru was worried about growing wealth and income inequality in the country, he has to set up the Mahalanobis Committee to inquire into it.
• The per capita annual foodgrain availability, which had been around 200 kgs at the beginning of the 20th century in “British India” declined to 148.5 kgs during the 1939-44 and even lower to 136.8 kgs in 1945-46, was pushed up close to 180 kgs by the end of the 1980's. It has since declined, over the neoliberal period, reaching 163 kg for the years 2012-14.
• The spontaneity of capitalism was breaking the bounds set by state control. And soon it was to jettison the institute a regime of neoliberalism, under which the domestic corporate-financial oligarchy got closely integrated with globalised finance capital.
• The economic travails of the dirigiste regime arising from the sluggish growth of the home market owing to growing economic inequality, its loss of social support among the people for the same reason, and the big bourgeoisie’s wish to break out of it has contributed towards effecting a transition from dirigisme to neoliberalism.
• Neoliberalism greatly accentuated the increase in economic inequality, though it accelerated the growth rate in the tertiary sector. The acceleration in growth rate was resolved through larger exports of services, larger elite consumption of luxury goods, and the effects of asset price bubbles. The top 1 per cent of households in India currently owns 60 per cent of the country’s total wealth puts India with the fastest increases in asset inequality.
• The process of primitive accumulation of taking over of peasant's land 'for a song' for corporate projects and squeezing the peasants through higher input prices, by withdrawing subsidies and the drying up of institutional credit, but without commensurably higher output prices. These output prices, especially of commercial crops are allowed to fluctuate widely with world market prices. Even phenomena like Demonetisation and the GST are also mechanisms for imposing primitive accumulation upon the petty production sector. 
• A tragic consequence of this primitive accumulation at the expense of peasant agriculture has been the suicides of over three lakh peasants over the last two decades. And large numbers of peasants have left agriculture and migrated to cities in search of jobs, which are not being created to an adequate extent despite the apparently high GDP growth. The net result has been a proliferation of casual employment, intermittent employment, part-time employment and disguised unemployment. The growth in the casualisation of employment and privatisation of public sector units have weakened trade unions. While capital is international, workers are still organised along national lines, making national unions ineffective.
• The middle-class segment that has done well out of globalisation, owing to the outsourcing of services from the metropolis, and owing to the rise in the share of surplus which supports a range of activities from finance to advertising, has expectedly belonged to the upper castes which have been privileged enough to acquire the skills to make use of the opportunities that have been opening up. Since these beneficiaries attribute their own success not to their privilege but to their talent, the inevitable conclusion is drawn that those who are excluded from such jobs are untalented. An impression spreads that children from the oppressed castes do not make it because they lack talent, which boosts casteist prejudice.
• Development in India started on a wrong foot by eschewing land redistribution and the pursuit of capitalist development contributed to growing socio-economic inequality, that got a free run under neoliberalism. The adherents of Hindutva in power this social counter-revolution is being carried forward with a vengeance. India is not a fascist state, but the growing socio-economic inequality is destroying the constitutional provision of political equality.
• Fascism arises when the system besieged by crisis is challenged by a threat from the revolutionary forces whom fascism is used for eliminating. Fascism grows when the system is at a dead end and when the working-class movement is not in a position to mount a challenge. That is when large sections of the people flock to fascist movements, not because it provides a credible way out, but because it projects a messiah, it resorts to flamboyant but meaningless rhetoric, it appeals to unreason, and it holds not the system but the “other” (the Jews or the Muslims or whatever) as responsible for the travails of the people.
• It may seem intriguing that neoliberalism has reached a dead end, Modi promises even greater neoliberal reforms while a Trump rails against neoliberalism. But this contrast between two current manifestations of fascism arises because neither has a coherent programme anyway for overcoming the crisis and the frustration gripping the people. Both are essentially purveyors of unreason for whom the economic agenda as a thought-out rational programme is incidental.
• The corporate-financial oligarchy adopts the fascist movement, finances the fascist movement, and promotes the fascist movement, which exists independently of it. Fascism provides “stability” and also an ideal ideological prop for neoliberal capitalism. Fascists in government represent, in the Indian context, an alliance between corporate capital and Hindutva. The fact that capital is globalised while the state remains a nation state entails that even a fascist nation state must abide by the wishes of globalised capital (to prevent capital flight) and this fact restricts its ability to overcome the crisis.
• At peril are the gains and achievements made by the movements for national independence, socialism and social justice. India is once again is at crossroads where the choices it made 70 years ago are being undermined.

The left and democratic forces can have an alternative agenda that promotes equality, that strengthens democracy, and is willing to withdraw from the neoliberal regime. They should for instance have an agenda of introducing a set of universal, justiciable economic rights, to supplement the political rights that the constitution guarantees. These can include the right to food, the right to employment, the right to publicly-funded free and universal quality health care, the right to publicly funded free and universal quality education up to a certain level, and a right to adequate old-age pension and disability benefits. The implementation of these rights together would cost less than 10 per cent of the GDP annually, which the country can easily afford. 

There comes a time in the life of every nation when it stands at the 

crossroads of history and must choose which way to go ... Lal Bahadur Shastri

Globalization benefits just minuscule percent of population to prosper, who are rich, educated and with access to power & resources. Trickle-down theory that says benefits for the wealthy trickle down to everyone else is unacceptable nonsense. In a large populous country like India, where most people are illiterate & poor, governments ignoring their welfare and chasing money making machines is nothing but abuse of principles of democracy and Constitution of India. Globalization is a concept propounded by developed & educated western countries to expand their reach for marketing their products and services rather than extending helping hand for upliftment of suffering masses in the world. India blindly embracing it for monetary gains, is not only height of insanity but also detrimental to its large segments of population. Development is not facilitating educated and/or rich people to prosper but enhancement of living standards of all classes of people simultaneously.

India losing its way, 70 years after independence

• In 1960, an American writer predicted that in an unstable India no outsider will be able to say with assurance where political legitimacy resides.
• Three years earlier, C.Rajagopalachari had predicted that “the centrifugal forces will ultimately prevail”, bringing anarchy or fascism. Older generation people, who had survived partition, mournfully surveyed the country’s future, some even hoping the British would come back.
• Even in 1969, India relied on wheat given away by America, and a “guest control order” specified that only 50 people could be invited to parties where food was served. To travel abroad, Indians required the approval of the Reserve Bank.
• India has not reduced poverty levels as dramatically as China. Still 250 million Indians live on less than four dollars a day, but the progress since the British left has been impressive.
• In 1947 life expectancy was 32 years, now it is 68. The per capita income in India was $439. Now it is US $1861, an all time high and was at record low of US$ 304 in 1960.
• In 1947 only 1,500 villages – a mere 0.025% – were electrified; now 97% of 6.41 lakh villages have electricity. After two centuries of British rule, literacy in India was only 12% of the population and now 74% are literate.
• Every change of government since 1947 has been via the ballot box, with the army never involved - something Greece, Spain, Portugal or even France can’t claim..

As its 70th anniversary approaches, India beset with fears? 

• The way, since Narendra Modi’s astonishing election victory in 2014, the country seems to be turning its back on the tolerant, secular society India’s founding fathers wanted. 
• Modi has always ridden two chariots: Modi’s real business of making India prosperous; and his Hindu business of appeasing his fanatical Hindu followers.
• Some people are confident that Modi will change India for the better, and that the Hindu business will amount to nothing.
• Yet Modi has proved a timid reformer, whose tinkering has included an overnight demonetization that led to such chaos that many people died.
• His Hindu followers have been given free rein. This has seen a ban on the slaughter of cows, and a growing intolerance of minorities and their lynching.
• Today in Mumbai, there is now a form of religious apartheid in housing. A Muslim client wanted to buy a flat in a suburb but the broker said “You are a Muslim. This building is not for Muslims. Hindus only.” 
• In some parts of Mumbai, the most vibrant city, have become so segregated that “owners say this building is for vegetarians only, so no Muslim, Christians, Jews, Parsis or even meat-eating Hindus”. Ironically 31% of Indians are vegetarian and 69% are non-vegetarian.
• In Mumbai of the 50's and 60's, all faiths lived side by side. 

Narendra Modi: Is he India's saviour, or sectarian with blood on his hands?