Indians don’t care about liberty

03Apr07

Gurpreet Mahajan writes in the Indian Express:

In societies like ours, where politics is popularly linked with crass opportunism and unprincipled pursuit of self-interest, it is easy to understand why the association with politics and seats of power is often derided. The lure of reward can corrupt the individuals, make them servile and compromise their judgment. While these conclusions would appear to flow from the nature of our political life, they are supported by the argument that the world of party politics and ideological affiliations are (sic) in principle different from the world of reason that intellectuals are expected to inhabit.

She calls for candid expression of intellectual ideas and open debate on government policy as a measure to keep politicians accountable. She blames a culture that expects loyalty to clans and consensus among affected parties for the decline of bold political debate.

While she may be right about the lack of bold intellectual expression in India (I have not much insight into that), the irony is that the opening paragraph of her own op-ed serves as a great example of what kind of ideas plague intellectual debate in India. Neither is the crass opportunism of politicians a phenomenon unique to India nor is the self-interest to which she attributes “servility” and “lack of judgement” itself a thing to be shunned. On the contrary, the opportunism of politicians is a systematic and essential characteristic of the political world, and the self-interest which she is so wary of is the very basis of – to pomopusly plagiarize Ludwig von Mises – human action.

What intellectual discussion in India seldom appreciates is that societies which are better off did not become so by the continued good fortune of having providentially received benevolent politicians. They have politicians who, given a similar institutional structure, would be as villanous as any of our own. In fact, the very logic of political survival is such as to only attract unscrupulous egomaniacs. It would hence seem that wisdom lies not in intellectual – conventional or radical – contemplation on the misfortune we suffer. It would lie in the simple and cynical acknowledgement of the nature of politics and government. The answer would thus lie in recognizing the power of self-interest and encouraging it where crucially necessary (in private activity) and curbing it where unfortunately unavoidable (in political office). Dreams of being able to coax politicians into admission of guilt and self-reform are mere intellectual romanticism. It would seem almost trivial that the path to take is the one that curbs the authority of politicians – who we agreed to being utterly insensitive to their declared duties – into running our life and views every government expansion into private activity with suspicion, no matter what the professed intention of that expansion.

It is admittedly funny to speak of rights to life and property in a feudal, discriminatory society. However what good is the cure of a loving government when it is worse than the disease? Doesn’t government introduce additional layers to the existing feudal structure and reinforce existing ones by distorting reality always to the benefit of the already privileged? Government in fact lends strength and legitimacy to the feudal structures we already have, all the while professing to eradicate them.

In a society fed for decades on flawed ideas of “social justice”, “the greater good”, “maai-baap sarkar” (a government that loves like a parent) and “profit is a dirty word”, it is no wonder that it took decades before systematic erosion of natural rights was discovered. Demands for freedom from the state remain the pastime of a small fringe, while most Indians have been tricked into giving up their freedoms in the name of – variously – culture, patriotism, social justice, solidarity and whatnot.

We ought to be careful. The growing lobby of self-declared “economics reformers” is an object to be suspicious of, and is not to be mistaken for the pro-liberty lobby. The economic reform lobby is a lobby of business – Indian and foreign – and is anti-liberty. It cares for its own special interests and not for liberty. Given a chance, the economic reform lobby would like to give as much power to government as it could so long as it benefits its interest. That is hardly a sign of being pro-liberty. We ought to be similarly wary of so-called libertarians who give precedence to utility over rights – be that the cost-benefit analysis of building Special Economic Zones by “acquiring” land or school vouchers or “public-private partnerships”. They are all schemes based on the same premise of theft of private property and infringement on individual freedoms, this time in the disguise of economic dynamism and feel-good prosperity.

Some such Indian “libertarians” who delude themselves into favouring these policies of “gradual desocializing” implicitly favour a European style corporatized welfare state with skewed policies favouring the multitudes of special interests, raising political theivery to higher levels of sophistication and eroding freedoms while somehow managing a facade of prosperity. Is a European style welfare state preferable to socialism? Certainly, but only grudgingly and temporarily. Let our insistence on absolute freedom from the state not be wooed away by the relative prosperity that gradualism has given us. Liberty is the goal. Prosperity is an inevitable result.

Similarly, let the intellectual movement that Gurpreet Mahajan rightly chastises not demand “better” politicians who are more loving and sensitive to our needs but let it dream of overthrowing their coercive and unjust power to control our lives.

Filed under: Indian Politics, Liberty   |  1 Comment