FEATURE

6 Reasons Why I Don’t Want India To Become A ‘Superpower’

JAIMINE BEZBOZNIK

Who will involuntarily pay the hefty price for the inflationary cost of maintaining a core nation?

Mainstream economists and politicians are always immersed with the illusionary episodes on ‘structural transformation’. This phase is “seen”, whereas I am certain that the mass tends to subconsciously circumvent the“unseen” side. This article is a critical attempt to rationally expose the “unseen” costs involved in making, maintaining and middling of India as a superpower nation.

I am not scorning the social efforts of the citizens, but holistically questioning the rationale of economic costs enlisted in the process of proselytizing the semi-periphery status (developing power) into core status (superpower). Nothing comes for free and so easy, as camouflaged by the politicians because the health of any master in the world is unhealthy without conscription of‘purchasing power’ of the subjects. Other things being equal, for any superpower, a mystical document called ‘social contract’ should always hail the principles of the Leviathan. Following are the crucial “unseen” reasons that I have chalked down to prove my scandalous assertion:

1) Nationalism is a religion, whereas government is its god

“Nationalism is a measles of mankind”, said Albert Einstein. The theme of nationalism is to indirectly convince the global society that “my humans are better than your humans”. To achieve the core status, in this so-called‘anarchic’ international system, propaganda efforts and imposed orders are the DNA of any nation. Without these two crucial parameters, nationalism cannot be cultivated and citizenry cannot be maintained. The health of nationalism begets mercantilism and discards the wealth of ‘free’ trade. Nonetheless, the ‘free’ labour movement is superseded by the fascistic nationalism. Ultimately, military expenditures exceed the cosmopolitan thinkers.

2) Collective egoism

“The word ‘We’ is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey? But I am done with this creed of corruption. I am done with the monster of ‘We,’ the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: ‘I’.” — Ayn Rand. A truth is a truth, in the democracy, even if ‘majoritarian’ disbelieve it. Google: Voluntaryism.

3) Tax Terrorism

Are citizens enjoying something called ‘tax choice’? Is India able to tackle the inflation in her fiscal deficit, without pauperizing the society? Why is India unfriendly to a recent cryptocurrency called‘Bitcoins’? I see that citizens are paying three types of taxes: a) direct taxes, b) indirect taxes and c) inflation. “Inflation is taxation, without legislation”, said Milton Friedman. Keeping aside the apoplithorismosphic (fear of deflation) behaviour of RBI aside, I am forecasting that in order to superficially experience the core status, India cannot survive without tax terrorism. Tax terrorism‘builds’ the limb of a superpower nation, but ‘breaks’ the limb of citizens. The matrix of taxation is highly complicated, now. This ‘legal robbery’ (taxation) requires a Misesian revision, rather than a Keynesian approach. India should take an immediate note of this, before promising anything related to the optimum allocation.

4) Right to self-determination

No doubt there is ‘unity in diversity’. There is no catallaxy. “Catallaxy is the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies, in a market,” – F. A. Hayek. ‘Unity from diversity’ is the need of the hour, but unfortunately a strongest social factor called ‘casteism’ de-motivates the scope of integrity. Rather than commenting on draconian political populist programme called reservation policy, I prefer to highlight that few regions like Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland, Bodoland, etc. are legally intimidated at gun-point (for the process of integrity), and this political action is purely antithetical to catallaxy. To become a core nation, in practice, right to self-determine persist only on constitutional papers.

5) Crony capitalism

USA, the so-called superpower, possesses the highest debt in the world, albeit printing money out of thin air, and continues to lecture about human rights and democracy. China is “rising peacefully”, but are Chinese disdaining libertarianism? Asian Tigers are unable to claim their core nation status, without yielding up liberty in exchange for regional security. Are all these [core] nation-states able to enhance ‘perfect competition’, without ‘oligarchic’structuralization of their respective markets? I believe that “mondustrial policy” is the software applicable to add more fuel to the fire, in order to attain the core nation status. Mondustrial policy is a fusion of “monetary policy” and “industrial policy”, Â and it describes the Fed’s creation of new money during the 2008-2009 financial crisis in order to rescue certain firms, such as Bear Stearns and AIG, and certain markets, such as commercial paper and money-market mutual funds, “at the expense of others”, by purchasing securities and making loans. It was coined by Stanford economics professor John Taylor.

6) The Abenomics of Modi

“Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” — Lord Acton. When newly elected Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promised new deficit spending and pedal-to-the-metal monetary inflation, the proponents of superpower theory were excited. And indeed, debasing the yen seemed to work for a few months, with analysts saying Indian policymakers should follow Japan’s lead. Does anyone else have a sense of deja vu? Monetary debasement transfers wealth within an economy by subsidizing exports at the expense of the entire economy, but this effect is delayed as the new money works its way from first receivers of the new money to later receivers. The Bank of Japan gives more yen to buyers using dollars, euros, and other currencies, but this is nothing more than a gift to foreigners that is funnelled through exporters. Because exporters are the first receivers of the new money, they buy resources at existing prices and make large profits. As most have noted, exporters have seen a surge in their share prices, but this is exactly what one should expect when government taxes all to give to the few. Eventually, the monetary debasement raises all costs and this initial benefit to exporters vanishes. Then the country is left with a depleted capital base and a higher price level. The good news is that Japan does know how to rebuild its economy. It did it the old-fashioned way seventy years ago—hard work and savings. India is set to follow this path to attain superpower status. Nevertheless, PM Narendra Modi’s slogan “minimum government, maximum governance” is economically an expropriation of the ‘acting agents’ and is an intrinsic threat to the economic liberty of all.

I would conclude by saying that ‘human action’ (acting agencies) is a purposeful behaviour, or ‘Action is will put into operation and transformed into an agency, aiming at ends and goals, is the ego’s meaningful response to stimuli and to the conditions of its environment, is a person’s conscious adjustment to the state of the universe that determines his life.’ Such paraphrases may clarify the definition given and prevent possible misinterpretations. But the definition itself is adequate and does not need complement of commentary. What superpower theorists fail to realize is that the various measures that they suggest are not capable of bringing about the beneficial results that they aim at. On the contrary, they are producing as well as sustaining, a socialist state. Proceeding step by step, on this way to superpower, it finally reaches a point in which all economic freedom of individuals has disappeared. Heard about USA’s PRISM and India’s CMS?

Association of doctors with conscience
(A clarion call for their conscience to be the change and come together)

Prof. B. M. Hegde,

hegdebm@gmail.com

"If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as a sorry state as the souls who live under tyranny."

Thomas Jefferson

The Times of India of Sundays the 22nd February on page 14 had a report of the frustrations of about 78 doctors in and around Pune. This is a good sign and is an encouragement for people like me who have been fighting for this for four decades now. It was a coincidence that the same day there is a report from London about how the drug companies are fooling the medical world about the wrong drugs to make money. The drug in question is the infamous statin. There has been a dishonest science doing that job. Yesterday there has been a report on the wrong nutrition advice given by the American science for more than 40 years. In the year 1968 I had warned the public about the dangers of fat free diets and avoiding the best fat in the world-coconut oil. Now they say coconut oil is a panacea for most human ills! All this makes me happy as I have been able to see the truth coming out slowly but steadily.

I have been writing since the 1960s several books, thousands of articles, both lay and scientific, and delivering hundreds of talks. I was also happy to see one of my old articles being selected by an American portal to be aired, again today. Nothing could have been better. Reading the Times of India in the plane from Chennai to Hyderabad, I had the idea to form an association of like-minded people to work together to get better results. We have to educate the doctors, patients and the powers that be. Today I have also written an article on the Swine 'flu fraud. It is almost a full time job and, therefore, more hands would be ideal.

The problem is much more complicated than simply clearing one's conscience. It was nearly 90 years ago that some rich people in America saw the potential of producing chemical compounds from naphtha to control human illnesses-a very dangerous idea based on the wrong premise that the human body is like a machine built by putting organs together-a reductionist view. They worked their way through the then US government to get the medical colleges there audited for their authenticity. This greedy conglomerate was funding about 47 of the nearly 250 odd medical schools then. They had their staff on the governing boards of those forty seven colleges. They had one of their own retired staff, Abraham Flexner, a retired school headmaster as one man commission. He declared only those 47 to be authentic and scientific and the rest bogus! Thus was born the era of chemical drugs which rule the roost even to this day. A recent study by Douglas C. Wallace showed by elegant computer chip tagged analysis that  all chemical reductionist molecules are rejected by the body and are sent to the liver for destruction while herbal drugs are recognised as self and used! (Genetics 2008; 179: 727) Indian Ayurveda and many other systems have been in existence for times out of mind but were defamed by the infamous 1910 Flexner report.

Same is the story with other interventions. One glaring example will suffice. Coronary angioplasty is an effort which is not only a waste but could even lead to death of the patient! Except in extreme cases of intractable chest pain (which is almost unknown with present medical therapy and change of mode of living) and extreme reduction in heart's function, there is no indication for even coronary bypass surgery. Over investigations and over diagnosis are other methods of disease mongering. All in all the hapless patient is in for expensive journey through our system. If s/he survives all that we claim the credit. When things go wrong, as happens many a time, we still get our  by blaming fate for the mishap. In either case the industry wins the game.

The whole science of western medicine is flawed as the human body works as whole in consonance with its environment; we treat it linearly as a machine. We use dangerous chemicals as drugs making it still more difficult for the body to recover from any disease. This needs to be incorporated into the medical education field to control runaway economic disaster for funding agencies if the latter is the responsibility of the tax payer. Today private medicine has become a corporate monstrosity. But we doctors either are unaware of this or do not want to know that, as the change, we feel, might break our rice bowl!

Right thinking doctors must come together to debate all these areas and come to some consensus as to how to tackle these complicated issues? We must remember that a doctor is basically trained to keep the health of the public. We do very little by way of preserving human health. We have become sickness managers instead. Together we get more strength to fight the nefarious forces; single handedly I was fighting without much success. Together we stand, divided we fall. Arise; awake fellow medical professionals let us make a change for the better in this vital, area of human health and wellness. Please do not forget that while patients CAN survive without doctors, we, doctors, CANNOT survive without patients. Let us wake up before patients leave us like the rats leaving a sinking ship.

"The FDA protects the big drug companies, and is subsequently rewarded, and using the government's police powers, they attack those who threaten the big drug companies.  People think that the FDA is protecting them.  It isn't.  What the FDA is doing, and what the public thinks it is doing are as different as night and day."

Dr. Herbert Ley, Former Commissioner of the U.S. F.D.A.