What made the Workshop very lively, was the diverse background
of the participants. Among the twenty-four participants who came from different
parts of the country, there were academics and
activists, economists and engineers, educationists and environmentalists,
research scholars and professionals.
Sharad Joshi, the founder leader of one of the largest farmers' organizations in the country, Shetkari Sanghatana, in his inaugural lecture noted that so many people from such diverse backgrounds had come together to have a discussion on freedom, was very encouraging. Especially when political discourse in this country is generally on a narrow spectrum with statists of the nationalist variety on one hand and statists of various socialist hues on the other, he said.
Joshi set the tone of the Workshop when he said "freedom is not a station,
it is a journey". Rather than borrow from the Marxist utopian approach
where in the final phase of history mankind is
supposed to reach a static equilibrium, Joshi warned that the advocates
of freedom should look at the free society and free market as a dynamic
process.
The Workshop was originally conceived as a small step towards broadening the social - political - economic discourse beyond the prevalent statist framework. Therefore, the focus on classical liberal - free market as an alternative to stale statist thinking was quite natural.
The Workshop was the first major event to be organized by the Liberty Institute. It was made possible by the generous support and active encouragement of Atlas Economic Research Foundation based in Fairfax, Virginia, USA. The Leslie Sawhny Centre at Devlali, Maharashtra, were the generous hosts for the Workshop. Tucked away in one corner of an army cantonment at Devlali (about 180 kms from Bombay), there can hardly be any doubt that the clean, green and quiet setting provided the necessary environment conducive for intensive interaction.
Appropriately, the Workshop began with a video presentation on the ideas
of Adam Smith, author of The Wealth
of Nations and considered to be the father of modern economics. This half
an
hour long video tape narrated by the late Dr. Benjamin A. Rogge was
a very good introduction to modern economics and free market. Juxtaposing
with quotations from Smith, the narrator
smoothly moved the viewer from the 18th Century to the present.
The video was followed by a talk by Mr. Souvik Chakraverti, a
commentator on political and economic affairs based in New Delhi, who provided
a brief biographical sketch of Adam Smith.
Later Mr. Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute illustrated the power
of Smith's "invisible hand" today in the growth of the informal or the
unorganized sector in the economy. Operating in almost
laissez faire like conditions this sector has been able to provide
an amazing range of goods and services in India - from sorting and recycling
garbage to assembling motorized vehicles.
The next session was on Ludwig von Mises, one of the greatest defenders of the free market system in this century, and the author of Human Action. Dr. Parth. J. Shah, assistant professor at the University of Michigan, USA, outlined the Austrian school of economic thought of Carl Menger, Mises, Hayek and others. He noted how Mises had exposed the fallacy of socialist economic calculation, in the 1920s, by pointing out that without private property there can be no genuine prices, and consequently no `natural' economic calculation was possible.
The day ended with a discussion on `Why Market Works'. Quoting from Thomas Sowell's influential book 'A conflict of Visions', Sauvik Chakraverti contrasted the views of two renowned evelopment economists, Lord Peter Bauer and Gunnar Myrdal. He concluded that development requires no spatial direction or effort from the state. The fact "why a Planning Commission should exist in a market economy is a question yet to agitate the intellect of the nation" is an indication that even after five years of "liberalization" the statist vision has not really changed, Chakraverti lamented.
Shah compared two types of institutions through which resources
are allocated in any society - Private Markets, and Political Markets,
on the basis of Friedman's Laws of Spending. In the
private market, where every player(buyer/seller) depending upon his/her
income, chooses directly from among various goods and services on offer,
has a strong incentive to acquire the necessary information to make a rational
decision. In the political market, however, Shah pointed out, the player/voter
may prefer rational ignorance since his one vote has almost no impact on
the outcome, and so each voter has no incentive to spend the time and effort
to acquire the necessary information.
On the second day the focus was on the ideas of F.
A. Hayek, the Nobel laureate economist and author of The
Road to Serfdom, and Sir Karl Popper,
perhaps the greatest philosopher of
science in this century. A two-hour video issued by the Atlas
Foundation was screened. It explained the economic, political and social
thought of Hayek, and chronicled the life of this remarkable champion of
personal, political and economic freedom.
In the ensuing discussion period, Shah elaborated on Hayek's
idea of spontaneous order where apparently complex phenomena, such as the
evolution of money, may occur as a result of human
action but not human design. Shah quoted Hayek and said that statism
allows the worst to get to the top, and that Hitlers, Stalins, Maos were
not aberrations but the logical culmination of the road to serfdom.
Barun Mitra illustrated another of Hayek's key idea that of "unintended consequences" of human design. He pointed out that many of today's ills, such as corruption, criminalization, smuggling, terrorism, are the unintended consequences of well intentioned laws, such as land laws, rent control laws, import and export restrictions, high taxation, etc., aimed at restricting the market forces.
Two papers were presented in the session on Sir
Karl Popper. Sumit Mustafi, a research scholar at the
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, elaborated on Popper's critique
of historicism from Plato to Marx. He noted Popper's opposition to all
forms of totalitarianism and held that the transition from closed to open
society is one of the deepest revolution of mankind. In the second paper,
Dr.G. S. Benipal, an assistant professor at the Civil Engineering
Department at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, described
how Popper changed the paradigm in scientific thinking from the verifiability
criteria of the logical positivists by introducing the falsifiability criterion
as the demarcation between what is science and what is not. This did
not mean that scientific theories are unconnected with reality. The empirical
evidence from the real world which a scientific theory is capable of explaining
constitutes its realist core, whereas its theoretical constructs like concepts,
hypothesis and theorems are always open to further revision and reformulation,
and at times rejection, Benipal concluded.
The day ended with a session on Free Market Environmentalism.
Concern for the environment is leading to calls for expanding the role
of the government in preserving the environment, in the
mistaken belief that environmental degradation is the result of market
failure. Dr. Benipal warned of the dangers of politicization as risk science
gets translated in to risk policy. Quoting Wildavsky and others, Benipal
said that this leads, at best, to merely transferring the risk from one
population segment to another, and at worst, actually increase the net
risk to the society as resources are wasted in the vain attempt to reach
zero risk in one particular area.
Continuing the discussion, Mitra pointed out the recent
examples of politicization of risk management, over BSE infected cattle
in Britain and the so called war on tobacco. He sketched
various ways by which the twin institutions of free market and liability
based on property rights has and can resolve many environmental disputes.
He suggested ways of how a property rights based approach could help resolve
disputes such as overfishing, air pollution around Taj Mahal and problems
of people affected by large projects like dams. If the state intervention
in the economy had failed to improve the situation, there are no reasons
to suppose that it can deliver a better
environment, Mitra concluded.
The efficacy of the market mechanism to allocate scarce economic
resources has been increasingly accepted by many, but Ayn
Rand, author of bestselling novels The Fountainhead
and Atlas Shrugged, successfully argued that the free market
is also the only ethical political-economic system in
history. She completely undermined the moral appeal of socialism. On the
third morning, the focus was on Ayn Rand and morality of the marketplace.
A video of her last public lecture - The Sanction of the Victim
- was screened. In the following discussion period, two speakers,
K.Jaisim of Jaisim-Fountainhead Architects, Bangalore, and
Prof. (Mrs.) Neela Shelat, a reader in the Department of Education
at the M.S. University, Baroda, shared some of their personal
realizations from Rand's ideas.
Later Dr. Shah spoke on morality of the marketplace. He identified and exposed some of the common fallacies about the market system. Dr. George Pattery, a priest who teaches philosophy and theology at St. Xavier's College, Calcutta, built on French anthropologist Rene Girard's theory of mimetic cycle of human desires, which held that the triangular relationship between "I', "the other" and "the desired" results in jealousy, anger and violence. He contended that the free market system is itself open to both the positive and negative aspects of this cycle.
In the afternoon, Dr. (Mrs) K. Raman, a lecturer of political science at Sophia College, Bombay, traced the evolution of the concept of human rights from its origin in natural law and natural rights, and identified new challenges to the idea. She concluded that human rights are universal but need to draw from traditions of all societies.
The discussions following each presentation were frank and often vigorous.
Questions that attracted a lot of interest included the nature of government;
the role, if any, of government in economic development, particularly in
areas such as education, health, roads, communication, etc.; nature of
rights, difference between negative rights and positive rights; property
rights approach to environmental issues; liberal tradition in India; current
situation in the country; the role of Liberty Institute; etc. More often
that not the discussions spilled over into tea-breaks and dining rooms,
and after dinner gatherings. To accommodate a fuller exchange on these
issues, an Open House
session was held on the third afternoon.
On the final day, the centre piece was a presentation that underscored the relationship between ideas and social action. Dr. Anil Patel, a physician who heads ARCH, a non-governmental organization involved in rural health care and rehabilitation of people affected by the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat, traced the evolution of thinking in his organization - their attempt to synthesize ideas from Rand, Hayek, Popper on the one hand and Gandhi and Jayprakash Narain on the other. On the issue of the dam, too, he acknowledged their evolution from opposing it, to supporting the project, to focussing on rehabilitation, to a property rights based approach to the issue.
It was followed by a freewheeling outdoor session where participants
suggested and discussed various proposals concerning how best the Liberty
Institute could help promoting a free society. Suggestions for a newsletter
to build up a network, to take clear public stands on various issues of
public concern, to mobilize public opinion through campaigns, posters,
publications, on issues like the restoration of property rights in the
Constitution, and to take up public interest litigations
on questions such as the socialist clause in the election laws, were
discussed.
On display at the Workshop were over 200 books and journals which provided
an opportunity to participants to browse through classics such as Wealth
of Nations (Adam Smith) and Human Action (von Mises),
and many other authors like F. A. Hayek, Ayn Rand, Henry
Hazlitt,Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, Julian Simon,
Dixy Lee Ray, Tibor Machan, Guy Sorman. Publications
from dozens of organizations and think tanks from Hong Kong, Prague, Zurich,
Vancouver and various parts of USA, provided a glimpse of the wide range
of activities
being undertaken to promote the cause of freedom.
In the evenings, participants had the option to listen and view from
a variety of audio and video cassettes. There were, among others, interviews
of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, talks by Prof.
Julian Simon, Dr. Jo Kwong, Dr. Walter Williams, Prof. Richard Epstein,
Friedman's `Free to Choose' video series. One video that proved quite engrossing
was "Are We Scaring Ourselves to
Death?"
The enthusiasm of the participants, reflected the general feeling that this Workshop was refreshingly different. They generously overlooked some of the inevitable shortcomings.
Mr. Ambarish Chedda, ARCH, Mangrol
Mr. Bipin D. Desai, Khedut Samaj, Surat
Mr. Gunvant I. Desai, Khedut Samaj, Surat
Mr. Rajesh Mishra, ARCH, Mangrol
Mr. Sumit Mustafi, research fellow, IIM, Ahmedabad
Dr. Anil Patel, ARCH, Mangrol
Ms. Trupti Parekh, ARCH, Mangrol
Prof. Suresh Parikh, CREST, Vallabh Vidya Nagar
Mr. J. C. Shah, Sujan Sahitya, Baroda
Mr. Sandeep Shah, Baroda
Prof. (Mrs.) Neela Shelat, M. S. University, Baroda
Mr. Arvind Shelat, Baroda
Mr. K. Jaisim, Jaisim-Fountainhead Architects, Bangalore
Mr. Sharad Joshi, Shetkari Sanghatana, Pune
Dr. George Pattery, lecturer, St. Xavier's College, Calcutta
Dr. (Mrs.) K. Raman, lecturer, Sophia College, Bombay
Dr. Parth J. Shah, assistant professor, University of Michigan, Dearborn,
USA
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