“Hindi-Cheeni Bhai Bhai” (Indian and Chinese are brothers).
Now again after years, China and India are together on a plane to project their political protest against the socialist USA and its protectionist policies and moves.
Chinese Ambassador Zhang Yan stressed that China along with India is strongly against trade socialism in form of protectionism. He stressed that such move is harmful for the recovery and growth of world economy. India and China now are against any form of protectionism and socialism and want to establish and stand by the principles of Free Market capitalism.¹
The Indian and Chinese policy maker realizes that socialism in form of protectionism is detrimental to the world economy and I second that.
Now when the most ardent supporters of communism and socialism are pleading for Free Market principles, and opposing any protectionist move of USA, I feel that things may go in right way.
Yet, do we realize our own hypocrisy?
When protectionism is dangerous and harmful for world economy, how can protectionism be purposeful for Indian or Chinese economy?
When Indian government is ready to fight against USA socialist protectionism in World Trade Organization, why do not Indian politicians fight against Indian internal protectionist policies like reservation, subsidies, government interventionism and enforcement, taxes, bans, government promotions, and economic stimulus and bailouts?
When India and China both understand and agree that the protectionist moves of USA will harm not only India and China but whole world including USA, why do not these countries should start removing the wrong and mending their own ways first?
Indian Minister Kamalnath and P Chidambaram strongly expressed their stern opposition for Obama tax plans and confirmed that they will contest against US policies in IMF and WTO, will congress leaders express same truth in India too and oppose Indian own policies of protectionism? Will they call for free market and capitalism in India and China too?
Or do they want India and China to remain socialist and enslaved yet they assume USA should remain capitalist and promoter of free market?
If free market is detrimental for whole world, how it can be favorable for India or China?
Indians should learn to accept that truth does not turn it face with nations, if socialist protectionism is going to harm whole world, than reservations, bailouts, free education, subsidies and taxation is harming India too.
What is necessary for progress, happiness, affluence and good life is Liberty, All the stimulus we need is “No taxation without deliberation.”
Socialist protectionism will hurt whole world in the same way in which Indian government’s interventionism hurt Indian agriculture. The government’s policy to promote GM seeds² caused the genocide forcing Indian farmers committing suicide, even now 46 farmers on average commit suicide daily in India, do government realize that before opposing USA’s policies of socialist protectionism, Indian government should take positive step to free Indian agriculture, announcing it a industrial sector and let free market principles help the farmers lead their life make their own destiny and riches?
In next G-20 meet, India, Brazil, China, South Africa, all nations will oppose protectionism and will support free market principles, why should not Indian government announce to support free market principle in water resources management, water distribution, electricity production, maintenance and distribution?
We all know all Indian rivers are suffering from extreme pollution and India is suffering water scarcity which will take a giant shape within decades, we and all politicians know and realize that government intervention is the cause of this and if free market principles are applied, Indian problem of water scarcity and pollution, electricity and power problems will be reduced to bare minimum.³
When Indian politicians are ready to oppose American socialist moves and protectionism, why should not they strengthen Indian commitment for Liberty, freedom and free market principles?
Indian major problem is poverty, we know poverty cannot be removed by worthless free-education program, poverty can be reduced only by increasing the productivity of the poor, and that can be done only by free market, redistribution of wealth through taxes and subsidies causes wastage and misuse of resources alone and that increases poverty and suffering. Why should not Indian government and politicians should stand together and vow to establish free market principles within India first to reduce poverty? Government cannot create job, government cannot create wealth, government, and by its interventionism, can waste resources, wealth and human efforts in non-productive-activities alone, which becomes the reason of all corruption, poverty, frauds and mismanagement.⁴
Since last 60 years, India is trying to spread literacy, and it failed because of government interventionism, (The myth of complete education,Reason for Liberty)) let the free market principle project education so that even the poorest can get proper useful education not dependent on some fuzzy governmental certification system but on the basic objective principle of education and that is to provide a way to earn a honest, proud, and self-worthy earning, to learn the right way to think rationalize and project a good life based on proper positive moral standard of self-respect, happiness, independence and liberty, liberty of man from men.
Indian health care system is one of the worst whole around the world. Government is just unable to provide good health care opportunities, after all it takes wealth, resources and human endeavour to provide health service, why should not free market, education and free market health care system be allowed to help Indian poor to fight against any ailment and earn their own right for comparably good health care procedures? Just like free market forces alleviate Indian IT and engineering sector, just like now we have immensely large number of technicians, engineers and diploma holders in all branches and sectors of engineering and technology, why should not free market be allowed to produce doctors and simplify medical education system and then let the doctors earn their ways by helping the poor?
Health care is expensive because of government interventions, free market will ensure the increase in number of specialist doctors to fulfill the demand, and that will reduce the cost too and will provide millions of new jobs in health care.⁵
It is a high time when Indian public, the common man, Indian politicians, the rulers and Indian bureaucrats should accept this simple fact, that since they realize protectionism is going to harm whole world, they should realize that their own governmental intervention in Indian market and productive life harms whole India, causes wastage, increase poverty, suffering, corruption and crime.
Just like India as a nation deserve free market capitalism and globalization opportunities in world market, Indian citizen deserve Liberty in India.

1. China joins India against Protectionism, Times of India [↩]
2. GM Genocide, Reason for Liberty [↩]
3. Water Scarcity in India, Reason for Liberty [↩]
4. Population, Poverty and Production, Reason for Liberty [↩]
5. Indian Health care requirements, Reason for Liberty [↩]

Education is a valuable tool required for survival of which the formal education forms a very small part. There isn’t anything special about education which makes it a birth right. Yet, I have found that a lot many libertarians make exceptions for education. Inspired by economists like Milton Friedman, they support programs such as “School Choice”. It makes one wonder whether they have any real understanding of the market economy. If they really believed in the superiority of the market in providing for the society, they wouldn’t have supported School Vouchers. They would have let the market take care of the situation.
There are several problems with the voucher system. The most important one is that School Vouchers don’t eliminate taxation. Public funded education is the exemplification of the Marxian idea “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.¹ Every one, including homeschooling parents, and childless ones are forced to pay for the education of the children who they may or may not care for. Tax payers pay according to their ability. Parents who recklessly produce children get according to their need. Nothing can be more monstrous than that. Taxation diverts production to fields which may not satisfy the needs which are more urgent for the people.
What most of the supporters of the voucher system pretend not to understand is that if Government is to fund the education of children in private schools through taxation, it is obvious that Government would have a say in how these funds are being utilized. One who pays the piper calls the tune. It would eventually lead to a total control of the education system by the Government. It goes without saying that under this system most of what children would be taught under this system in the name of Social sciences would be mostly Government propaganda. There wouldn’t be autonomy even in the case of private institutions. There would be a call for more accountability and regulation which would lead to stagnation and less innovation in the field of education.
On an entirely free market, schools would have to compete with each other in providing better education at a lower price. The voucher system clearly tampers with it. It reduces all incentives for cutting costs as the fee is not given out of the parent’s pocket, but from the Government. The result would be inefficiency and a high cost for maintaining the system. It in turn leads to less children receiving quality education.
Some schools would be out of business due to the voucher system. Schools which don’t accept the vouchers would find less people to pay for the education which it provides. Voucher system, needless to mention, breeds parasitism and dependency.
What most libertarians forget is that the voucher system is against the founding principle of libertarianism: The Non Aggression principle. No one has the right to take from other in the name of noble motives. To begin with, it is not a noble motive to take from the producer to give to the parasite. Coercion is hardly a libertarian principle.
It is interesting that the supporters of this program call it “School Choice”. What does that mean? Should the tax payer be molested in order to provide parents with enough choice? There are always enough options to choose from under a free market. The voucher program would only reduce this choices by leading to Government dictated syllabus and curriculum. It is utterly naïve to think that Government would fund the education without having a say in it. Notice the secret admission of the proponents of this policy that the government is a failure in providing its citizens with quality education.
Why are these libertarians calling for free food, housing or health care when it is well evident that these are more important and urgent needs than education? If they have real faith in the superiority of the market, why don’t they call for an all-out privatization? The answers are not obvious.

1. Story of Socialism and Public Welfare, Reason for Liberty [↩]

India will be witnessing its 16th LokSabha Elections soon, again; Indians will choose their leaders in the festival of democracy to rule over them.
Yet, can we say that Indian leaders and Indian voters have any sense of responsibility and clarity of issues on which one may raise the platform for the general elections?
Indian politics is no less mysterious than the blind labyrinth of Jantar Mantar.
No matter how much one may try to look for a right perspective and correct way to find out the path towards freedom, development, peace and progress through the political system of India, it is highly improbable for him to get any ray of light in dark alley.
Recently, Rajnath Singh, the party chief of BJP raised the issue of Ram Temple again.¹
Yet, the thing is, is Ram Temple really an issue of Justice, or is it a political gimmick?
Anyways, Indian sense of secularism is extremely debauched, so yes; Ram Temple can again be the issue for election. Since the start, Indian politics is working on rules of caste, creed and religion.
India is a country that may face major political change not on the issue of extreme inflation or high unemployment rates, neither on the number of poor farmers committing suicides and starving² , but the trivial issue of Ram Temple and Ram or on some further debauched issues of reservation on the name of caste, creed religion and sex.
Is it good for India, or is it bad?
What should be the issue for elections if not the Ram Temple? Should it be removing the illiteracy? Now that will be ridiculous, to remove illiteracy, we do not need government or government support, what we need is workers as teachers and investors to create schools. What we need is No interference from government in the process of providing education for all through private mediums, schools, channels and organizations. We do not want government to interfere in the process of educating and halt it uselessly by its worthless ways of licensing.
Can the election issue be employment? How logical it is to expect government to provide employment for all, or better ask can government really provide employment for anyone? No, that is not the work of government, providing employment is the work of Individuals, and entrepreneurs.³
In a free society, we individuals provide jobs and work for each other. If one makes a house, he actually provides jobs for the labor, architect, engineer, raw material providers and transporters. If one feels hungry, he provides job for the farmers, the vegetable growers, the milkmen and the distributors, the dealers and the shopkeepers, the vendors. If one needs shoes, he provides job for the shoemaker, if one needs a nanny or a housekeep or a house cleaner helping in home maintenance, he/she provides further job. If one wants to provide education to their kids, he further provides job for teachers, schools maintainers, guards, peons and all, if one want to go to market from home, they provides job for autorikshaw drivers, city bus drivers and maintainers, mechanics, garage owners etc.
In any Indian city, the individuals living in that city provide roughly 60% of jobs by means of self-employment. Enterprises provide further 25% jobs in form of big shops owners, constructors and IT sector majors, private schools and colleges, colony maintainers, private security guards, private hostels, ambulance, nursing homes, doctors, restaurants owners and hoteliers etc.
Municipality in form of governmental colleges, schools, police, and government hospitals etc provides further 10% jobs as in maintenance and administration, and the central government provides the rest of 5% jobs.
So yes, we cannot expect unemployment as a major issue for elections. In fact, what we can desire for, is a governmental policy to NOT to interfere in market, because in absence of government interference there can be only voluntary unemployment in a society.
Often people opt for voluntary retirement. They work hard for a period, make enough money to lead a good life and future, and then enjoy the leisure, roaming round the country, visiting new places.
A person seek for employment only when he considers the value of leisure lesser than the value he will get by labor of working for the employer, or when he realizes that he need more and he can make more than what he is making from self-employment while working for the employer.
There can be a scenario of unemployment for a seeker only if he is not ready to accept any job, which will provide him lesser value (as in terms of salary or work satisfaction) than what he thinks is necessary for him to work.
As for example, a graduate person in India may complain of unemployment, but what he complains is not lack of work, but lack of his desired work. If he desires a clerical job in some governmental office, then yes there may be some sort of unemployment, but if he is just seeking for an honest living by hard work, there is no lack of work. He can very well establish a beetle shop too, that is self-employment. Furthermore, for self-employment, it is easier to get loans or micro finance from independent firms.
Even a farmer wishes to enter the cities somehow to get work only if he feels working in city is more worthy than his self-employing work at his farms.
Can politicians make poverty an issue for elections?
As a matter of fact, it is also not possible. We know that politicians and government policies cannot tackle the issue of poverty in India. The only solution for poverty is to increase productivity of the poor, and that is not possible by any governmental policy, government interference may further reduce the productivity though, as it is the case of failure of trade unions all round the world. Productivity can be increased if the individual citizens are provided with more potential to create job opportunities, and for that, freedom for citizens is necessary, freedom to innovate and enterprise, freedom to entrepreneur and channelize capital resources freely.
Free education does not increase productivity of poor by any means; hence, education does not make him rich too. A study on poverty, and always changeable poverty line definition suggests,

while nearly 26.7 per cent of non-poor households have at least one graduate, just 8.5 per cent of ‘poor’ households qualify under this attribute.⁴

That clarifies the fact, that even a graduate can be a poor. As explained earlier too, poverty is comparative; we all are poor in some sense or other. A study on poverty in India by Planning Commission and NCAER under Mr S.L Rao⁵

In contrast, 8 per cent of ‘poor’ households own colour television sets, 4 per cent have telephones, 3 per cent have refrigerators, 3 per cent own cellular phones, and hardly 1 per cent have cars and credit cards each. But these ‘poor’ do own them.⁶

This shows that even many of us can be called poor by the measures of government, and even a “poor” can have cars and credit cards, refrigerators, mobile phones and colour television. This shows that the standards of poor are increasing progressively.
Obviously, the reason is the increased productivity of India through the liberalization process towards a more open and free economy as it was before under totalitarian socialistic system. As far as we go towards liberalism and libertarianism, towards free-market individualism, towards freedom from government and politicians, poverty reduces further.
Hence, political parties cannot make any of issues like poverty, education or employment as a political issue for the elections. What is left is again the dirty vote bank politics of caste, creed, and reservations, and religious differences and divide and rule politics, and unworthy ignorable issues of tussle like the Ram Temple.

1. BJP raising Ram Temple Issue, Times of India [↩]
2. GM genocide, Reason For Liberty [↩]
3. Population, Poverty and Production, Reason For Liberty [↩]
4. Planning Commission and NCAER study on Poverty in India, Rediff News [↩]
5. Planning Commission and NCAER study on Poverty in India, Rediff News [↩]
6. Planning Commission and NCAER study on Poverty in India, Rediff News [↩]

Profits are often reviled by collectivist intellectuals and by most of the general public. Profit motive is often considered as the greatest of evils. People with an inadequate knowledge of economics think that profits are taken away from the workers or consumers. At the bottom of the fallacy, all that there lies is economic ignorance.
It is often said that Capitalism means profits over people. Intellectual savages who utter such nonsense don’t realize that profits can be acquired on a free market only through serving people. Profits are a signal of how well the business is serving its customers. Yet, serving the public is not the justification of profits.
It is the right of a person to exchange value for value.
It is interesting, as an economist had said, people who say “profiteer” doesn’t say “wageer” or “losseer”. Blinded with envy they don’t realize that businessmen take risks and profits are the reward they get when they succeed. Those who say “excessive profits” seem to be totally unaware of the fact that what they see as excessive can only be acquired through a better forecast of the future. Why don’t the ones who feel that the businessman is making excessive profits, save the society by abstaining from buying his products? Profit motive can’t be eliminated without resulting in chaos.
The failure of socialism due to the lack of profit mechanism and pricing system is for all to see.
What I am saying is that the main problem with socialism is not practical, but theoretical.
I’ll explain why. Imagine that you have to bake some bread. You make the bread out of flour. Assume that you make 10 loafs of bread using 5kgs of flour.
How do you know whether you have increased your wealth through making that bread? How would you know whether wealth has increased when 5 kgs of floor has turned to 10 loafs of bread—To know an answer to that question, you have to reduce both quantities to a common denominator–Do you see?
For instance, if you bought 5 kgs of floor for 10$ and you sold 10 Loafs of bread for 20$,you can conclude that you have increased your wealth by 10$. It means that for you to understand whether you have done your job well–Which means whether you have increased your wealth, a pricing and monetary system is necessary. Profit mechanism is necessary for an economy.
This exactly is what is lacking in a Socialist world.
Now let me explain the importance of a pricing system and profit mechanism.
The importance of a pricing system is that it would lead to the most efficient allocation of resources.
For instance, if you are that bread manufacturer and if you make profits, the funds and resources would flow to you. You would be able to invest these funds further in production. In this manner funds and resources flow to the most efficient people who would further invest it in production.
Moroever,the stock markets divert the funds to the most efficient citizens.
The fact that the most efficient citizens take hold of the production process is very beneficial for the whole of the society. This process of transferring resources to the most efficient people is lacking in the socialist system. In a socialist system who would take hold of the production process would be decided by the central planners and they would not be in a position to determine who are the most efficient people. Even if these central planners were the most intelligent people and the most virtuous men, they can’t decide what is the most efficient means of producing goods.
One of the most widespread arguments against privatization of education and of private institutions in general is that private institutions are run solely on profit motive; lacks ‘social commitment’. Almost every child is born capable of knowing pain and pleasure. He acts to further his pleasure and avoid pain. As he grows up, he learns to endure pain when necessary, when it furthers his pursuit of long term pleasure. Often we find children, and of course grown up men pursuing short term pleasure no matter what it’s long lasting effect may be. No sane, intelligent person now would argue it is expedient to cut of this pain-pleasure mechanism in order to avoid such self hurting tendencies. Children lacking this mechanism, as we all know wouldn’t live long enough to be a grown up man.
As pain-pleasure mechanism acts as the life-nerve of a child, profit motive acts as the life-nerve of an organization. An organization can’t survive well for long when profit motive is taken off from its goals. I offer you Soviet Russia –Or any public sector enterprise-as an elegant example of what I am talking about. Such is the intellectual status of a man arguing against profit motive.
Let’s now, talk of his moral status. What sort of a person would argue against man’s striving for pleasure? He’s the doper, the drunkard, the chain smoker, the woman-chaser, the irresponsible semi-somnambulist wretch. What could be said of his notion of pleasure? Is there any wonder that he finds it expedient to cut it off? Such is his moral status. And such is the moral status of a man opposing profit motive.
We now have to find out what the word ‘social commitment’ is supposed to mean. Parents have commitment towards their child. A man has it toward his wife and the wife has it in back.
An employer has the responsibility to pay his employees as much as he has agreed to pay. Employees have the same responsibility to finish off the work in the best manner possible.
A trader has it toward his customers. A man of course, has to take responsibility for his acts and should live up to his promises. All the commitments above mentioned are individual. No man, but has any responsibility toward the child or woman he just met on the street.
No employer has the responsibility to grant employment to every seeker, nor has any one the responsibility to work for any prospective employer. No one has to trade with all prospective clients. If so, what is this ‘social commitment’ supposed to mean other than living up to the promise of educating the consumers as they had promised? Isn’t it preposterous that the ones, who argue against a man’s responsibility to educate his own child, call for ‘social commitment’ from the part of private educational institutions? Logical inconsistency is explicit when one argues a man should not be held responsible for his acts, but shall be held responsible for the acts of his fellow beings.
Why it is that one should be held responsible for the education of another man’s child?

Is it the high promiscuity in our society which the left liberals are trying to point out?

Every living man prefers life to death. To preserve his life, he ought to think. Man can’t survive by instincts alone. Thinking is man’s means of survival. For advanced thought man should acquire knowledge. All of mans thoughts are based on the knowledge he possesses. Education is the process of acquiring that knowledge. In every moment that man lives he is in the process of acquiring that knowledge. Formal educations consist of only a small part of that learning process. To survive, it is not necessary that a man should be formally educated. Most of the jobs don’t require formal education of any sort. This is not to understate the importance of learning or education. What I intend to mean is that most of education is self-education and formal education is only a small part of it.
It is often said that education is a birth right. It should be obvious that there are no such free gifts. Education doesn’t grow simply in the nature. It is not absorbed from the atmosphere. It is a service and it ought to be provided by some if others ought to receive them as a gift. . It is not possible to make universal education a goal without initiating force against some, and initiating force is a crime. Taxation is violence, plain and simple.

No man should have the right to say that others should provide him with education or the means to it. Nothing is a birth right. No one says that everyone ought to be provided with food and shelter. No one asks whether people would walk naked if government is not to provide them clothes. Yet, no one opposes public funded education. There is nothing unique about education that would make it a birth right. If so, why is it that such a notion is widespread? It is because the state has emitted propaganda which would make it get a hold on children from the beginning of their lives. If they are taught right from their childhood that their life belongs to the state, it would be hard to take that notion away from them. They would cling to it, like a neurotic. If anyone later tells him that is not the case, they would act as if just a button has been pressed and they have suddenly turned helpless and neurotic.

Public funded education is just a trick of the state and its parasites to control the minds of its citizens. Remarque was right when he said the First World War was created by the tricks of schoolmasters. Bonheoffer was just being honest when he said the Second World War was the inevitable product of good schooling. Mises wasn’t amusing himself when he said “A healthy illiterate is always better than a crippled literate.”He most certainly meant it.

Education is largely controlled by the state in most part of the world. Even in private institutes, the syllabus is decided by the government. Currently, what is taught in schools and colleges as social sciences is mostly government propaganda. Competent teachers in the humanities either have to go without jobs or teach at lower rung institutions. If education were taken from the clutches of the government the schools would compete in deciding their curriculum and finally reach closer to the objective truth.

It is a wide spread myth is that due to government funded education, children who would have no chance of getting an education otherwise gets a chance-that they get a fair start in life. Nothing could be farther from the truth. On a free market, where there is no taxation, regulations, unemployment and inflation-where there is free trade and high capital investment, no one other than lazy bums would be incapable of providing their children with education. Even in the hampered market that we have, there is overwhelming evidence that private unrecognized schools teaching slum children are three times as better as public schools. What the proponents of public education forget is that the money spent on public education is taken from the tax payer and taxation hampers production and reduces the incentives to produce. It reduces wages in the long run and hence makes private education out of reach of most parents who otherwise would have been able to pay for private education.

One of the most fallacious arguments in favor of public funded education is that all children should given ‘equal opportunity’. Left liberals have given their own twists to Adam Smith’s views on the subject. Some of the modern classical economists of now, and the previous century, including Milton Friedman are of the same opinion, which brings into contradiction all of their views. Even Bentham believed children are to be given a firm foundation in Utilitarianism. Come On. Let’s define our terms. What is meant by ‘equal’? What is an ‘opportunity’? How could two children born to different parents be given the same opportunity? Could they be given the same opportunity, even if they were born to the same parents, if born in a different time-space? Aren’t opportunities floating around us all the time? Are they to be thrown into ones lap or to be seized?
It’s usually asked “What would become of them who are not willing to educate their children? Such a question might as well be put as “What would become of the masters if the slaves were let free?”

And the answer is: They’d starve.

So, it has come. Many have been awaiting it, to rejoice, a few, thought, it shall never come. Fewer never bothered. However, it is going to affect them all.
I am speaking about the new education bill proposed. The first remark to it is, it is not a novel idea, in no way it is. It is the result of all the small ideas, the small steps taken. Now, with one sweep, it will be established, no one will oppose, no one will see what’s going wrong, no one will say anything against, and no one will hear about the wrong.

What is the name of this idea?

“Free and compulsory education for children”

Yes, free, and compulsory. Through the 86th amendment, the children got the right. The children are human beings, from age 6-14.
If we dissect this idea a bit, we shall see that through this right, we are also introducing compulsory education. What does that mean? If you do not want to study, you shall be forced to study. You shall be educated, with or without your consent. You are not grown up enough to give consent. Who decides? The state, of course.

Now, the child, who worked hard in the tea shop shall go to school, his standard of living shall improve. The dream that he had, to work and open his own shop after a few years shall be erased. It is not right to have such dream for him. All men must have high ambitions. The child who worked, because there was nobody earning in his home, shall go to school. We must feel for those poor children. They work when ours go to school. They are earning, when ours are learning. What shall happen to his family? Who shall feed him? That shall be dealt when we bring a new law, making food a basic human right.

Now, when this bill is passed, all our children shall be educated. All shall be able to solve algebra, when they are lying hungry, because he does not have any money to buy food. He shall accept this philosophically, as he is educated now. Education is a virtue, it required sacrifices. He has sacrificed. He has been made to sacrifice.

There shall be a vast number of children going to school. Are there enough schools for these children? Oh yes, we have. We shall make the privet ones share the burden. Education is not a commodity. It must not be sold. It is a virtue. It must be given free. Then how shall the private schools exist? Well, it shall take money from the wealthy children. Why? Because they can afford to buy it, so they MUST buy it. Nevertheless, does not this kid have a right to free education? Well, he may come to government ones.
The schools shall not choose the student. They shall not screen. Some people are good students because of their genetic make-up, they have no right to be given preference. No body has any right to discriminate. Those who are not good enough shall have everything equal to the good ones.
“THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE WORLD”

There shall be no exams. Nobody has the right to decide whether one has learned or not. Nobody has the right to award the working, the studious. The studious has no right to celebrate his victory. He shall not be given a battle to have a victory. All shall be equal.
When they will come out of school, all will be equal, the good brought to the label of the inferior, through years where every single occasion when he proved to be better than others were erased. The good shall come out not knowing he is good. Thus, there shall not be anybody who is better than the rest. This is equality.

It has been six years since the 86th amendment was made. Why haven’t it been passed? Because, the bill did not mention the funds required, or was very vague about it. Now it is clear, it requires minimum of Rs 3, 21,196 crore to a maximum Rs 4,36,458.5 crore over six years. Not a small price to pay, but, when there are so many good things about to happen, the price shall be paid. By whom? Those who would not be benefited by it. Now, we should not oppose it. We are not.
Through out ages, mediocre have ate out of the hand of the creator. Now, India seems to feel that it can do away with creators’ altogether.

Why this idea is being criticized has been discussed in this site. The reader is being requested here to think, why the government never privatizes health and education.

We the educated elites of India, no not those who can read and write, not even those who have a degree to flaunt and qualifications that can fetch them good salaries in a job market. It is a severe misnomer that most carry about the term education, it being some structured syllabus taught only in schools. In Indian context one may add ‘Government recognized schools’. Thereafter the individual must pass certain examinations and should hold relevant certificates to as a proof of that. If the above mentioned conditions are met, a person is supposedly educated so to say. I beg to disagree though on this account.

I would like to draw a distinction firstly between literacy and education. A person who can read and write is literate. Literacy however by no means can be equated with education, and neither is literacy a precursor or a mandatory requirement for actually judging a person educated. The ability to read and write is nothing but just a tool, it gives us access to plethora of written material. We can use that tool to widen our sphere of knowledge, interact through books and other written media with people of our age and those who are no more amidst us but their thoughts, brilliance of ages that has percolated through books. This tool can be used effectively so to say in our process of educating ourselves. It is however wrong to claim that without it we could not achieve this feat.

Secondly I would like to bring out the difference between qualification and education.
I address the term educated to people who simply have two attributes. Firstly they have a mental faculty so trained and developed to apply it with reason and logic to any situation presented to them. Secondly some life skill they have mastered so as to perform certain useful role in society. One may ask is an illiterate farmer in some village educated, as per me he well may be. If he has trained his mind well enough to judge rationally and react aptly to his environment, which includes people whom he is dealing with. Along with that he is good at his chosen profession he is by all means educated. He may not be aware about Indo-American nuclear deal, but is aware of which crop to sow when, knows how to judge soil and skies, so as to be successful in his endeavors of agriculture, he is definitely educated.

One may ask that such a person however is unequipped and unaware of various new schemes that government is bringing in for farmers. He may also be duped by some conman to take loans that he cannot repay, so and so forth. Will all that not construe as lack of education. My argument on the issue is simple, we the so called educated people, are we aware of all the policies that government brings forth. Are we not equally susceptible to falling in debt traps? We all have a sphere of knowledge around us which we endeavor to expand to a level of reasonable comfort. At this level of knowledge we are able to perform almost every day to day activity without wondering as to how or being lost. This level however varies from person to person, and that makes our individual knowledge about various issues different. If the farmer feels uncomfortable with his level of knowledge he would by all means try and expand it. He will ask people whom he trusts. If nothing satisfies he would learn how to read and write and thereafter through written media increase his knowledge to this level of comfort. Everyone does that when we go to a new office first day of work, a bride when she goes to her new house. Education however comes into play as to how fast we become aware of the changing environment and gear up to tackle it and of course how we actually go about tackling it.
A farmer of Vidharbha and a techie of Bangalore who commits suicide at the same time lack education in same life skill, which make them, take such harsh and self defeating decision at the time of peril. Many may ask farmer may have been lured and duped by some conniving man on the pretext of him being illiterate and uneducated, well then what about the techie who was duped almost in similar manner by some bank or credit card firm or stock market?

A degree simply does not make any one educated. It’s simply a qualification that may be highly lucrative in a job market. Job market simply works on the principle of demand and supply, as long as supply is limited demand is high and there is value for a particular product. Suppose we manage to give everyone a particular degree, whatever it may be, it won’t fetch the money it does on today’s date.

With such an elaborate introduction as to what is education and what is not, I would like to once again raise question on the wisdom of Indian government declaring education as fundamental right and trying to ensure compulsory education (so called) to all children. Frankly it would be foolhardy to believe that a syllabus consisting a bit of maths bit of science, arts and literature is a foolproof way to educate whole of India. Indian education system was borrowed from the English, who had in turn developed this system not as some universal education scheme but more or less for aristocracy and office bearers I won’t include scientist and inventors because most of them during those days were school dropouts. I am not challenging the efficacy of the scheme, a fair blend of all subjects till the pupil is reaches a stage of maturity to understand what is really his liking and thereafter specialization in those specified subject is absolutely an excellent concept. It is however not universal, it caters only for certain specific job requirements and it definitely does not impart any specific lesson in the other vital life skills that I elaborated above. Most people do learn it, but education system cannot take credit for it.

The second requirement of education that I mentioned that is ‘qualification’ is a market based requirement. Society is a fabric, a well oiled machine; for it to run well free market principles need to be adhered to. Simply put, where ever there is demand you need to supply it with replacement. Now if we look at our society we would notice that it essentially does not consists of people with graduation certificates and various university degrees in hand. There are various kinds of jobs equally important that needs to be addressed so that we have this machinery up and running. Individual may choose for himself what task he likes to perform, but cannot relieve himself of the responsibility of performing one. If he does not then he is a dead weight on the rest. Now the jobs with degree and qualification appear lucrative and better, that is simply because there is high demand for these and we still don’t have enough of them. It does not however imply that this demand has no limits or saturation. They on reaching saturation will become less lucrative and excess products’ (graduates) will be rejected by the market (society) and we will have unemployment.

In democracy however government tends to get motivated by policies of mass appeasement. In our society such white collared jobs are held at very high esteem everyone wants that for their kids. In such scenario it seems like exceptionally people friendly policy to go about declaring education a fundamental right and spending billions on it. All short term goals work in incumbent governments favor, building schools, creating employment (as in teachers and staff), providing meals and economic incentive, all seems such a philanthropic act that the government can boast about. Results are visible in five years makes it even more attractive, what people fail to see and governments simply do not want to see is that they are simply destroying the social fabric of a period 20 years from now. Luckily our government is so inefficient they would never be able to achieve any task they set forth ;we may not fact this problem in such acute a way.

Unemployment in white collared job sector will however be tremendously high in the times to come because of this non adherence to market principles. Other philanthropic argument which I need to counter is that governments actions ensure equality in society, even poor kids get an opportunity to study, well according to me had we had a non interfering government we would have had simply enough private schools coming up to meet the market demands. For sure no private school would give reverse incentive to teach children or force it down anybodies neck but definitely a competitive low price schooling market would have flourished in India. One which for sure would have been better than the present government schools for sure.
Lot of statistics are available on net freely for anyone to go through on net which depicts how government is mindlessly wasting billions of tax payers money on such self defeating philanthropic missions. Government however cannot be blamed for these in a democracy but we the people who somehow are led to believe that these actions would help in building a better nation. We overtly get philanthropic and emotional without understanding the true implication of such government steps. We are led to believe that only those who have entered the portals of schools are educated and more so with all these process we will build more prosperous and stable nation. It’s time we do a reality check on these stupid claims and refute it, not everyone perhaps but at least we the so called educated elites of India.

Update: I am adding this excerpt that happen to come across today….in brief words it echoes what I was trying to point out throughout my article. How a policy that seems excellent in short run especially in regards to a particular community is failing us in long run. Read it and try and evaluate the present education policy on Indian government in this perspective

In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.
Yet when we enter the field of public economics, these elementary truths are ignored. There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: “In the long run we are all dead.” And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.- Henry Hazlitt ~ Economic in One Lesson

The distinction may seem obvious. The precaution of looking for all the consequences of a given policy to everyone may seem elementary. Doesn’t everybody know, in his personal life, that there are all sorts of indulgences delightful at the moment but disastrous in the end? Doesn’t every little boy know that if he eats enough candy he will get sick? Doesn’t the fellow who gets drunk know that he will wake up next morning with a ghastly stomach and a horrible head? Doesn’t the dipsomaniac know that he is ruining his liver and shortening his life? Doesn’t the Don Juan know that he is letting himself in for every sort of risk, from blackmail to disease? Finally, to bring it to the economic though still personal realm, do not the idler and the spendthrift know, even in the midst of their glorious fling, that they are heading for a future of debt and poverty?

In this lies the whole difference between good economics and bad. The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups.