Though i am staunchly anti-socialist, i have to concede i found the soviet national anthem to be a superb creation. I noticed how the inspiring song served as an effective propaganda tool : the soviet space glory and picture of Yuri Gagarin were shown along the words " triumph to communism " . This can easily fool a person into believing that communism indeed has very remarkable successes and victories. But ofcourse, you can't keep fooling people for ever : people were clever enough to realise that communism did little to improve things on ground level; despite all the space glory , there were shortages of consumer goods , which were generally of poor quality--communism did nothing to improve people's standard of life.

The Soviet leaders thought that by forcing people sing " Unbreakable Union of Freeborn Republics " , they would actually make Soviet Union unbreakable .They thought that by making people repeatedly sing " mighty and united soviet land " , soviet union would actually become immortal. But alas , that was not to happen. Despite repeatedly singing the lie of " unbreakable union of freeborn republics " , people were not fools, they knew very well that most soviet republics were forcibly annexed by military conquest ( rather than " freeborn ") , and would break apart eventually.

Overall, the song is indeed an excellent creation-- it was very successful in doing what it was designed to do : brainwash people. The inspiring and motivating tune might have provided some rare motivation in an economy characterised by lack of incentives. The song helped to keep the Soviet Union alive .. a concept otherwise doomed for failure.



And in case , you too have been brainwashed by listening repeatedly to this captivating song , please watch this video for a reality-check :



ultimately, the statemtent " the soviet economy doesn't work , becuase the workers don't work " might seem to be too simplistic, but it effectively sums up the great tragedy of communism- the lack of incentives.

I found this valuable document while surfing Wikipedia : This is the Economic Survey of India published by OECD ( organisation comprising of developed countries ) http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/52/39452196.pdf .. .this contains many valuable recommendations for reform in the indian economy, but I am sure few of the recommendations for reform would be acted upon by the Indian government. Indian lawmakers get elected by promising populist schemes of loan waivers and free electricity to farmers.. its very unlikely they would threaten their political careers by pursuing bold reforms. Their primary motivation is electoral success ; economic growth of the nation matters little to their careers.

A critical evaluation of UPA's performance.

Tavleen Singh,columnist with the Indian Express.

As someone whose usual reaction to our politicians is disdain, let me begin by confessing that one of the few for whom I have real respect is the Prime Minister. I have been a fan since the nineties, when he became the finance minister who shook India out of its socialist coma by abolishing the license-quota-permit raj. With socialism enshrined in our Constitution and embedded in our DNA, it was a brave thing to do even if he did it because we were flat broke. So my disappointment in the performance of his second government runs deep. As the only Prime Minister to have been given a second consecutive term in more than forty years, there was so much he could have done to rectify the things that prevent India from becoming a fully developed country.


As an economist, he knows better than you or I that the things that need drastic, revolutionary change lie mostly in what economists call the social sector. Our state schools are among the worst in the world, our public hospitals are horrific, we have more mobile phones than public toilets and this absence of basic sanitation along with unclean water is the cause of most of our diseases. No matter how fast the economy grows, no matter how much money we pour into NREGA, no matter how many airports and roads we build, if we fail on the education and public health front, there is no chance of India becoming a developed country in this century.



Sadly, all that Dr Manmohan Singh’s social sector ministers have done is tiptoe around these problems and pass the buck to the state governments. It is true that primary education and healthcare are state subjects but it is also true that when the Government of India lights up a new path, state governments happily walk down it. Did a single chief minister sneer when Rajiv Gandhi came up with the idea of Navodaya Vidyalayas? And, nobody would sneer now if Kapil Sibal formulates a policy to radically improve state schools. Nor would anyone protest if he did something about the mess in higher education, which comes directly under him. India used to have the best universities in Asia in the sixties and the seventies. We no longer do and the reason is mostly too much government intervention.


It is on account of too much government intervention that we are nowhere near building the 600 more universities that we desperately need. Instead of getting on with the job, the Government of India spends its time banging on about the Right to Education Bill. What use is the right to education if there are not enough schools and colleges?

Indian citizens already have the right to free healthcare but so horrendous is the state of our public hospitals that more than 80 per cent of Indians use private services. Nothing has been done to make things better. Nothing at all. What makes things worse is that, for those who can afford it, private hospitals in India are today among the best in the world. Not only do our political leaders no longer rush to foreign hospitals when they get sick, we receive increasing numbers of medical tourists every year.


If public hospitals are to improve, we need hundreds of thousands more doctors and nurses but government makes it almost impossible to set up new medical colleges. Now that they have caught the criminal who was running the Medical Council of India like a mafia operation, can something not be done to facilitate the setting up of new medical and nursing colleges?


On the sanitation front, it is something of an achievement that the Ministry of Urban Development did a survey of our cities and found that not one of them meets standards of hygiene and sanitation. Now that the Minister has discovered this, could he please come up with solutions? It’s true that every city must deal with its own unique problems but can the Ministry of Urban Development not act as a consultant?


There are other areas in which Dr Manmohan Singh’s second government is not showing dynamism but in my humble opinion, often expressed in this space, there is nothing more important than education, healthcare and sanitation. Everything else will fall into place once we have healthy, educated citizens who live in sanitary towns, cities and villages. Why is India one of the only countries left in the world that has not been able to deal with problems that are so fundamentally important? Why is the Prime Minister unable to make the sort of dramatic changes here that he made with the economy in the nineties? So, in the week of the first anniversary of his second government, I give him no more than four out of ten

Courtesy : The Indian Express.

How Religion and Socialism create disincentives for people to become wealthy.

One of the most important principles of psychological science is that for a person to be motivated to achieve a particular goal, s/he has to be assured that the achievement of that particular goal would bring in rewards that the individual desires. However, in the Indian society, shaped by the two great evils - religion and socialism, many of the desirable rewards are either in short supply or simply not available.

After liberalisation , Indian markets are flooded with all sorts of desirable , superior-quality consumer goods- air conditioners, LCD Televisions, computers , internet connections, and what not. But being wealthy doesn't necessarily mean that you will be able to enjoy these comforts and entertainment-- these devices run on electric power , whose distribution , in India of circa 2010, is still controlled by state-run companies ( for example , the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation , UPPCL, run by the state government in UP ) . These " discoms " are the relics of india's socialist past, and enjoy complete monopoly with little accountability -- they have little to lose if they are not able to supply uninterrupted power-- there is no competition, so the consumer has no freedom to switch to a better alternative, simply because there is none. They need not fear heavy transmission and distribution losses ( including thefts ) , because they know even if they incur heavy loss, they will still be bailed out by the benevolent socialist indian state.

The ultimate result of this semi-socialist setup is that an ambitious person can work hard to become wealthy , but earning huge amounts of money would still not be able to provide him with the desirable comforts of life. You can buy Japanese and Korean air-conditioners and refrigerators , would would still have to rely on power supplied by state-run indian companies to run them . Another similar example is that you can buy Japanese and Korean cars, but still would have to drive them on potholed indian roads and mismanaged traffic conditions. Such a situation can lower a person's motivation to work hard and become wealthy ( why work hard if all you can buy with money are devices that don't work during Indian power failures? )

You can work hard and earn a lot of money , but huge wealth would still not set you free from the archaic norms of indian society . No matter how wealthy you are, you still would have to tolerate the outdated traditions of a religious society. Hinduism seeks to impose restrictions on perhaps all aspects of a person's life-- what a person eats, whom does s/he marry . Even if you are a billionaire , you would still not be able to eat anything containing beef , and sometimes even other kinds of meat... Most international cuisine is simply not commonly available in india, due to all sorts of archaic food taboos imposed by hinduism. even hamburgers and steaks , common foods in the west , are not available for the indian middle class. Sausages sold in india are almost often made of chicken , unlike in the west, where they are made of beef or pork.

You can buy a computer and internet connection , but when you log on to www.shaadi.com ( online matrimonial service ), most of the marriage or dating proposals would be restricted on the basis of caste and even subcaste . Indeed , the caste system of hinduism has elaborate and complicated rules for determining whom a person is permitted to marry-- I once overheard a conversation in an internet cafe in which a marriage candidate was rejected because " Tamil Nadu Brahmins are permitted to marry Kerala Brahmins, but not the other way round " . Indeed , almost all the entries in the " caste no bar " category of matrimonial services is from westernized indians settled abroad. You can earn a lot of money and become wealthy, but still not marry or date the person you like , if you are not of his/her caste. And if you are an atheist like me, you can't marry anyone.

So why work hard to earn a lot of money ? Neither will you be able to buy useful devices and appliances , neither would you be able to eat as per your wishes, neither marry or date as per your wishes .

Indeed , most individual choices and freedoms have been restricted in the holy name of Hinduism and Socialism .

This article was composed in an internet cafe as neither the electric power not the broadband internet connection- both provided by state-run companies - were available at my home at that time.