How are religion and socialism similar ?

Answer : Both are blind, rigid beliefs. They might have been comprehensively disproved, but their followers stick to their beliefs tenaciously, conveniently ignoring the fact that the world has now changed; socialists ignore the fact that socialism has been tried for decades in N number of countries , stretching from Vietnam in one corner of the world to East Germany in the other. The supporters of socialism fail to realise why did these N number of countries eventually abandoned socialism. The supporters of socialism keep citing the promises of socialism , forgetting that socialism might have had made wonderful promises, but has consistently delivered poor performance, whether in Moscow or in Mumbai. They keep citing the statements of Karl Marx ,especially " from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs ". This habit of theirs ( focussing on the promises , not the performance of socialism ) reminds one of religious people, who have a rigid belief that there religion would bring a wonderful era, forgetting completely that in practice, religion has only brought about hatred, communal riots and social evils like misogyny, dowry practice etc. The supporters of socialism have difficulty accepting the fact that things in the real world differ substantially from what is predicted by a theory. They forget the fact that the socialist system, which promised its citizens free education, free healthcare, and guaranteed employment was brought down not by American warplanes or tanks, but by the strong protests of the people themselves . They fail to understand how such a benevolent system could have been outrightly rejected by the overwhelming majority of people. For understanding the reasons why, one need not book a flight to Moscow or Budapest, our own Great Indian Socialist Republic is a typical example of a socialist mess.

Today, because of the fact that India is still a semi-socialist country, Power and Railways are still in the hands of government monopolies. Because sarkari socialist enterprises have no incentive for satisfying the customer, no incentive either for profit or for efficiency, and have no competition to worry about, they can happily afford to provide inferior, inefficient and obsolete services to the customer. Nothing exemplifies this fact better than the grim power situation in India's cities. The posh locality where i live, continues to suffer from long power cuts, frequent low voltage and voltage fluctuations ; all because Power continues to be supplied by a monopoly.
These problems render the products of capitalism ( the electrical appliances people buy ) useless . And effectively, they serve as a potentially strong disincentive for people to work hard. ( " Why work hard to earn more money if all you can buy with that money are appliances which are rendered useless by india's socialist power enterprises " ?) Have you ever wondered why is there is always a shortage of electric power and train seats, but never a shortage of consumer goods like detergents or shampoos ? Answer : both power as well as railways are run by benevolent golden-hearted socialist enterprises, not by the hungry and greedy capitalist conspirators, who work for profit , not for social service.

But no facts , whether of the poor performance of state-run power corporations , or the impunctuality of Indian Railways, would deter the supporters of socialism from their cause. Their beliefs and commitment to socialism would remain as strong as ever ( one wonders what the supporters of socialism would say if the train they had to board was 6 hours late ). For the supporters of socialism , the words of socialist leaders like Karl Marx are good enough, and they can conveniently forget that the world has changed a lot since the early 19th century. They consider the teachings of Karl Marx and other socialist leaders as beyond questioning or criticism. Not very different from the attitude of religious people , who continue to stick to their delusions , simply because they were revealed the Great Creator in Quran/Bible/Geeta. The fact that almost all of religion's claims, including that of the existence of god, have been comprehensively disproved by science, need not matter to them. For them , the holy words of the Allah/God/Bhagwan are unquestionably true, and any questioning or criticism of them constitutes sacrilege or blasphemy.

Some supporters of socialism , who partially concede the fact that socialism has failed to live up to its promises, say that the poor performance of socialism till now is because of the fact that " Nobody has ever tried pure socialism till now " . May I ask them , what has been preventing the N number of countries, from India to Romania, to implement " pure socialism " ? . Whats more, this stance of theirs seems to be similar to the stance adopted by some Islamic apologists , who say Islam is not being followed in its true spirit , and under " true Islam ", there would be no terrorism or misogyny.

I strongly recommend that the Indian Railways and UP Power Corporation should install a statue of Lenin in its office. Lenin's ideas might have been rejected in his homeland, but they continue to be followed faithfully in this far-off land. I am sure the Russian Government can send some old discarded Lenin statues to the Sarkari Socialist Republic of India.

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.

This article was written by an eminent economist ; it highlights the human tragedy caused by socialist policies followed by India till the early 1990s.

Delayed economic reform killed 14.5 mn children

S A Aiyar,
15 November 2009

The 20th anniversary of Communism’s fall is a good time to estimate the costs borne by countries like India that did not become Communist but drew heavily on the Soviet model. For three decades after Independence, India levied sky-high taxes, strove for self-sufficiency, and gave the state an ever-increasing role in controlling the means of production. These socialist policies yielded economic growth averaging 3.5% per year, just half of that in export-oriented Asian countries, and yielded poor social indicators too.


Growth accelerated with tentative reforms in 1980, and shot up to 9% after reforms deepened in the current decade. How much lower would infant mortality, illiteracy and poverty have been had India commenced reform a decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster growth and human development? I have published estimates in a paper for the Cato Institute (see http://www.cato.org/pubs/dbp/dbp4.pdf). This shows that the delay in reforms led to an additional 14.5 million infant deaths, an additional 261 million illiterates, and an additional 109 million poor people. Indian socialism delivered a monumental tragedy, lacking both growth and social justice.


Economists frequently estimate what would have happened had policies been different. The assumptions on which such estimates are based can always be questioned.


For instance, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has popularized the notion of 100 million missing women on account of gender discrimination in China, South Asia, West Asia and North Africa. These regions have 94 females per 100 males, against 105 females per 100 males in other countries with equal gender treatment. Sen assumed that without gender discrimination, the female:male ratio in the four developing regions would also have been 105:100. On this basis, he estimated that gender discrimination had caused a shortfall of over 100 million females — what he called ‘‘missing women’’.


Sen’s model was so simplistic that he did not send his paper to an economic journal: he published these estimates in the New York Review of Books. Various economists complained that he had neglected other causes of gender differences, and some came out with alternative estimates.


Despite these objections, Sen’s estimate of 100 million became world famous, and his phrase, ‘‘missing women’’, became standard lexicon in gender debates. What mattered was not the precision of his estimates, but the magnitude of the social disaster he was able to highlight.


In the same spirit (but without implicating Sen), i have sought to estimate the number of missing children, missing literates, and missing non-poor arising from the delay in economic reforms. Had reforms started in 1970 rather than 1980, India would have grown faster. In this fast-growth scenario, i assume that per capita income growth in the 1970s would have been what was actually achieved in the 1980s: growth in the 1980s would have been what was actually achieved in the 1990s: and growth in the 1990s would have been what was achieved in 2001-08.


I calculate the rate of change of infant mortality, literacy and poverty with GDP since 1971. I then apply this rate of change to the fast-growth scenario. This reveals what infant mortality, literacy and poverty would have been with faster growth.


In a fast-growth scenario, infant mortality would have been less every year, and in 2008 would have been 27 deaths per thousand births, against the actual 54 per thousand. The cumulative number of ‘‘missing children’’ turns out to be a massive 14.5 million. This is two-and-a-half times the number of Jews killed by Hitler.


I use trends from the latest surveys to calculate actual literacy and poverty levels in 2008, and compare these with literacy and poverty levels in a fast-growth scenario. With faster growth, literacy would have been virtually 100% by 2008, and 261 million more people would have been literate. Again, faster growth would have reduced the number of poor people in 2008 from 282 million to 174 million. This means we have 109 million ‘‘missing non-poor’’ on account of delayed reform.



Doubtless critics will object, as they did after Sen’s exercise, that i have used a simple model that neglects other factors affecting infant mortality, literacy and poverty. Demographer Ansley Coale reworked Sen’s calculations to show that the number of missing women was probably 60 million, not 100 million. That did not dent public horror at the social tragedy that Sen unveiled.


I invite critics to produce more sophisticated models on the impact of delayed reform, as Coale did in the case of missing women. If these more sophisticated models conclude that Indian socialism killed only 10 million children and not 14.5 million, i will shrug. My point about the magnitude of the social tragedy will stand.

Courtesy Times Of India.


another informative article by the same author..


India's great escape from the socialist zoo

S A Aiyar, 18 April 2010, 01:12 AM IST

I view myself as a freedom fighter, who for 45 years has sought to promote every kind of freedom — economic, political and social. "Escape from the Benevolent Zookeepers", a 2008 collection of Swaminomics columns, emphasized that the socialists who led our Independence movement, and then shackled us for decades through the licence-permit Raj, were not evil. Rather, they were golden-hearted leaders determined to banish the poverty they associated with British colonialism.


However, 200 years of colonial subjugation gave them a serious inferiority complex. Lacking confidence in India's ability to export its way to prosperity, Jawaharlal Nehru sought economic independence by retreating from international trade into a cocoon of self-sufficiency, forgetting completely that international trade had made India a world power for centuries before the British Raj.


Critics pointed out that other developing countries like Korea and Taiwan had opted for export-oriented growth rather than self-sufficiency, and been rewarded with 10% GDP growth, thrice as fast as the Hindu rate of growth in India. The socialists smiled condescendingly and said that these countries were neo-colonial puppets falling into an imperialist trap, and had no future. In fact, the supposed puppets soon became richer in per capita income than their colonial master, Britain. India, alas, remained mired in poverty.


Apart from self-sufficiency, golden-hearted socialism sought to protect Indians from the rapacity of businessmen, and promote prosperity as in the Soviet Union through planning and government domination of the economy. So, they made India the land of a million controls. Everything was forbidden unless specifically allowed. Government bureaucrats with no business experience were supposed to know better than any businessmen what should be produced, where, and how. They were supposed to know better than consumers what was good for the consumers themselves. No citizen had free choice in buying anything; the government chose on his behalf the list of goods that could be produced or imported.


Entrepreneurs were forbidden to start a business without a licence, forbidden to import raw materials or machinery without a licence, and forbidden to close a business if it was unprofitable. If any businessman was innovative enough to produce more than the listed capacity of his machinery, he faced a jail sentence for the terrible sin of having dared to be productive. (Narayana) Murthy of Infosys recalls that it took him almost two years to get a licence to import a computer and another two years to get a telephone when he was setting up Infosys in the 1980s.


All in the public interest, you understand.


Insane though it sounds today, golden-hearted socialism held that prosperity would be best achieved when nobody had the freedom to do anything other than what they were told. Citizens were told that the world was a dangerous place, full of predators. So, said the leaders, the licence-permit Raj does not really put you in cages; it puts you in protected enclosures for your own security. In these enclosures we will ensure your basic needs.


They failed even in this. Literacy, infant mortality, life expectancy, poverty and every other social indicator was always far worse in socialist India than in Asian miracle economies (and even in some poor African countries). Vast sums spent on health and education were wasted; teachers and health staff had an absenteeism rate of 18% to 58%, but were protected from disciplinary action by strong trade unions (supposedly the vanguard of socialism). So, the socialist cage gave Indians neither economic growth nor social justice. This remains an area of grave concern: opening the cages will not solve problems of basic education and health, so public-private partnerships may be needed.


The leaders themselves were not caged, of course. Indeed, many zookeepers became incredibly wealthy by using controls imposed in the holy name of socialism to line their pockets and create patronage networks.


R K Laxman had a brilliant cartoon about a journalist interviewing a minister in a palatial mansion. The politician says, "Of course, socialism is applicable to us also. But we have promised it to the people and so must give it to them first."


Everybody agrees we need democracy. Why? Because democracy empowers citizens with the freedom to choose, and this remains invaluable even if it is constantly eroded or manipulated away by politicians. Democracy, warts and all, is far better than a system where supposedly benevolent dictators decide everything.


For the same reason, we need freedom of choice in the economic marketplace. The case for democracy and the case for liberal economic policies is the same: both are flawed systems that are nevertheless better than the alternatives. Both empower citizens through the freedom to choose. No matter how tattered at the edges, freedom to choose is nevertheless better than being put in cages by benevolent zookeepers.


After 20 years of economic reform, the cages have been opened and the enclosures have been destroyed one by one. Have Indians been swallowed by predators, as predicted by the socialists? Have our companies been killed by foreign multinationals or become neo-colonial slaves? Not at all. Indian companies have become multinationals in their own right.


Indian liberalization has created more billionaires than exist in Japan or China. These are mainly people of middle class origins like Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys. Shiv Nadar of HCL was once an employee of DCM, but is now a hundred times bigger than DCM.


These self-made men have beaten hollow Indian business families and multinationals. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once said these newcomers are not the children of the wealthy; they are the children of economic liberalization. Having escaped from the socialist zoo, they have proved that Indians can roam the global jungle proud and fearless. Let us celebrate that escape, that new freedom.

Courtesy TOI.

Was communism equally irrational and silly as religion ?

I was often fascinated by the ( erstwhile ) communist regimes ( like the former Soviet Union )for many reasons, among which was the fact that they were among the very few in human history that have dared to defy religion, and also the fact that they provided an " alternative " setup to the now ubiqutous free-market system. But when i decide to read more about this system, i was amazed how such a ridiculous, weird and irrational belief system had influenced or even dominated the policy-making of so many countries. I was forced to draw parallels with religion, an equally irrational and ridiculous belief system, that , unfortunately, continues to brainwash people's minds even today..

As far as i could understand , communism is just brainwashing.. there is no sound rational or logical basis for its claims, most of which seem outlandish.. consider the communist dictum " from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs " .This eliminates the incentive for people to work hard , since they will continue to get the same reward , no matter how hard they work. Without a profit motive, firms had no incentive or need to provide quality services, and no need to innovate and adapt new technology to satisfy the customer, as they were monopolies , and the customer was forced to buy whatever crap they had produced.. Neither there was any incentive for individuals to work hard -- there was similar pay for both specialized and unspecialized jobs ; and in any case there was guaranteed employment,free housing and medical care ( ..and there was hardly any desirabe consumer product available to buy )* ,Neither there was any incentive for firms to produce quality goods . And there was no market mechanism of knowing which goods are in demand and hence need to be produced.. the managers had no idea of public demand , and the result was both surpluses and shortages ( the latter mostly of consumer goods and food ). And since the State decided what goods to be produced on its own whims and fancies rather than public demand, it diverted a lion's share of the economy to military expenditure.**

This belief system ignores the basic tenets of psychology-- to motivate a person to work hard, it is necessary to provide some incentive -people cannot be forced to work hard for " collective good ". People work hard for their own material prosperity, and performance-based pay serves as an incentive for putting in more effort. And since wokers pooled in their effort for a collective goal, there was no way to identify individual effort ,and hence workers did not bother with productivity as individual contribution could not be measured anyways.

And since there was hardly any attractive consumer products to lure the people, they had few aspirations in life ( compare that to the present day situation ,where one thinks " i will work harder, get a pay raise and buy that new laptop/cellphone/car/dress " )--Consequently , the only collective aspiration of the nation's people was military glorification of the country - hostility toward USA and other western countries. The communist nation avoided trade with foreign countries, since they emphasized " self-sufficiency "--this lack of trade only accentuated Cold War hostilities, and resulted in lots of money being spent in nuclear bombs and missiles.

One can easliy see similarities between religion and communism- both are irrational, unfounded beliefs -- Both promise an ideal state- religion promises " heaven " to the religious and communism promises an utopian world of " guaranteed employment, housing and free healthcare " . In reality , both heaven and the socialist utopia are nonexistent . Both recruit new members to their beliefs by luring them with false promises of heaven or socialist utopia. And they both deride other irrational belief systems ( the different religions deride each other ,claiming themselves to be the "true relgion" of the " true god " , similarly communism was intolerant of any religion -irrational belief systems just like itself )



* " They pretend to pay us , and we pretend to work " -- an ex-soviet citizen succintly sums up the situation.

* " The reason why the Soviet System doesn't work is that the workers dont work " - was the finding of an economist.

** One KGB spy who defected to Britain revealed that 50 % of the economy was devoted to the military . A huge amount of government's money was spent in providing subsidies ( free healthcare, education etc ), leaving nothing for innovation.