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Through Vikram Doctor and Titoo Ahluwalia I received an email about the medieval and abhorrent Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalizes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” with punishment upto life imprisonment. Section 377 is being challenged by various groups in the Delhi High Court lead by Naz India, a Delhi based NGO dealing with HIV/AIDS communication in the queer community.

The Delhi High Court initially tried to avoid the case by throwing it out on the grounds that Naz India had no locus standi on the issue. But they appealed to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court declared that the Delhi High Court’s decision was wrong and that it would have to hear the case.

This petition is now due to come up again in the Delhi High Court in the middle of this month, and they want to make a public statement on how absurd it is still to continue with this colonial era law that should have no place in a modern India. To this effect they have got the support of many prominent people, starting with Vikram Seth, the writer, Swami Agnivesh, the activist, Nitin Desai, former UN Under Secretary-General, and Aditi Desai, the sociologist who drafted the statement. Since then a number of prominent people have signed it (a brief list is below). They’ve somehow scraped together some funds and are planning to print the letter with the signatories names, as a full page ad in a Delhi paper next week. I’ve already signed the letter and would exhort my readers to sign it. You could do so simply by sending Vikram an email [vikdoc at gmail dot com] agreeing to have your name included in the list of supporters.

(Most of the text in this post is adapted from Vikram’s email) 

Continue reading ‘Criminalizing consensual sexual acts between adults of the same sex’

The next Bombay Bloggers Meet will be held on Saturday, April 29, at 4 pm at the Cafe Coffee Day, Nirmal Lifestyles, Mulund, Regal Barista on Colaba Causeway, I have the pleasure of announcing that Nitin Pai of the Acorn will be flying down to Mumbai just to meet up with all of us!

Important Update: Due to unavoidable reasons, the venue for the Blogger Meet has to be changed from Mulund to the Regal Barista. I apologise for any inconvenience caused. Please do note the change. The time remains the same: 4pm. I hope to see many many bloggers this Saturday.

The gross miscarriage of justice in the Jessica Lal case is symptomatic of the fact that Indian socialists have an extremely warped notion of the role of the state. Nehru wanted to make steel; Indira added banks, insurance, mines, airlines and what not; and Manmohan wants the state to teach the unlettered and give jobs to villagers.

To liberals, the only role of the state in a free society is to go after the bad guys – nothing else. Thomas Paine called this ‘common sense’. Thus, Sir Robert Peel, who instituted free trade in Britain, also set up the world’s first police force: the ‘Bobby’ of London is named after him. Similarly, Margaret Thatcher, who privatized with a passion, always insisted that ‘the Tories are the party of law and order’.Our socialists have allowed the criminal justice system to go to seed because to them this was never the most important aspect of the state’s functions. They aspired for ‘the commanding heights of the economy’. A fish rots from the head, and if this fish is so totally and absolutely rotten today, the blame lies squarely on our socialists’ heads.The Jessica Lal case has received media attention, but thousands of murderers regularly slip through the criminal justice system. I can cite the example of two young girls I know, Pushpa and Prabha Nair, whose brother was brutally murdered in south Delhi a decade ago. When his body was found, he had in his clenched fist some of his murderer’s hair. However, when the case came to trial, the prosecution failed to produce this clinching evidence, and the killer walked free. The sisters, who had no parents, lost faith in Indian justice and now keep two huge Dobermanns for protection.

Like the Nair sisters, every Indian must look to private security, because the state’s police looks after ‘national security’, VVIP security, VIP security, industrial security, border security et. al., and completely neglects the real security concerns of the citizenry.

Unlike the state, the market is deeply interested in keeping us alive. The biggest firms in any market economy are insurance companies – and they want their clients to live long and keep paying their premia. These big firms with very deep pockets can effectively substitute the state’s justice system, and radical libertarians have been recommending this substitution for long.

Insurers today protect us from fire, theft, accidents, natural disasters and the like. To this must be added aggression. If, instead of paying taxes for the upkeep of our rotten criminal justice system, we pay premia for aggression insurance, we will be much more secure. How would a case like the murder of Jessica be handled then?

For one, under free-market capitalism, the Tamarind Court would not be an ‘unlicensed’ bar: there would be no licenses at all. Thus, the Ramanis would insure their premises, and the insurance company would insist they hire a good defense agency for private security. These private guards would ensure that a man with a gun is denied entry. Thus, whereas the police only react after a crime is committed, with insurance there would be a great deal of crime prevention. If, despite these precautions, an armed assailant still obtained entry, and then murdered someone, these guards would be responsible for apprehending the assailant and handing him over to the insurance company.

The insurance company would first pay the family of the victim to the extent of the full sum assured. It would also pay the owners of Tamarind Court. Then, it would exercise its rights of subrogation and make monetary demands on both the assailant as well as the private defense agency that failed to keep the premises secure. These cases would be brought before a private arbitration agency, whose decision would be binding. The matter would be decided in a few days, and the insurance company would make good its claims. The assailant would have to pay a lot of money to the insurance company, the victim’s family and her employers. There would be no costs on ’society’, as all costs, from the expenditure incurred on his apprehension, detention, forensics and the arbitration proceedings would have to be paid for by the aggressor. Instead of the state meting out ‘punishment’ in the name of ’society’, this would be ‘justice’ to the actual ‘victims’ of the tragedy. There are no crimes against ’society’; there are only crimes against individuals.

Of course, in a true ‘rule of law society’, which socialist India is not, a similar result could be obtained through tort laws. Jessica’s murder was not pre-meditated, and would be an ideal case for treatment as a tort. Unfortunately, in socialist India, the citizens have no relief in torts. That is why ‘hooch tragedies’ occur so regularly, and there is never any ‘justice’ in the sense of compensation to victims.

We Indians need to think ‘out of the box’ for all our concerns. Our socialist state is a complete disgrace to every notion of ‘good government’. Thus, as with everything else, so too with both protection as well as justice, we must turn to the benevolent market.

A shorter version has been published in today’s Times of India.

The Mises Institute has a thought provoking article on zoning, comparing it to theft.

Zoning uses all the standard interventionist lines of thought, most notably the concepts of externalities and utility. Those who advocate zoning really believe that acting man does not have the ability to create communities that are functional and prosperous. Without plans and maps drafted and drawn by the local elected elite, developers with knowledge and foresight, and a whole lot of money to gain or lose, would purposively layout communities that are sterile and functionless. Only the marginal vote-getters — those elected — and their appointed allies are omniscient enough to peer into the crystal ball and define the perfect setting for future life and leisure. The rest of us can only marvel at their visions.

I’ve been intrigued by zoning / land use planning for some time. On the face of it, sound planning does lead to more beautiful urban spaces. But the eternal question — “why should a small planning elite foster it’s zoning plans on all” — remains.

Architects and town planners, even those professing to follow libertarian principles, treat zoning laws like some sacrosanct holy cow. I remember a conversation with a young town planner at a libertarian seminar and his forceful defense of zoning. His argument boiled down to “Zoning should be a given. There is bad zoning and good zoning, and we must look at ways to highlight the good zoning and curb the bad zoning.” I wonder what he would think if I asked him to replace the word “zoning” with “dictator” in the sentence above.

Zoning laws restrict freedom by contraining the right to private property. They’re often used to keep the “undesirables” out. Why are they justified?

The Freakonomics blog has an interesting letter from a 10 year old in India.

Hello. I am Rohan Patel, I am 10 years old. Your book was amazing! I loved it, but I found one mistake in it. In the chapter “What Makes A Perfect Parent?” it says that changing schools does not have an impact on the child. This is untrue, as i moved from Canada to India. In India the school system is much harder, when I came here I was way behind. I am emailing my friends and they are behind me, what they learn is very different from what I learn. So changing schools makes a huge impact on the child, I myself am an example of this.

We should be so lucky, so lucky…. Before people start jumping and raving about the Indian school system, two points.

1. Rohan most probably goes to one of the best schools in India, most of which are privately run. He’s comparing his Indian school with a Canadian public school. If Rohan went to a government school in India (even the best like what the Mumbai Municipal Corporation runs), I doubt he would be far behind his Canadian friends.
2. The real comparision should not be between India and Canada, but between privately run and publicly run schools. In nearly all cases, we’d see the private school doing better, and from Rohan’s letter private schools in “third-world” India seem to be doing better than public schools in “first-world” Canada.

But what of the scores of Indian students studying in government run schools who don’t have the choices Rohan has? A decade ago, I volunteered at a municipal school in Mumbai and was schocked at the poor standard of education and facilities. There was no Parent-Teacher Association, no art or craft classes, no trips to the zoo. And that was supposed to be a better performing school — at least teachers attended class most of the time! We need to change this. And the Centre for Civil Society’s Education Choice Campaign is a good starting point.

Headlines Today is having a panel discussion on blogging today at 1:30 pm. I’m on the panel along with Sabeer Bhatia who talks about his new blogeverywhere concept, Pawan Duggal, the IT lawyer, and Arindam Chaudhari of IIPM. Watch it if you can. I’ll post a transcript next week.

While considering the merits of the judicial order to demolish over 18000 private buildings in Delhi, a few plain truths must be borne in mind. First and foremost is the fact that overbuilding and overcrowding are not caused by private greed. Rather, they are a result of poor transportation. There is surely enough land in the National Capital Region for every citizen to own a Lutyens-type bungalow, but this land cannot be brought into service because of poor connectivity. This is state failure, because of which builders have the perverse incentive to ignore building bye-laws and overbuild. If there were expressways to each of the 400 towns in the NCR, property prices in Delhi would crash, overcrowding would end, and overbuilding would be unprofitable.

Second: Under ‘natural law’ every landowner is free to build what he likes on his own property. If we sacrifice some of this freedom for collective gain, then that collective gain must materialize. Here, we are forced to conclude that our town planners have actually contrived to destroy our habitat. Delhi is a new city, built from scratch. When I moved there in the late 60s, the posh colonies of South Delhi did not exist. They are unlivable now – only because of poor urban planning. Delhi’s planners completely failed to anticipate the automobile revolution. The localities built by the Delhi Development Authority have ‘scooter garages’. They are swamped by cars today, and there is no place to park. In my book, therefore, it is these DDA localities that should first be demolished and re-built (by private developers). It is also a fact that, as far as urban aesthetics are concerned, nothing could be uglier than the constructions of the DDA.

Third: The judge who heartlessly ordered these demolitions was sticking to the letter of the law. How did these laws come about? Here, we find that babus were delegated powers to pass these rules. They were not passed by any representative body. These laws possess not a shred of democratic legitimacy and only serve the interests of our inept and venal babudom. Thus, the judge was not only heartless, he was also thoughtless, for what will now transpire is massive blackmailing. When faced with a babu armed with demolition orders, property owners will be forced to fork out huge sums. They will live in constant fear and trepidation. Rather than the rule of law, what will transpire is more illegality and insecurity. It will be tyranny of the worst kind, unmatched in the annals of world history. After all, throughout history, people have made laws and created states only in order to protect themselves and their properties. Never have the state and the law been used to destroy private property.

Fourth: As far as the ‘lal dora’ areas comprising ‘urban villages’ are concerned, these have always been outside the purview of the authorities. The original inhabitants of these urban villages actually owned extensive tracts of land that were usurped by the state, for very low compensation. These villagers were kept poor and their villages denied every urban amenity. Hauz Khas, Zamrudpur, Katwaria Sarai, Mehrauli etc. became ghettoes. If they are seeing property development today, the resultant gains should not be denied to these victims of ‘rural development’. Bulldozing constructions in these neglected enclaves is therefore the greatest injustice ever. Both custom as well as the letter of the law do not permit it.

Keeping these four basic truths in mind, this judicial order must be seen as an instrument of tyranny and injustice. Its purpose is also to divert the blame for all our urban problems on private property owners and developers. The authorities who cannot clear garbage, who cannot build roads good enough to withstand Delhi’s scanty rains, who cannot regulate traffic and keep pedestrians secure – it is these authorities whose ‘authorizations’ have secured judicial support. The interests of the long-suffering citizenry have been given a complete go-by. It is typical of the ‘committed judiciary’ of Indian socialism to ignore the property rights of the people. If India desires a future in liberalism, then India will need liberal judges.

Do cities need building bye-laws and zoning restrictions? I don’t think so. If there were relief in torts, building bye-laws would be totally unnecessary. Similarly, a healthy mix of commercial and residential properties in a locality is a natural outcome of liberty, and is in the interest of the residents. Normally, a shopkeeper would build his house atop his shop. Private residents would thus find it easy to shop near one’s home. With zoning restrictions, we are forced to drive to market. Additionally, commercial activity in any area actually serves to raise the property prices of those who own residences there. We can therefore contemplate a future without urban planning – no building bye-laws and no zoning restrictions. All that the city fathers would have to take care of would be ‘public properties’ like roads and parks. Any encroachments on these, of course, should be demolished. Our freedoms end where our properties end. We can then make the whole of India a great piece of real estate.

Reading between the lines of the budget, it was clear the 1,00,000 crore rupees (or 1 trillion rupees) are being stolen from the citizenry by the personnel of ‘the system’, both elected as well as appointed.

50,000 crore rupees (500 billion) are being spent on the 8 ‘flagship programmes’, including the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (or education: building 5,00,000 classrooms and recruiting 1,50,000 teachers), Mid-Day Meal, Rural Sanitation, Drinking Water etc.

Another 50,000 crore rupees are going on subsidies.

These kinds of astronomical figures make no sense to anyone. They are simply too big. 1 trillion does not fit on my big calculator. To make sense of such figures, it helps to look at them like this:

If 1,40,000 rupees were spent each day, every day, since the birth of Jesus Christ, it would add up to 1,00,000 crore rupees!

This enormous amount of money is being stolen from the poor people of India.

Think about that!

This article of mine appeared, in a slightly abridged form, in The Times of India recently. I cannot find the link:

Sexual morality is very big in India. The entire establishment is sexually straitlaced. A couple kissing on the dance floor led to the police closing down a Chennai hotel. Mumbai’s dance bars were shut down by legislative fiat. But hold it there! Is sexual morality that important? After all, these are postmodern times. The prudery of Victorian England is of the long-gone past. These are the days of speed dating, gay and lesbian rights, nudity and permissiveness. In such times, young people must be encouraged to explore the sexual experience and find love on their own terms. Today, the arranged marriage and the joint family (â la Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi) must be seen as detrimental to the prospects of happiness before our youth. But does sexual freedom mean that society will break down? I don’t think so. There is a far bigger morality that is required to hold society together. And the sorry fact is that the sexually ‘correct’ Indian establishment is sorely lacking in this far more important morality. I am speaking, of course, of economic morality, which means earning one’s keep honestly. While sexual morality differs between ages and cultures, economic morality universally is a straight and narrow path, without any permissible deviations. You can either live by producing, or you can live off plunder and theft, extortion and bribery. In the area of economic morality, our politico-administrative establishment possesses no ethics whatsoever. They are all faithful to their spouses, yes, but they are not faithful to their constituents: the people of India. They demand we pay our taxes honestly, but they themselves are not honest when it comes to spending our money on our collective needs. It does not need an inquiry commission to prove that much of the money spent on roads (or armaments) is stolen. It does not require much analysis to gauge that theirs is an ugly spoils system. In a society where most politicians have criminal records, it does not require deep investigation to conclude that every ‘political party’ is a quasi-criminal gang. In such a society, very little harm occurs if we kiss on the dance floor; or, after that first kiss, we progress ‘all the way’ – to Chicago! On the contrary, it is the economic immorality of our ruling classes that is responsible for all the ills our society suffers from. So let us give the youth their sexual freedom, and let us demand of the aged strict economic honesty. That is the bigger morality.

This point was made by me earlier on AnarCapLib, with reference to the MMS scandal.

My column, “Antidote”, which ran in The Economic Times from 1998-2002 is back, this time as a monthly offering on The New Indian Express on Sunday. This time, the topic of discussion is imports, and why “import-promotion” is a very good idea! Enjoy the difference!

Sir John Cowptherwaite was the man responsible for the spectacular rise of Hong Kong, post WW II. He achieved this by refusing to intervene in the economy and doing only those things that a government should - nay, must - do. This great colonial civil servant, of the kind that came to India with the ICS just passed away. A tribute to this shining example of a good bureaucrat can be found here.
The critical difference between a colonial civil servant like Sir John Cowptherwaite and the stupid IAS-IPS types we have today is that the former was a laissez faire, free trade, sound money, rule of law man; while the latter are “control freaks”. Sir John wanted the poor people of Hong Kong to be free to earn money, and, with low taxes, also be able to keep that money, to accumulate capital and invest in in furthering their businesses. Our “control freaks”, on the other hand, want the people to be poor and subservient. Sir John was a true “public servant”, while these morons are predators. The best example of “out-of-control freaks” is the current fuss about Mumbai’s nightclubs, where, apparaently, even having a DJ requires a separate “performance license”: this, apart from the 15-odd licenses required anyway to open a pub. Mumbaikars need to protest. And also quote the superb example of Cowptherwaite’s Hong Kong.

Prime minister Manmohan has hinted at a new pay commission that will significantly raise the salaries of our ‘misproductive’ babus. Which rational Maharaja would jeopardize the health of his treasury by recruiting millions and paying them wages higher than market rates?
Those who worry about the fiscal problems that will surely follow may note that William Niskanen (who theorized that bureaucrats are ‘budget-maximisers’), president of Cato Institute, will be in Delhi this week, as a guest of Liberty Institute. Delhiites should make it a point to hear him.
Niskanen’s theory assumes importance in India, where the fat-cats of babudom have played havoc with the budget deficit.

The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival starts today. And will go on till next weekend. Do come along if you’re in Bombay. And if you can’t, hop over to the spanking new Kala Ghoda Gazette where I’m blogging on the festival along with an illustrous set of co-bloggers with some lofty aims. Join us.

It seems prime minister Manmohan Singh’s honeymoon with the media is finally over. Thank heavens! Here is Sandipan Deb’s hardhitting column on the sheer nonsense that Singh’s press conference was all about. The Indian Express also warns us, in an editorial, that all is not well with Singh’s much-trumpeted ‘rural employment guarantee scheme.

I have an article in The Times of India arguing that the “freedom of expression” is a meaningless right without private property rights. Where these rights are not protected, as in India, many find their freedom of expression violated - like the dancing ladies of Mumbai.

Here is an excellent review of Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God that Failed by Keith Preston, who is billed as America’s revolutionary vanguard.

Another blow for unilateral free trade and methodological individualism - this time from The New Indian Express on Sunday - the south Indian paper.

I have argued for the legalization of cannabis in The Times of India today, based on an “experiment with truth” that I undertook at Devprayag, where the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi meet, and the river thereafter assumes the name Ganga. Enjoy!

Every barbarian knew how to bring a city to its knees: he laid siege to the city. How did he achieve this? Let us take the example of the walled city of Delhi, as it was even 500 years ago, and think up what any barbarian would do to lay siege to the town.

The walled city of Delhi has a few gates: Lahori Gate, Kashmiri Gate, Ajmeri Gate and so on. Outside each of these gates was a road leading to that respective city. Laying a siege on Delhi would mean blocking these roads, so that the city would be deprived all its supplies. Trade and commerce would stop; food supplies would be exhausted – and the city’s rulers (older, established barbarians) would be forced to either fight the barbaric hordes outside or meekly surrender.

Sieges were simple, the product of untutored minds, and they worked precisely because even an idiot knows that no city is self-sufficient: all its needs are met from without.

Which brings me to our current rulers, central planners, “eminent” economists all. They have laid siege to their own cities! You drive out of Kashmiri Gate today and you’ll never hit Kashmir. There is no highway to Kashmir, Lahore or Ajmer today. In fact, there isn’t a road even to Gurgaon, just at Delhi’s border. Ibrahim Lodi hit the highway to Panipat to meet Babar. There isn’t a highway to Panipat today! Every city in India is such. Are these “planners” anything but ugly minds that rule a nation in such a way that each and every city and town is brought to its knees by transport bottlenecks. Our “centrally planned” transportational disaster reveals that there is nothing called raison d’état in India. There is no “reason of state”. It is a state of unreason, as though morons and imbeciles are in charge of our collective affairs. Sher Shah Suri, eminent barbarian, built the Grand Trunk Road from Peshawar to Bengal, still the most important road in North India. Corrupt and evil Roman Emperors ensured that “all roads lead to Rome”.

Because cities are not self-sufficient, and must procure all their needs from outside, it is said that “every great city sits like a giant spider on its transportation network”. As an economist, I believe transportation must get top priority in India, not “education” – as Amartya and Manmohan insist. Put on Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” – that’s my song! Then hear “We Don’t Need No Education” (and certainly not from these morons!).

I have an article at TechCentralStation arguing that India should abandon the WTO and opt for unilateral free trade. There is a lot to gain from this approach, as imports of cheap food, cheap cars (second-hand) and cheap everything else will mean that the possessions of every Indian will increase in a quantum jump. The ‘wealth of the nation’ will rise in ‘real’ terms as every Indian will be possessed of ‘real’ assets.