Theft in the name of development and industrialization

The Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board [KIADB] plans to acquire (grab) 3,300 acres in Halligudi village, Gadag District off National Highway 63, about 500km from Bangalore. The farmers obviously are very upset and they say 72% land is fertile, won’t give up

This news is making all the headlines.

I went to the KIADB webpage to see what they actually do. The home pages says"KIADB - The land provider" whose land does it provide ? KIADB owns no land it always seizes someone else, mostly farmers who are politically less powerful.

KIADB describers it self as "a statutory body, constituted under Sec.5 of Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Act, [KIAD Act] – 1966, which provides for expeditious acquisition of lands for industrial and infrastructure purposes. KIADB, besides forming layouts with all infrastructure facilities for promotion of industries, also acquires lands in favour of various State & Central Govt. Departments/Organizations and Single Unit Complexes, for setting up their projects on stand alone basis."

This is legal plunder, the rotten idea that government can anytime snatch private property and provide just compensation, is arrogant and the worst form of abuse.

Bastiat in the great essay "The Law" says the below on legal plunder.

"It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them."

This is not the first time government land grab is happening......it is doing it all the time in the name of industrial parks, SEZs, STPs, development corridors and other supposedly public goods and development projects.

There are many who view it as OK for government to acquire land  for development purposes, what these people do not understand is once you give such power to the government, it is bound to abuse it. Friedman says "Power to do good is also power to do harm". As in this case and many other before..... the government purposely abuses property rights.We should be very skeptical of power and anything that takes away decision making from the individual.

We indians urgently need to learn the importance of property rights and the significance in preventing power abuses besides promoting peace and prosperity.

An excellent post by Amit Verma

Author, blogger Amit Verma in this post calls for India’s Second Freedom Struggle.

It is a must read, he lists about 8 things to be accomplished. I also would like to see the Reserve Bank of India discharged of its evil duties of printing money (inflation) and debasement of our currency. This harmful institution is the source of all our inflation woes and is causing enormous damage to all of us by transferring wealth from poor to very rich, increasing poverty, making the old & weak suffer as they loose their purchasing power.

Dear Citizens.....Weep on our country's current state of affairs

I sulked as I opened today's TOI newspaper.....The headline goes "NAC sticks to its stand, finalizes draft food securitybill"

Some highlights of this food security bill

• Requires the government to cover 90% of the rural population and 50% of the urban population in its final phase  
• Requirement of food to rise to 63.59 million tonnes annually
• Needing a total subsidy of nearly Rs 80,000 crore, up from the subsidy this year of Rs 56,000 crore
• Each "poor" family will have right to 7 kg per person (equal to 35 kg per family) with rice at Rs 3 a kg, wheat at Rs 2 a kg and millets at Re 1 a kg.

Dear fellow citizens expect massive corruption, endless money printing (inflation), more dependent citizens, even more poor people, rotting food grains in govt. godowns, shortage in food grains, significant increase in food prices and violence on the streets. This bill will do nothing to decrease poverty, malnutrition or reduce hunger.

If poverty & hunger could be have been solved by giving out subsidized food financed by printing money. By now, India and the world would have already seen an end to these difficult problems.

After a few years anticipate a revised version of this bill with a new name and even more draconian measures and much larger spending. These economically ignorant elite civil society members of this evil institution called NAC will not be accountable they would be long gone or be in another government committee dreaming up some other "welfare" scheme.

We Indians have seen such ineffective schemes before…… alas…………. we have never learnt anything from them.  Friedman  advised us “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

Besides, I have serious issues with this illegitimate institution called NAC, a group of 14 people who have the wrongful right to come up with bills....... which they think are right for rest of us billion+ Indians...... arm twist the government into passing it as laws of the land.

I do not consider this freedom; we are a country ruled by elites who have their own visions, agendas and world views that they are forcing on rest of us using force. They are self serving and far removed from reality.

What Did You Learn In School Today

Depressing but honest

Silly obsession with democracy

Justice Santosh Hegde says "All are equal in democracy"

Democracy is how we elect our government. We Indians think that democracy is a great thing it is a national obsession, all the headlines read..... India the world's largest democracy...I say what rubbish. 

These "intellectuals" who shape the opinions of the masses are dangerous to our country. They give us all a false impression and sell us this illusion of democracy. 

As I said Democracy is just a method of electing government, it does not ensure liberty  (only form of real equality) and freedom .........we can have.....like we do in India a democratically elected but tyrannical government hijacked by thugs (politicians) and lazy bureaucrats.

Friedman says "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both"

We need to think about on the role, function and structure of government and then talk about how we put in place the government. India is a democracy and of course all are not treated equally.....people with power and money rule over the land. Everyone is equal when the role of the state is limited to protecting everyone's liberty.

In India we have a government with Unlimited powers...power to grab property, power to inflate, power to tax and the most evil power to kill. The government of India freely excises all this power and abuses the citizens every day.

Today's power of government of India is a legacy of the British rule, now the Indians are using the same power to rule over the rest. It’s always the congress rule, BJP rule or UPA rule etc.,

The day to celebrate will be a day when the massive powers of the sates are taken back the bureaucracy dismantled the Reserve Bank of India and Income Tax Department shut down. Liberties are restored to individual and private property protected. So the individual can lead a life of dignity without being abused by people with power.