Outline of a Marxist/Friedmanian theory for India/Pakistan/Bangladesh etc, even perhaps China too (except the Marxists will not find it)…

April 13, 2011 — drsubrotoroy

I should admit I think there is a Marxist theory for India/Pakistan/Bangladesh etc (perhaps including China) yet to be written except it will never get written by any Marxist as they tend to be innocent of all normal economics; it has to do really with Marx’s idea of a vast indeed unlimited ‘reserve army of labour’ in the rural areas which through migration keeps the general structure of wages low throughout the economy, and hence allows the technologically advanced “leading”/comprador sectors to be attractive to the outside world and hence generate scarce foreign exchange, which is then controlled quantitatively in its expenditure to pay for weapons’ imports, shopping malls, elite consumption etc. while a debauched local currency is made to preside over the abysmal and unreformed public finances…. It is a steady-state equilibrium that can continue indefinitely as the land is fertile enough and the climate agreeable enough for the rural poor to always have subsistence wages sufficient for consumption, growth and reproduction… Just a thought…

On second thoughts, it is a Marxist/Friedmanian theory that I have outlined, as at its core is not merely the reserve army of labour but the distortions caused by an externally controlled and internally debauched money.


My 200 words on India’s Naxal guerrilla rebels that a “leading business magazine” invited but then found too hot to handle

April 26, 2010

“Public finances in India, state and Union, show appalling accounting and lack of transparency. Vast amounts of waste, fraud and malfeasance get hidden as a result. The Congress, BJP, official communists, socialists et al are all culpable for this situation having developed – over decades. So if you ask me, “Is the Indian state and polity in a healthy condition?” I would say no, it is pretty rotten. Well-informed, moneyed, mostly city-based special interest groups (especially including organised capital and organised labour) dominate government agendas at the cost of ill-informed, diffused masses of anonymous individual citizens ~ peasants, forest-dwellers, small businessmen, non-unionized workers, the destitute, etc. Demarcations of private, community and public property rights frequently remain fuzzy. Inflation causes non-paper assets to rise in value, encouraging land-grabs. And the fetish over purported growth-rates continues despite measurements being faulty, not reaching UN SNA standards, probably hiding increasing inequalities. India’s polity and economy are in poor shape for many millions of ordinary people. Armed rebellion, however, does not follow from this. Killing poor policemen and starting class-wars were failed Naxal tactics in the 1970s and remain so today. Naxals should put down their weapons and use Excel sheets and government accounting data instead.

Dr Subroto Roy, economist and adviser to Rajiv Gandhi 1990-1991.”


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