India’s Future
India missed out on two revolutions which brought prosperity to some nations (especially those in the West) in the 19th and 20th century: the classical liberal ideas centred around individual and constitutional constraints on government (with Adam Smith as the guiding light, along with the likes of Mises, Hayek, Friedman and Buchanan) and the Industrial Revolution (which multiplied human productivity). This is what lifted many hundreds of millions out of what had seemed until then as perpetual poverty. Liberalism, entrepreneurship and technology (especially in the harnessing of energy) created the modern world as we know it. And India, colonised first by the British and then subjugated by its own leaders after Independence, remained poor. 75 years after the British left, the per capita income of Indians is only $2,000, a sixth of the world average. Indians have created wealth for themselves outside India (the household income of Indians in America is the highest among all ethnicities) but have not been allowed to do so in India.
Even as the liberal world order faces challenges, India has this moment in time when it can rise. A politically stable and secure leadership can free Indians and open India to the world. A decade of breakthrough ideas like Dhan Vapasi, low taxes, protecting property rights, enablement of education, decentralisation of powers to cities, freeing agriculture from all its constraints, removing trade barriers, ensuring speedy justice and contract enforcement, and eliminating all discriminatory laws can see India rise rapidly to middle-income levels. [For more, see my Nayi Disha writings.]
The next Mont Pelerin Society general meeting will be held in India (New Delhi) in September 2024. The theme is apt for countries like India: “Freedom for the Next 6 Billion.” India needs the vision and ideas that MPS embodies. The intellectual heft of the MPS can be India’s guide as it seeks a roadmap to enable wealth creation for 1.3 billion Indians. Every other system to engineer prosperity has failed; it is only an environment of freedom with minimum government that creates the incentives for people to flourish. As the title of a book by Dierdre McCloskey and Art Carden puts it: Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich. Indians do not need another welfare scheme or subsidy or handout; what they need is economic freedom. Prosperity is the best legacy any leader can leave.
It all begins with the right ideas. As Mises wrote in 1957, “The genuine history of mankind is the history of ideas. It is ideas that distinguish man from other beings. Ideas engender social institutions, political changes, technological methods of production, and all that is called economic conditions.” Forums like Mont Pelerin Society are the incubators of ideas. We, the educated in India, have a responsibility to take these ideas, which are so aligned with human nature, to the people. A free and rich India can be the real Vishwaguru. With the West caught in the aftermath of its own financial excesses, with Russia and China being led astray by authoritarian leaders, India has a unique opportunity in its 75th year to transform itself (as this book by Atanu Dey explains). India’s Amrit Kal can become truly that if Indians embrace the ideas of freedom – not just political independence, but real economic freedom for every Indian and in every action. This is the Nayi Disha India needs.
