Thursday, March 13, 2014

Why has it taken 30 years to understand.

Scorched earth policy was used very successfully by the Scythians against Darius the Great around 500 BC.
In recent years it has been used in various wars, the American Civil War, the Boer War and by Stalin against the Germans in World War II. It is an extremely drastic strategy which results in vast numbers of civilian deaths and as such is forbidden under the Geneva Convention. However, it has always been used as a last resort against an invading army and never against their own people by those in power. Until now. In an article Arvind Panagariya, Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University in the US, has focused on how the Congress is ensuring the complete destruction of the economy so that whoever wins the elections in April will find it impossible to repair the damage and the past 10 years of total misrule by the Congress will look good in comparison. The Land Acquisition Act 2013 has made costs of acquiring land prohibitively expensive by mandating that rural land can only be acquired by paying 4 times the market rate and urban land by paying twice the market rate and everyone must be resettled. Just as MNREGA has caused food prices to rise by double digits by putting a floor under rural wages this Act has made it impossible to acquire any land whether for public projects, such as road building, or for private projects, such as building factories by putting floor under land prices. The only thing it has guaranteed is that the property price bubble will be permanently protected thereby protecting those with black money, namely politicians and civil servants, and makes it impossible for young people to buy their own property, thereby perpetuating poverty. Everything the Congress has done is recent days, such as increasing the handouts paid under the MNREGA scheme, increasing the Dearness Allowance paid to useless civil servants to 100% of basic pay and the setting up of the Seventh Pay Commission is directed towards destroying the economy. Apparently this is because all our politicians are motivated by extreme greed and personal ambition even at the cost of the nation. This was predicted in a book written 30 years ago by V Raghunathan. That is why decrepit old men in the BJP are trying to derail Mr Modi. When we have been saying this since 2009 why did the scholars wait till it is too late. If only they had spoken out before now.

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