Why can we not do the right things?

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. The economy is in such dire straits that there are food riots where people are looting food shops. The currency has collapsed to 1050 to the dollar in the black market while the official rate is 9.95 to the dollar. President Nicolas Maduro blames the opposition for hoarding food and the US for conspiring to topple his government. Since Venezuela imports all consumer products, including food, the collapse in the currency has caused inflation to rise to 524%. The opposition has collected millions of signatures calling for a referendum on Maduro but he is refusing. He has filed a case against a referendum in the Supreme Court where he is sure to win because he replaced 12 judges with his stooges when his party lost the elections for Congress. Although India has never suffered such a crisis, probably because we do not have oil, we should not forget the famine in the 60s, when we were rescued by the US, and the Emergency when Indira Gandhi appointed AN Ray as Chief Justice, superseding 3 judges more senior to him. Hugo Chavez resorted to fixed prices, which pushed goods into the black market, and resorted to subsidies, which took away the incentive for production. One day's minimum wage will buy 227 grams of beef, or 12 eggs, or 1,000 litres of petrol, or 5,100 kWh of electricity, enough to light up a small town. Instead of economic reforms Chavez proceeded to nationalise everything, from farms to supermarkets, banks, telecom, manufacturing companies and supermarkets. Production fell off while corruption boomed. The result is what we see today. This is not a fairy tale or something that happened in the past, like the Cultural Revolution in China. China seems to have learnt a lesson from the ravages of that period but people in India seem have learnt nothing from our history. A former professor writes that there is a crisis in agriculture, a crisis in manufacturing and a crisis in infrastructure. So what are his solutions to all the problems we face? " The role of the government, and the importance of public action, cannot be stressed enough. Without it, growth cannot be sustained, let alone be transformed into development that improves the well-being of the people," he writes. " ...the history of capitalism suggests that success at economic development is observed mostly in countries where governments and markets complement each other and adapt to one another..." The professor forgets that socialism was written into our constitution by Indira Gandhi, the government controls a lot of industries, and we have a plethora of social schemes to distribute handouts to the poor. The mystery is that why he did not write such an article during the 10 years of Congress raj when the economy was being trashed. The knowledge is already there. Just look.