AAP's Delhi Car Free Day: another stunt

Poor, poor Arvind. One can obviously not blame him for resorting to stunts.

The real problems of the country, including those of people of Delhi, are massive poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, lack of healthcare and good education for the masses. The solution to these problems lie outside the system, but Arvind is within the system.

 So he is left with nothing to do except resort to stunts like Delhi Car Free Day

Hari Om

The New Miracle Man

Just as Narendra Modi was regarded a miracle man at one time, and Arvind Kejriwal later, some people are perceiving and projecting Nitish Kumar as the miracle man now, the modern Moses who will lead India into a land of milk and honey.

 I submit that this is only a pipe dream, which will soon disappear. Leave aside the fact that the new Bihar government is saddled with the stranglehold of the RJD, and assuming Nitish is personally honest, what can he achieve ?

  The main problems of Bihar, as also the whole of India, are massive poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, lack of healthcare, good education, etc. I am afraid Nitish has no idea how to solve these problems.

 Take, for example, the question of unemployment. Now jobs can be created and poverty abolished when the economy is rapidly expanding. For that massive industrialization is necessary. There is no difficulty in increasing production, because India today has a huge pool of competent engineers, technicians, scientists,etc ( which it did not have in 1947 ) and has also immense natural resources. 

The problem is: how will these additional goods produced be sold ? People in India, including Bihar, are too poor and have little purchasing power, and with rise in prices of foodstuffs, etc this purchasing power has further been reduced. After all, the goods produced have to be sold, but how can they be sold when people are too poor to buy them ?

 So the basic question is not how to increase production ( that can easily be done ) but how to increase the purchasing power of the masses ?

 Under the Nazi regime unemployment was largely abolished by a programme of massive rearmament ( see William Shirer's ' Rise and Fall of the Third Reich ' ), which was financed by certain Western powers. But that is hardly possible in India today.

 The other method for abolishing unemployment was that adopted in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. At a time when Western economies were going through a depression following the Wall Street Slump of 1929, the Soviet economy was rapidly expanding. How was this achieved ? The methodology followed there was this : the Central Government fixed all prices of goods. Thereafter they steadily reduced prices of goods by about 5-10% every 2 years or so, and sometimes raised wages by 5-10%. In this way by state action the purchasing power of the people was steadily increased. When prices are reduced, the real wages automatically increase, because incomes are relative to the price index. Simultaneously production was increased, and the increased goods produced were absorbed in the domestic market, because the people had more purchasing power. But this method cannot be used under the prevalent system in India.

 So our 'miracle man', who like a good politician had promised 'vikas' during the Bihar elections, will be compelled, like Modi and Kejriwal, to resort to stunts and jumlas. But sooner or later people will see through these gimmicks, making him very unpopular.

Kejriwal is right

On this issue Kejriwal is right

As I had mentioned in my interview with Rahul Kanwal, how can a government run unless it has officers in whom it has confidence ? After all, it is the officers who have to implement the policies of the government.

Najeeb Jung's claim that he can appoint senior officers of the Delhi government at his own discretion (meaning the discretion of his masters ), and not on the advice of the Delhi Chief Minister, is wholly unacceptable in a democracy.

 Kejriwal's claim that Shakuntala Gamlin wanted to trick his government into giving Rs. 11,000 crores to power companies may or may not be correct. But one thing it certainly proves is that Kejriwal has no confidence in Ms. Gamlin. How, then, can she be thrust as Acting Chief Secretary on an unwilling Chief Minister ?

 As I had pointed out in my interview, Delhi is not an ordinary Union territory like Andaman Islands or Lakshadweep, which have no legislatures or Council of Ministers, but are run by an Administrator appointed by the Central Government. Delhi ( and Pondicherry ) have both a legislature and a Council of Ministers.

  There is no doubt that in view of Article 239AA of the Constitution, which created the NCT of Delhi, three subjects are reserved for the Centre : public order, police and land, while the others are in the domain of the Delhi legislature and administration.

 As regards public services, there may be a grey area, but the ambiguity should be resolved by interpreting Article 239AA democratically, rather than in an authoritarian manner, since admittedly India is a democracy. Hence the Delhi government should have the right to choose officers in whom it has confidence.

  After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England the principle of supremacy of the legislature over the king has been firmly established, and in Shamsher Singh vs. State of Punjab, 1974, a Constitution Bench of the Indian Supreme Court has held that the Indian President or Governors are only like the British king, that is , having no real executive powers except ' the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn ', as Walter Bagehot in his book ' The English Constitution ' mentioned.

 In a democracy it is the people who are supreme, and the people operate through their elected representatives. The President of India, Prime Minister, other Ministers, Judges, bureaucrats, police, army, etc are nothing but servants of the people.The legislature, elected by the people, therefore represents the 'general will' ( to use Rousseau's terminology ) which is supreme. Najeeb Jung, being unelected, is only a servant of the people, and must behave as such. However, as I mentioned earlier, like Faust he has shamelessly sold his soul to a Mephistopheles