The April 10 post from the much admired Jayaprakash Narayan of Loksatta makes a strange reading:
http://jayaprakashnarayan.blogspot.com/
He first describes his conversion to market economics:
"It is now universally acknowledged that the ‘invisible hand’ of the market is a greater force of common good than the benevolence of the rulers. But even 30 years ago, this was not so obvious. I entered government service as a starry-eyed socialist with great faith in the power and intentions of the State. Then, in early 80’s, my stint as special officer of Visakhapatnam Steel Project, then India’s largest public sector project (Rs 8000 crore), looking after land acquisition, rehabilitation, labour relations and public order issues, cured me of my illusions. I learnt to my consternation that public sector in India is largely the private sector of those in public office, giving endless opportunities for pelf, privilege, patronage and petty tyranny. Mercifully, things have improved since then with progressive expansion of competition and choice. The communications and consumer goods revolution, and accelerated growth are two obvious gains of liberalization."
He then goes on to say that market cannot be the panacea to all problems and pins his fath on philanthropy:
"But that is not how the capitalist West behaves! The charities of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are known to all. The great North American Universities of Harvard, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Stanford, McGill, Duke, Illinois Institute of Technology and Vassar College were all built through private charities. Smithsonian Museum, and several foundations – Ford, Kellogg, Rockefeller, Mellon, Carnegie and Kresge – are all promoting public causes with private funds. Those wealth creators understood the best value their money could get, and pursued public causes with vigour."
See http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/2007/04/behind-veil-csr-corporate-philanthropy.html for some of the problems with this approach. The approach of Loksatta of fighting corruption , raising public awareness, building social capital have been much admired and according to World Bank reports have reduced corruption in many cases. I am not sure whether faith in philanthropy is a substitute for the more difficult path which JP followed earlier.
