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C. T. Kurien

The author, Gadfly in the title of the book, was a director of research in the Reserve Bank of India some decades ago, who then flew into the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and then into the World Bank. He has now settled in the United States, fairly close to that country’s capital. In the circle of economists he is known for his incisive and often sharp writings on monetary policy, especially in the context of economic development.

The 80 pieces brought into the present volume are what the author describes as his “unconventional writings”, containing, as he says, “my non-economic reflections on the world around me – good and bad, profound and profane, conviviality and conflict, hypocrisy and honesty, and approbation and opprobrium.” They were originally published from the late 1970s to the early part of the present decade, primarily in the Economic and Political Weekly (as “Potomac Musings”), The Times of India and the Business Standard, that is to say, for an Indian audience.

The 1980s and 1990s were eventful and traumatic – the Reagan presidency in the U.S. to begin with, the Soviet misadventure in Afghanistan, and then the adventures of the Taliban, the radical changes in China, the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the break-up of the Soviet Union, the end of the cold war and the American attempt at global hegemony, the Gulf War, the East Asian Miracle, the spurt of the information technology, globalisation, and, in India, political assassinations, communal riots, and a dramatic change in economic policies. The Gadfly moved into many of these events and situations, briefly though, humming, but frequently giving a sting! In 1990 he recalls some of the heroes of the past, Kennedy, for instance, who “got credit for every discreditable act.” Further, “if Kennedy had not died the way he did, his life would have been worse than his death.”

The humming and sting continue. “Nearer home the hero is Jawaharlal Nehru… Here was a democrat who helped establish a dynasty with first his daughter and then a grandson following him on the throne. He loathed dissent from any quarter… He was a democrat who set shining example of what an ideal democrat should be, by sacrificing his trusted defence minister after the China debacle.”

And, some more. In our country “we define an intellectual as one who does not change, who clings to the past, who lives in a different planet.” But, of course, there are true intellectual heroes as well, Milton Friedman, for instance, whose “place in the world of economics is well assured, not only because of his concepts and theorems, but also due to his demonstration that free market can be an instrument of social justice too.”

The themes dealt with in the collection are indeed diverse. Over 30 pieces deal with comparisons of America, the land of the author’s choice, and India, the land of his birth and early life. Apart from comparison of Reagan and Rajiv, Washington D.C. and New Delhi, there are sharp critical pieces about the homeless in America, about drug addiction, racial prejudice, sexual perversions and crime. The attempt of Indian immigrants to progress materially while holding on to their ancient culture and practices is described, sometimes with humour, sometimes with a tinge of irony.

The pieces on India are almost entirely of the 1990s vintage and, not surprisingly, lend support to the economic reforms initiated and taken forward, rather haltingly and hesitantly, according to the author. A point emphasised is that blueprinting any economic policy has to have the architectural design of political institutions and processes. However, the architectural design is confined almost exclusively to decentralisation, from the Centre to the states and from there to districts and below. If that architecture is to include provision to protect the interests of those mercilessly pushed out by technological and market forces, and who have nothing to fall back on even for daily needs, that issue does not get any recognition at all.

The last section is on the fall of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the break-up of the Soviet Union, and what the author confidently, but not convincingly claims to be the failure of the communist ideology itself. On the fall of the regimes the responsibility is placed squarely on the top members of the party and the bureaucracy who enjoyed special privileges and a luxurious lifestyle while the bulk of the citizens were constantly faced with scarcities and restrictions.

The failure of communist ideology is traced back to Marx’s wrong prediction that capitalism would collapse because of its internal contradictions, and to Stalin and Lenin who tried to take a feudal society straight to a utopian order without experiencing the plenty, prosperity and individual freedom of capitalism.

In the last piece in the collection (written in 1990) Marx makes a visit to Jyoti Basu, commends him for his originality of giving democracy a chance, and making the achievement of socialism through democracy a reality. Marx goes on in this fanciful reappearance and tells Basu: “By your action you have modified the old Marxist clichés about the working class… The era of the working class as an agency of change is over.”

These views of the Gadfly (attributed to Marx) are not merely innocuous flights into fantasy. In the preface the leitmotif of bringing together and publishing the snippets of the past is mentioned: “to recapture my passion, idealism and social awareness in my early youth” which turned out to be disillusioning. His ruminations betray the disillusionment of youth surfacing as caustic cynicism in later life.

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