Repressive state bad for free market economy

There are enough people defending Dr Binayak Sen, the Chhattisgarh medical practitioner and human rights activist, and they are doing the right thing. It is not necessary to nit-pick that the articulate, liberal middle class from the metropolis is speaking up so eloquently for one of their own.

There is not much doubt that the case against Sen — and it is interesting that not much attention is being paid to the other two, Narayan Sanyal and Piyush Guha — is legally weak. The defenders of Sen are basing their defense not on a point of law, but on the basis of Sen’s credentials as a good samaritan. They are keen to defend his muddle-headed politics rather than his Constitutional right as a citizen of a democratic country.

It is necessary to defend Sen on the basis of his Constitutional rights even if many of us would not agree with his politics, and it is this defense which is of utmost importance to the democratic set-up in the country. As a matter of fact, it is the leaders of business and industry and the anti-leftists, and this would, in a way, mean the anti-Sen lobby, which should come forward to defend Sen’s rights.

If Sen’s friends have an ideological stake in defending him because they religiously nurse the useless pro-poor sentiment which underlies their liberal politics, the critics of Sen have a larger stake of preventing the state from imposing undue restrictions on the thoughts and actions of citizens. It is the freedom to pursue one’s interests within legal parameters that is the keystone of a market economy.

The captains of industry as well as the market ideologues stupidly believe that the state should ensure a strict law-and-order situation that would enable them to carry out their own business activities without any hindrance. That is the presumption of the Tatas in West Bengal, of Vedanta in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh and of Posco in Orissa, and the implication is that those opposed to the Tatas, Vedanta and Posco should be punished, or at least shooed away, for opposing their projects. It would be a disaster if industry were to depend on the policing powers of the state to silence their opponents.

In Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and communist Soviet Union, dubious economic miracles were cited as a good enough reasons to rationalise a repressive political regime. But the economies crumbled in each of these countries as well as in other states with a totalitarian bent of mind because without basic democratic freedoms, it is impossible to sustain economic growth.

Critics of market economy are keen to drive home the point that repressive regimes and business interests go hand in hand. Business for its own selfish — call it enlightened if you like — interests should be on the side of freedom and against the state.

The paradox is this: The private sector wants the state not to interfere in the economy but it wants the state to keep under control its opponents and critics through relevant laws.

On other hand, the leftist liberals want the state to control the economy but leave the political sphere alone. These are biased expectations and agendas of special interest groups. The lefitsts should stop pretending that they are speaking for the poor. They are not. The poor have their own views but we must listen to them and not to their self-appointed emissaries.