This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
It may be a cliche, but apart from a few determined organisations, India’s apalling lack of economic freedom does not seem to bother public opinion enough for it to become an ‘ahem mudda’. Given that the lack of economic freedom affects a vast majority of Indians it is probably due to the abstractness of the concept of economic freedom that it does not allow it to surface as a topic for national public debate. The phrase ‘economic reform’ has hijacked public mind-share, as if reform were a goal in itself.
A century ago, Mahatma Gandhi delivered his most brilliant masterstroke when he was able to encapsulate all the abstractness of political freedom into a simple mantra and package with a simple do-it-yourself tool to help achieve it. There is both hope and despair in this analogy - the good news is that it is possible, the bad news is that it requires another Mahatma. The consensus these days is that Mahatmas are hard to find.
Related Posts: On economic freedom.
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