Pragati August 2009: To be free

Here’s how Shruti Rajagopalan—who, as guest editor, helped to put together this month’s special issue of Pragati—describes its theme:

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

In process of conceptualising this issue of Pragati, I asked the contributors to discuss “how the laws, their enforcement and the judiciary affecting can be reformed in India.” In my effort, I revisited the Constitution to understand the rules of the game and how it affects human action in areas of life as diverse as financial regulation and sexual freedom, and realised that Ludwig von Mises got it right when he said that “the idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom.”

…

The purpose of the issue is not to just to catalogue the various areas that need reform, but also to highlight many ways in which the state infringes on individuals using the legislative and judicial machinery at its disposal. Mises said that “freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.” This has become the reality of the Indian social, political and economic spectrum where no means are left unused to abridge the rights of individuals and their ability to make decisions.

This issue is in defence of our right to think, talk and trade without interference. It is in defence of our liberty. [Shruti Rajagopalan/In Defence of Liberty]

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