Presenging my booklet: response from Birmingham, USA

["Dr. Sanjeev Sabhlok" <sanjeev@sabhlokcity.com>]

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One of our good friends on IPI (I will not name him unless he decides to do
that on his own) decided to 'present' my booklet (on IPI's page) to some
Indians in USA in an evening get-together. This is his response. I am not
surprised. When I spoke with India's top CEO's of US firms in US last year
at Palo Alto (courtesy Dr. Parth Shah), except for Kanwal Rekhi and a few
others, all were very confused. This is the result of Nehruvian
conditioning which we are unable to get out of.

Reg. the book Small is beautiful, that has caused more damage to India's
elite than even Gandhi, whom the elite normally ignores anyway. But
following the 'economics' of Nehru + Schumacher (and add Mahalanobis to
that) is a fatal combination whose results are obvious. That was the book I
reviewed for my term paper at LBSNAA when I joined IAS in 1982, being
completely ignorant of economics. I compared it with Ayn Rand's Capitalism:
An unknown ideal, and at that time, due to sheer ignorance, I was persuaded
by Schumacher over the other in many cases, except that I was puzzled at
various places how correct Ayn Rand seemed to be. Experience has taught me
to critically examine theories such as these and my verdict is clearly in
favour of Ayn Rand. My counter (not direct, but related) to  Schumacher is
a small paper called "Myths of Appropriate Technology" which is found on
IPI's publications page.

Enjoy! SS

At 04:49 AM 5/15/00 GMT, he wrote:
>The presentation didn't go well as I expected, the socialist were in the
>ignorant majority and basically they didn't buy the argument that Socialism
>is  evil.
>
>I am disappointed that these people (mainly students) so fond socialism
>choose to live in U.S, never have I seen such intellectual dishonesty.
>
>They agreed with every argument I made regarding competion, need for greed,
>but some how seem to think that "open markets are not good for India".  Such
>blatant blindness. May be there a ignorant, but they quote liberally from
>Prahalat, and Amrit sen, None of whom, I think advocated Socialism, or did
>they?
>
>I think the audience was an igornant bunch of socialists, such a waste of
>time. Oh! I can't stand these people. Democracy and socialism converge in
>ideal conditions according to them.  Enough of the crap about the
>presentation.
>
>I wasn't even able to talk much about the other sections of the book at all.
>  These are lost souls Dr.Sanjeev, I ready to put up with illiterate fools
>not with literate socialist clowns, I am not going to engage in any argument
>with them again.
>
>Have you read the book "Small is beautiful" and what you think about it?
>This book supposedly should help me in opening my mind about socialism it
>seems.
>
>Waste of time I would say,
>
>Any way since you put me trouble, I am going to ask your help with the
>following questions
>
>1) why can't we have a "great socialistic" society like the Europe?  What is
>harm in that?
>2) How do you curtail the so called bad corporate entities lurking allover
>the U.S.(according ot socialists)
>
>Thanks
>Sincerely,


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