4th Annual Indian Liberals Lecture 2025 | Confused Indian Liberal Elites | By Praveen Chakravarty

4th Annual Indian Liberals Lecture 2025 | Confused Indian Liberal Elites | By Praveen Chakravarty

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecltgku7DNQ Duration: 3887.9s

Speaker 1 (00:00): There can be illiberal economic policies that foster growth and liberal economic policies

Speaker 2 (00:08): that hinder growth. So should growth always come before liberalism or should liberalism be the first objective?

Speaker 3 (00:19): This is the dichotomy of the confused Indian liberal elite today. Hello everyone, good evening. Welcome to the fourth annual Indian Liberals lecture to be delivered by Mr. Praveen Chakravarti. At the Center for Civil Society, since our founding in 1997, we have been delivering policy training programs, the Liberty and Society seminar, now called iPolicy. Through these seminars, CCS trains students in the liberal approach to public policy to inspire an appreciation for individual freedom and free markets on the road to becoming liberal champions. We now have over 12,000 alumni over the last 28 years. I am very glad to see several of our star alumni champions join us today in the room.

Speaker 4 (01:11): These programs have been very successful, if I say so myself.

Speaker 5 (01:16): But we were often challenged that these classical liberal libertarian ideas are not Indian and are foreign and western and do not apply to the Indian context. So ideas of individual freedom and people’s ability to engage freely with each other to exchange can’t be foreign.

Speaker 3 (01:35): This challenge inspired us to locate and gather the often forgotten voices of Indian liberal thinkers.

Speaker 2 (01:41): Liberal writers of prominent liberal thinkers like Meenu Masani, Rajaji, Palkhiwala, A.D. Shroff, Bia Shenoy, Shara Joshi, among many others, were largely missing in the contemporary discourse. To correct for this, we launched the Indian Liberals Project in 2015. The platform today serves as a publicly accessible repository for scholars, students, and citizens interested in exploring India’s rich liberal intellectual heritage.

Speaker 3 (02:10): Our initial focus was on preserving and digitizing these works to prevent them from getting lost. I am happy to share that we have made significant progress in achieving this goal. The Indian Liberals Archive now has over 50,000 pages of liberal works digitized and available for free, thanks to our supporters. Some of the liberal works are also available in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali. We are now in the process of adding another 20,000 pages of liberal works. We are taking the next logical step, which is to disseminate these ideas to a wider audience and reintroduce liberal principles into contemporary public discourse. The annual Indian Liberals Lecture is an important part of this effort. Our three past speakers have used this platform to, one, make a case for individual liberty in India, ponder on the scope for political liberalism in India, and even to share the dilemma of an Indian liberal.

Speaker 5 (03:07): Our speaker today will share his thoughts on the topic of the confused Indian liberal elite.

Speaker 2 (03:15): His lecture will be for about 40 minutes followed by Q&A.

Speaker 3 (03:19): I’m hoping that we, you know, take notes during the lecture and ask pointed questions. I’m honored to introduce Praveen Chakravarti to you as a speaker for the Indian liberal lecture 2025. 2025. Pravin Chakravarti is a senior politician with the Congress party. He is also a visiting

Speaker 2 (03:39): professor of political economy at Ashoka University. Before his foray into politics, he was a very successful angel investor and a senior Wall Street executive. He holds an undergraduate degree from Bits Pilani and an MBA from the Wharton School. A desire for public service led Mr. Chakravarti

Speaker 5 (03:56): to join Dr. Manmohan Singh government in 2009, first with the unique identity program and then

Speaker 3 (04:02): then with the Prime Minister’s skills mission. After the 2014 election, he became a scholar in political economy in a think tank

Speaker 2 (04:09): where he published papers in peer-reviewed journals, articles in leading Indian and international publications. In 2018, Mr. Chakravarti became a full-time politician

Speaker 3 (04:20): when he was invited to formally join the Congress party by the then President Rahul Gandhi and his mentor, Dr. Manmohan Singh. He currently chairs two departments of the party,

Speaker 2 (04:29): the All India Professionals Congress and data analytics. He’s also a key member of the Congress economic think tank and helped draft the parties manifestos for the 2024 and 2019 national elections. Praveen Chakravarti is a prolific contributor to India’s policy discourse and has the unique distinction

Speaker 5 (04:48): of having co-authored articles with former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and former Finance Minister

Speaker 2 (04:53): P. Chidambaram. He is an average sports buff. I think one time I saw you on one of the telecasts of Test Match in one KD on screen with a friend of ours,

Speaker 3 (05:05): an active tennis player, and a South Indian classical music aficionado, and an enthusiastic cook. Thanks. I hope that you stay back to just the dinner that we are going to have after this. Thank you for accepting our request

Speaker 5 (05:18): to deliver the fourth annual Indian Liberals Lecture.

Speaker 3 (05:21): I request everyone to please join me in welcoming Praveen to deliver the fourth annual lecture.

Speaker 6 (05:49): Good evening.

Speaker 2 (05:50): When I first entered the room and I heard all the drumming, I actually thought I’d entered

Speaker 1 (06:00): the Bihar political yatra that the Congress party is doing.

Speaker 3 (06:05): I mean, the yatra is actually not very different from in terms of the energy. So what that has done is I am simply not going to be able to match that energy levels at

Speaker 2 (06:15): all, because this is apparently a lecture, a boring lecture on the idea of liberalism. So I hope you will forgive me for not being able to match the energy of the drums in the

Speaker 3 (06:30): music session that you just had. I’m truly delighted to be here for the fourth annual Indian liberals lecture. Now you may wonder what is a mainstream politician, tattooed from a party often criticized for championing state control, doing here, giving a lecture on liberalism.

Speaker 2 (06:58): Your apprehension is entirely justified and well placed. All I request is you hold your judgment until I finish. the knowing Indian liberals, you’ve probably already made up your minds.

Speaker 3 (07:14): This event is the Indian liberals lecture.

Speaker 2 (07:20): I’m an Indian, yes, a proud one. Am I a liberal? I consider myself to be fiercely liberal.

Speaker 3 (07:27): Am I worthy of delivering a lecture? I am neither a lecturer nor do I believe in lecturing.

Speaker 2 (07:38): I actually fundamentally do not believe in sermons, lectures and credentials.

Speaker 1 (07:45): So here I am, not to lecture as one Indian liberal to another,

Speaker 3 (07:51): liberal to another, but just to share thoughts, experiences, and ponder together with you.

Speaker 2 (08:03): The topic for today’s discussion that Kumar and the organizers kindly let me choose and

Speaker 3 (08:12): keep is the confused Indian liberal elite.

Speaker 2 (08:20): I guess that topic is more a reflection of myself than any of you. Why confused? Because I struggle.

Speaker 3 (08:31): I struggle with how the definition, interpretation, and the practice of liberalism by Indian liberal

Speaker 1 (08:41): elites don’t seem to gel together seamlessly.

Speaker 2 (08:47): For example, as a political economist, when I study, say, the theory of price and I interpret

Speaker 3 (08:55): it using supply and demand curves, for those of you that are economists, and observe it

Speaker 2 (09:01): in practice, they all align seamlessly. I can draw a clear line from what I see to the theoretical construct of price. But I’m unable to do the same with liberalism, at least in the context of India’s liberal

Speaker 1 (09:18): elites. Why do I say this? Let me start with a story or share an anecdote of a true story.

Speaker 2 (09:29): This was 2019 before the general elections.

Speaker 3 (09:33): I was sitting with a friend, one of India’s top 10 industrialists, in his lavish Mumbai home. During our discussion, he kind of went to this frustration at the government’s economic policy or what he thought was lack of reforms.

Speaker 2 (09:55): He had high hopes for this government after the listless and dismal last years of UPA2, he said. All governments in politics seem to be the same, he lamented. I responded somewhat tauntingly and jokingly. I said, tomorrow I can go out and say the same thing,

Speaker 3 (10:21): your criticism, and criticize the government’s economic policy in public, even put it out on social media. But here you are, directly affected by government policy,

Speaker 2 (10:36): with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, but unable to say it publicly, venting only in the privacy of your living room. So tell me, who is richer, you or me? The industrialist was immediately, he’s a friend, but he was immediately pricked by this question. Now let’s parse this carefully. When I asked him who is richer, there are several ideas that are tangled together.

Speaker 3 (11:12): There is this abstract notion of richness. Then there is the idea of the freedom of expression.

Speaker 2 (11:22): Then there is this tangible material wealth.

Speaker 3 (11:27): Clearly, I mean, he was thousands of times wealthier than me, materially. But my question pricked him. All that lavish South Mumbai home,

Speaker 2 (11:40): those thousands of crores in the bank, the prestige of leading a top business group in the country, it all seemed to collapse in the realization

Speaker 3 (11:49): that he couldn’t even speak his mind freely despite all these riches.

Speaker 2 (11:58): But at that point, something else was going on in my mind. My mind kept going back to the 1991 liberalization of India’s economy,

Speaker 3 (12:12): which is justifiably celebrated as one of the most liberal events in our economic policy history. I said, I thought, yet here we are three decades later after the liberalization event of India’s economy and one of India’s top industrialists cannot freely voice his opinion on economic policy. What exactly did we liberalize then? I wondered. What does liberalization even mean? Is economic liberalism different from social or political liberalism?

Speaker 2 (12:57): Isn’t liberalism fundamentally about liberty, about freedom? Or is it just about state versus market in a very narrow policy sense? But aren’t they all related? it? Freedom in society translates into freedom in politics, business and economy and economics. Am I missing something? Am I getting the idea of liberalism mixed up? I was confused. My friend was confused too. The only difference was he was confused about the idea of richness. I was confused about liberalism. I then took this confusion to my mentor, Dr. Manmohan Singh,

Speaker 1 (13:51): and I narrated this incident to him.

Speaker 3 (13:54): I asked him if I was wrong in extending the literal definition of liberalism, liberty, freedom,

Speaker 2 (14:04): all those ideas, to economic liberalization.

Speaker 3 (14:06): After all, if a business person doesn’t have the freedom to speak, how will they have the freedom and the confidence to make unfettered business decisions? I asked him. Dr. Singh listened quietly for 15 to 20 minutes without uttering a word.

Speaker 2 (14:31): Very typical and characteristic of him. Then in a soft tone, he said, no, Praveen,

Speaker 1 (14:40): you’re not mixing things up.

Speaker 2 (14:44): He said, the essence of Karl Popper’s work in open society

Speaker 3 (14:51): and its enemies, it was a 1945 book by Karl Popper, by the philosopher Karl Popper. And he said, the essence of Karl Popper’s work

Speaker 2 (15:03): an open society was exactly this. Open societies are defined by critical debate.

Speaker 3 (15:14): Closed societies are governed by dogma and fear. Fear of authority is directly linked to investment and innovation, he said.

Speaker 1 (15:28): Whenever I used to go meet him, he would always, I mean, the most, the more interesting part

Speaker 2 (15:36): for me in my conversations with him was some of the anecdotes and some of his experiences

Speaker 3 (15:40): that he would relate. So, and when he was talking about this, he told me about his meeting with Karl Popper when he was a PhD student at Oxford and how deeply Karl Popper’s work influenced Manmohan Singh. He explained to me the connection between open societies, entrepreneurial risk, acceptance of failure, innovation, and investment. I was enthralled. I told him, I said, Dr. Saab, and I used to call him Dr. Saab, I said, Dr. Saab, you have to write about this. You have to write about this in the context of India’s then economic situation in 2019, which had just experienced several quarters of declining growth. At that time, the mainstream explanation for the declining growth in GDP was that there

Speaker 2 (16:42): was poor consumption demand, which meant lack of private investment, which was stalling growth. But here, Dr. Manmohan Singh was telling me something else using Karl Popper’s framework.

Speaker 3 (16:57): And he was saying that it is the climate of fear and the lack of freedom that was the real factor behind businesses not willing to take risks and invest. He was, of course, 87 years old at that time, so it took me a little bit of coaxing to get

Speaker 1 (17:22): him to agree to write an article, and he finally did.

Speaker 3 (17:26): He wrote an op-ed in the Hindu titled, The Fountainhead of India’s Economic Malaise.

Speaker 2 (17:35): This was in November 2019. The article immediately went viral, and I’m going to quote a paragraph from that article

Speaker 3 (17:47): titled, Industrialists Live in Fear.

Speaker 2 (17:50): Dr. Manmohan Singh writes, there is a palpable climate of fear in our society today. Many industrialists tell me that they live in fear of harassment by government authorities.

Speaker 1 (18:05): Workers are reluctant to make new loans for fear of retribution.

Speaker 3 (18:11): Entrepreneurs are hesitant to put up fresh projects for fear of failure.

Speaker 2 (18:18): Technology startups, an important new engine of economic growth and jobs, seem to live

Speaker 3 (18:23): under a shadow of constant surveillance and deep suspicion. Policymakers in government and other institutions are scared to speak the truth or engage in intellectually honest policy discussions. There is profound fear and distrust among people who act as agents of economic growth. When there is such distrust, it adversely impacts economic transactions in a society. When transactions among people and institutions are negatively impacted, it leads to a slowdown of economic activity and eventually stagnation. This perilous state of fear, distrust, and lack of confidence is a fundamental reason

Speaker 1 (19:13): for our sharp economic slowdown. I remember the then Chief Economic Advisor, Arvind Subramaniam, called me

Speaker 3 (19:23): to express his admiration for the peace. And I quote this from the story, from the incident that I started with my industrialist friend

Speaker 1 (19:34): to ponder together with you,

Speaker 3 (19:37): so is India’s economy truly liberalized? Is it really free? But Mohan Singh said that what we achieved

Speaker 2 (19:53): through the 1991 liberalization process, He called them formal freedoms. Policy changes like abolishing the control of capital issues

Speaker 3 (20:06): or removing production quotas or freedom to export and import

Speaker 1 (20:11): or to price your goods and services freely. He said those are formal freedoms.

Speaker 3 (20:18): But formal freedoms don’t immediately create an open economy or society.

Speaker 1 (20:25): Only when individuals can act without fear of arbitrary power do we have true liberalism and an open society. Formal freedoms in a closed society

Speaker 3 (20:39): are meaningless and futile. But this is what we are as a nation, as an economy,

Speaker 2 (20:49): even after 35 years of economic liberalization. We’re a closed society with some formal freedoms.

Speaker 1 (20:58): Then why do we celebrate economic policy changes as some milestone liberalization events? The intellectual tradition and idea of liberalism

Speaker 2 (21:14): is far beyond simplistic economic mutations.

Speaker 3 (21:19): Liberalism is a philosophy of freedom, a politics of rights, and an economic vision of prosperity.

Speaker 2 (21:28): And they’re all interlinked. Its interplay and contradictions have sparked revolutions,

Speaker 3 (21:35): built constitutions, shaken empires, driven global debates. But there is a recurring confusion, a constant confusion, particularly among Indian liberal elites, between the fundamental idea of liberty, the ability to live free from domination and the narrower economic policy of state versus market. Does liberalism only mean freedom from the state or does it mean freedom from social conformity?

Speaker 2 (22:13): As John Stuart Mill said, the tyranny of the majority.

Speaker 3 (22:17): Understanding this difference, this distinction is vital to reviving and rescuing liberalism from its current caricature. At its foundation, liberalism is about liberty, the ability of individuals to live without

Speaker 1 (22:50): domination, to make choices about their lives, and to pursue their vision of the good. Liberty is a moral and a political condition, not an economic formula.

Speaker 2 (23:08): Professor Isaiah Berlin had a famous distinction between negative liberty, what he called negative liberty, that is freedom from interference, and positive liberty, which is freedom to develop one’s own potential. And that remains central. Yet Indian elites, politicians, business leaders, have often reduced liberalism to laissez-faire economics. And the result is a very peculiar short circuit. Liberty becomes equated with free markets.

Speaker 3 (23:47): State action is seen as inherently illiberal, which it may well be, but that is not the be-all and end-all. And this leads to a moral shrinkage in society and a policy dogma where complex questions of justice and liberty

Speaker 2 (24:05): are reduced to simple binaries of state versus market. Let me give you another example of how Indian liberal elites

Speaker 1 (24:16): confuse economic policy measures with liberalism. GST, the goods and services tax.

Speaker 3 (24:26): When it was introduced by the UPA government, it was hailed by business and intellectual elites across all political ideologies as a great liberal economic reform or a liberalization.

Speaker 2 (24:44): When in fact, GST is as illiberal an economic idea as it can be. And why do I say this? What is GST? GST’s core principle is taking away taxation powers from the states and consolidating them

Speaker 1 (25:04): in a group controlled by the union government.

Speaker 3 (25:08): So GST was about centralization, not liberalization. It strips elected state governments of taxation powers, which makes India the only federal

Speaker 1 (25:24): democracy in the world where legitimately elected state governments have no

Speaker 2 (25:31): exclusive taxation powers because there are two types of taxes direct taxes and

Speaker 3 (25:37): indirect taxes broadly states anyway did not have powers for direct taxes as per our Constitution after GST their sole exclusive powers for indirect taxation was also taken away. So one can be an elected chief minister of a state,

Speaker 1 (25:56): but no powers for taxation. Some of you may know what the American freedom movement

Speaker 3 (26:05): was all about. When the American freedom movement was coined,

Speaker 2 (26:09): they had a slogan for their freedom movement that said, no taxation without representation. We have to elect our own people and only they can tax.

Speaker 3 (26:21): Today’s state governments have the exact opposite,

Speaker 2 (26:23): representation without taxation. Yet GST was an idea that was endorsed

Speaker 3 (26:33): and celebrated not only by liberal elites, but by both the national parties that wanted more control of taxation. Only the national, only the regional parties

Speaker 2 (26:44): opposed it as a move against freedom of states. When 30 states, what is the impact on liberty on something like GST? And let me give you some examples. When 30 states are robbed of their powers for indirect taxation, we lose the opportunity

Speaker 3 (27:08): for states to innovate on different taxes, and I’ll give you a story there.

Speaker 2 (27:14): It was, I think, the year 1982 or 83, I can’t remember exactly, in the state of Tamil Nadu, there was a leader named M.G. Ramachandran who had just been elected as the chief minister of that state. During his election campaign, he had a promise.

Speaker 1 (27:36): the promise was that he would extend the midday meal scheme program for school children to all schools in the state, to all government schools in the state. So he wins the election, comes to power, and he wants to implement this. His finance secretary says, sir, this would cost us 120, 140 crores.

Speaker 2 (28:00): We do not have that money. M.G. Ramachandran says, no, we have to do this. What do they do?

Speaker 1 (28:09): Tamil Nadu comes up with an innovative way of taxation

Speaker 3 (28:16): by which they can raise some revenues only for goods

Speaker 2 (28:21): and services in their state and use that money for the midday meal scheme. Tamil Nadu’s school enrollment rate was as low

Speaker 1 (28:34): as Bihar’s in 1979.

Speaker 3 (28:38): A decade after the Midday Meals program, Tamil Nadu school enrollment rate was the third highest in the country. If there had been GST, M.G. Ramachandran would not have been able to do it.

Speaker 2 (28:52): And because that scheme was so successful, it was implemented in every other state, and innovative ideas were able to be cross-pollinated. GST took that away. Now, extreme liberals or libertarians will consider taxation itself as illiberal,

Speaker 1 (29:13): but even if one accepts taxation, the more dispersed the powers of taxation are, the more liberal it is. For example, let’s say, if Gujarat has high taxes on meat products,

Speaker 2 (29:28): because let’s say there are not that many meat eaters there,

Speaker 1 (29:34): Theoretically, at least theoretically and technically, a meat-eating Gujarat resident has the liberty and the freedom to move to another state that has lower taxes on meat products.

Speaker 3 (29:51): Under GSD, all states have to charge the same tax rate on meat products. You’ve taken away that liberty, that freedom from that individual. This is how illiberal GST was.

Speaker 1 (30:08): How is GST a liberal reform?

Speaker 2 (30:12): GST aims for economic efficiency because it’s one nation, one tax, it’s more efficient,

Speaker 1 (30:19): and it gets that efficiency by sacrificing liberties and freedoms. And we may well accept this trade-off as a society, as a country.

Speaker 2 (30:29): That’s perfectly fine, but let’s not mislabel it. GST may be, don’t get me wrong, GST may be excellent for economic efficiency and growth.

Speaker 3 (30:39): One is perfectly justified in welcoming it for these reasons.

Speaker 1 (30:45): But justifying it as an economic liberalization reform

Speaker 2 (30:49): leaves me utterly confused.

Speaker 1 (30:52): The DST may be an economic reform, but not a liberal reform. There can be illiberal economic policies that foster growth,

Speaker 2 (31:03): and liberal economic policies that hinder growth. So should growth always come before liberalism, or should liberalism be the first objective?

Speaker 3 (31:16): This is the dichotomy of the confused Indian liberal elite today.

Speaker 2 (31:23): In classical liberal thought, greater freedoms lead to greater prosperity. The dogmatic version of this claims that it is only greater freedoms that will lead to

Speaker 3 (31:34): prosperity, not anything else.

Speaker 2 (31:38): But it’s quite evident now that freedom and prosperity can sometimes be a contradiction. as the greatest example of this, where freedom is not a necessary condition for growth and prosperity, measured, of course, purely in material terms. The more freedoms an individual has in society, the more dissent it propagates and the more delays in decision-making, leading to more inefficiencies and slower economic growth.

Speaker 3 (32:10): Slower economic growth is one strong school of thought today. I suspect most business leaders and growth wallahs in India would rather have a strong state than no state,

Speaker 1 (32:27): which is not liberalism,

Speaker 2 (32:29): though it gets packaged in some economic liberalization wrapping paper.

Speaker 3 (32:36): Political leaders across all parties would also rather have more control than less. In my decades in public life, I have not met a single political leader,

Speaker 2 (32:48): perhaps except Munmurian Singh, who wanted less control. This innate desire for control, this desire by political parties and political leadership, it’s often disguised.

Speaker 1 (33:03): It’s disguised as either politics of equality on one side

Speaker 3 (33:07): or the politics of efficiency on the other side. But they’re two sides of the same coin. It’s the politics of power and control.

Speaker 2 (33:17): Control is the antithesis of freedom and liberty. No political party in India is willing to let go control

Speaker 3 (33:27): or even reduce control. If any, they seek greater control. So it’s no surprise that India lacks political liberalism

Speaker 2 (33:39): in the classic sense, as Kumar was mentioning in his introductory remarks.

Speaker 3 (33:46): And that’s not a surprise to me, of course, as a practicing politician. But I’ve often said, and I’ve written about this,

Speaker 1 (33:54): how a political party governs the nation is dependent on how the political party governs itself internally. How a political party governs itself internally

Speaker 3 (34:07): is the best indicator of how it will govern the nation when it comes to power. The more centralized and high command driven a party’s culture, the more likely the nation will be governed through command and control when that party comes to power. The only counterbalance to this is when a group

Speaker 1 (34:35): of many political parties because literally, I think every party, almost every party in India,

Speaker 3 (34:42): except perhaps the left, the Communist Party, do have a strong high command culture.

Speaker 2 (34:53): So if that is how they govern themselves internally,

Speaker 3 (34:57): then when they come to power, that is how they will govern the nation. And that is what manifests itself as state control or other forms of policies that liberals often get very angry about. But it is about how a political party is set up

Speaker 2 (35:14): and runs itself internally. So the only counterbalance to this in my view is that when a group of political parties,

Speaker 3 (35:25): with each one as a high command culture,

Speaker 2 (35:28): but when a group of them are forced into a coalition to govern, that is when there is a chance

Speaker 3 (35:36): of a slightly more liberal government, which is what political scientists try as India is more liberally governed by a coalition

Speaker 2 (35:48): than a single-party majority. It only means that there is a greater likelihood

Speaker 3 (35:56): of a more liberal state when it is a coalition of high command parties than a brute majority of one high command party. If one side of the liberal elite conflates and confuses

Speaker 2 (36:16): liberalism with state versus market doctrine, the other side conflates it with equality.

Speaker 3 (36:26): Again, if I use taxation as an example, since I’ve used GST before to argue on the other side,

Speaker 1 (36:36): progressive liberals often argue for an eat the rich type taxation, such as wealth tax,

Speaker 2 (36:43): in the guise of equality.

Speaker 1 (36:47): This is fundamentally an attack on the freedoms of the rich. and what’s worse is these are attacks with a vindictive and a spiteful tone.

Speaker 2 (37:02): So let me give you another story. I was helping draft the manifesto for the Congress Party.

Speaker 3 (37:10): I think I’m giving out some internal stories. It’s okay. It’s now been more than a year. I was helping draft the manifesto for the Congress Party for the 2024 elections

Speaker 1 (37:20): along with former finance minister Mr. Pichadamram. In one meeting, there was a very strong demand by some members of the manifesto committee

Speaker 2 (37:29): as well as some members from civil society

Speaker 3 (37:33): for a wealth tax to reduce inequality. And they said it is almost impossible to reduce inequality without a wealth tax.

Speaker 2 (37:47): So we listened to all of them and then at the end of that discussion,

Speaker 1 (37:52): I asked the leaders and the committee members, what was their objective? Was their objective to make the poor richer

Speaker 2 (38:07): or to make the rich poorer?

Speaker 3 (38:11): I said, what is your objective? The response was, it was to make the poor richer but you cannot do it without making the rich poorer. That is, attacking the rich. The fundamental presumption here, and this is what in data and economic terms you would call it a Pareto trade-off, which is someone has to lose for another to gain.

Speaker 2 (38:43): And I think this mindset is very deep-rooted, very, very subconsciously deep-rooted. Certainly in our politics, certainly amongst the progressive liberals, that it has to be a trade-off, that everything is a trade-off. It’s a Pareto trade-off.

Speaker 3 (39:06): And I can also understand where that comes from, because at least as someone who’s in politics, who’s a practicing politician, politics is a world of trade-offs. If I have to win, someone has to lose.

Speaker 1 (39:19): If I have to become something, a member of parliament or the chairman of professionals, congress or minister or whatever it is, somebody else is losing. You may argue that’s the same in the corporate world, but it’s not really because the supply

Speaker 3 (39:34): is very small here in politics. So politics is a kind of brutal world of Pareto tradeoffs.

Speaker 2 (39:40): One has to necessarily lose for another to win. Of course, sports. There’s always, one wins only when somebody else loses. But in most other realms of society, business, economics, and everything else, there is the idea of a win-win.

Speaker 3 (40:04): People don’t have, one doesn’t necessarily have to lose for another to win.

Speaker 2 (40:08): But at least in developing countries such as India, there is still ample scope to grow the pie larger

Speaker 1 (40:17): than to merely cut someone else’s slice

Speaker 2 (40:21): and give it to another. And that, cutting somebody else’s slice, is an attack on freedom. It’s an attack on freedom of that individual. So if it is not okay to impose or to remove freedoms of the poor, it is equally not okay

Speaker 3 (40:45): to remove freedoms of the rich. Now to conclude this story, so thankfully the chairman of the manifesto committee, Mr. Chidhamram agreed with me and there was no proposal of a wealth tax in the party manifesto.

Speaker 2 (41:05): But typical of the Congress party, during the elections, some leaders made some public statements about, in the media, about wealth tax by the Congress party and it became a

Speaker 3 (41:18): big issue. The Prime Minister raised it and all kinds of things.

Speaker 2 (41:23): And I finally had to step in, gave media interviews, and I wrote a piece in the Hindu newspaper

Speaker 3 (41:31): titled, Make the Poor Richer Without Making the Rich Poorer. And I clarified that there was absolutely no such proposal in the party’s manifesto. Jim Smith, of course, considered the father of free market economics, wrote his book, In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, man naturally desires not only to be loved, but to be lovely,

Speaker 1 (42:10): or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love. And this is a book that he wrote before, this famous book about the invisible hand that

Speaker 3 (42:25): every liberal became the foundation for free market economics. But in theory of moral sentiments, he says, man naturally desires not only to be loved but to be lovely. Now forgive the 18th century gendered language.

Speaker 2 (42:43): I think this was sometime in 1776 that he wrote this book. So, of course, today he would have said humans and not man.

Speaker 1 (42:55): But Smith’s fundamental point was that individuals naturally seek more than just material gain. They desire respect and affection from society. And it is this trait that prompts behavior of individuals

Speaker 3 (43:17): to collectively produce the maximum good for the maximum people. Hence, individual freedoms lead to collective prosperity, was Adam Smith’s postulation.

Speaker 2 (43:31): And this formed the foundation for liberalism, free markets, and prosperity. Now, one may agree or disagree with Adam Smith, but his core idea that liberalism complements a desire for justice.

Speaker 3 (43:49): You can be loved and you can be deemed lovely only when you have a sense of justice and compassion. And he said, the idea of liberalism complements this desire for justice. And this is a very important one.

Speaker 1 (44:11): No liberal, left or right, can oppose justice and fairness. That’s what earns you respect in society. And that’s what you desire, to be loved and to be lovely. So when we say that there is huge income disparity or that there is underrepresentation of oppressed castes or race in higher echelons of society, it is an issue of justice.

Speaker 3 (44:41): It’s an issue of fairness, not equality. There’s a subtle but a profound distinction between the two. And I’ll explain.

Speaker 2 (44:54): It is about the process that produces success in society.

Speaker 3 (45:03): If, let us say, we were doing a coin toss or a lottery, the process is considered fair and just by everybody. The outcomes may not be. as Shubman Gill found out in the recent India-England cricket series, he lost every single toss. And the chances of that happening is just extremely small. So the outcome may not be equal. The outcome may be very unfair, may be unequal. But the process, Shubman Gill couldn’t go and say this is rigged because it was a coin toss.

Speaker 2 (45:44): But when we substitute that, and let’s say the umpire were to decide who won the toss,

Speaker 3 (45:52): or we have some sort of hereditary privilege or some sort of testing method that only the elites can master

Speaker 1 (46:01): and somehow score very high marks in, and then we call that the process

Speaker 2 (46:07): that produces these outcomes, then it’s the idea of justice and fairness of that process that gets questioned. And that is why justice and fairness is different from equality.

Speaker 3 (46:24): And I know there is a lot of confusion, certainly on one side of the liberal spectrum about this, but Adam Smith’s postulation was justice and fairness

Speaker 2 (46:38): and not equality. So if every individual desires to be loved and lovely

Speaker 3 (46:45): as Smith postulated, then no liberal individual would want an unjust and an unfair society. Let me now try and summarize my argument in perhaps in the syntax and semantics of

Speaker 2 (47:02): free markets that liberals understand very easily. Very often I hear the refrain from India’s liberal elite that there is no liberalism in our politics. And that is the core dilemma of an Indian liberal. Like the story I shared of my industrialist friend, all parties are the same. There’s

Speaker 3 (47:22): no liberalism. There’s no difference in thinking. In market terms, what they’re saying, their

Speaker 2 (47:33): is that there is a dearth of supply of truly liberal political parties that espouse the fundamental tenets of liberalism.

Speaker 3 (47:44): And that is 100% true. It’s a feeling that I empathize with and bemoan. But my argument is something else.

Speaker 1 (47:56): I argue that the problem lies on the demand side of the equation. The problem lies on the demand side of liberal politics.

Speaker 2 (48:07): There is not enough demand for genuine, true liberalism in our politics.

Speaker 1 (48:16): The liberals on the right, I don’t quite subscribe to the right-left divide,

Speaker 3 (48:20): but since it’s used, I use it. But the liberals on the right view liberalism solely

Speaker 1 (48:28): through the prism of economic policy, as I explained,

Speaker 2 (48:30): and state versus market, welfare versus GDP, public versus private, and so on. They’d be perfectly happy with a strong state that curbs all individual freedoms, such as freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of life choices, but one that has privatized all economic activities.

Speaker 3 (48:55): But on the other side of the liberal spectrum, they would be perfectly happy in removing

Speaker 2 (49:07): freedoms of one section of society, the rich or the wealthy as they deem, imposing the state on private property and businesses, and eating the rich as long as there is equality.

Speaker 3 (49:24): Neither side truly wants fundamental liberty, individual freedom and justice.

Speaker 1 (49:37): Liberalism is merely the wrapping paper for the chocolate of economic growth or equality for this side.

Speaker 3 (49:45): The wrapping paper can be readily discarded once they get to the chocolate.

Speaker 2 (49:51): While here I am, pondering, confused, isn’t the wrapper the main chocolate? And the sweetness of economic growth or equality or justice the aftertaste? That is the confusion of the Indian liberal elite. Thank you.

Speaker 7 (50:21): Thank you.

Speaker 2 (50:47): I said liberalism is merely the wrapping paper for the chocolate of economic growth or equality on either side of the liberal spectrum.

Speaker 3 (50:56): The wrapping paper can be readily discarded once they get to the chocolate. While I am pondering, isn’t the wrapper the main chocolate and the sweetness of economic growth or justice just the aftertaste?

Speaker 7 (51:11): Anshu, go ahead. Question. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:17): Hello. So one job of political theory or political philosophy is to illuminate the concepts that we use in everyday politics. Now you just mentioned about the confused Indian liberal, and this is kind of strange given that in India we boast a strong tradition of at least liberal political thought. I mean, we could just look at Rajaji or Minu Masani, for example.

Speaker 8 (51:53): And one tenet of political thought is then to convert it into theory, or theory as we know as political theory in practice.

Speaker 3 (52:02): Now, given this apparent lack of demand of liberalism that you mentioned at the end, and also the confusion of the Indian liberal,

Speaker 8 (52:09): would you say that Indian political philosophy or Indian political theory has really failed to illuminate the contours of liberalism in India?

Speaker 1 (52:21): No. I mean, you know, I often hear this saying that Indian political, I mean, Indian liberalism, especially in the political context, starts from Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and his Swatantra

Speaker 2 (52:35): Party. I disagree. I think it goes back to Ashoka’s edicts. So, and I actually think

Speaker 3 (52:43): no society truly understands, desires and cherishes freedom more than us. And so that’s why it’s a very simple framework. It’s are you free? Are you free from domination? And And I mentioned in my speech that I am not surprised that modern politics, certainly in India,

Speaker 1 (53:06): but I’m assuming in most other democracies,

Speaker 3 (53:10): do not embrace liberalism because politics is now about control.

Speaker 2 (53:17): The moment I have that desire for control,

Speaker 3 (53:20): and it’s a very subconscious desire. I mean, this idea of losing control, it could be something as simple as, oh my god, Social media can say whatever. How do I control the damn thing? It starts from, I mean, it’s all very subconscious,

Speaker 2 (53:36): and that’s why I said the more technology tries to disintermediate,

Speaker 1 (53:42): the more politics gets nervous and wants more control. And that’s the reality. And I actually don’t think a 1991-type moment could have happened because what was 1991, and I remember this very funny story that Mr. P. Chidamaram told me, and I’ll narrate this. This was before the 1991 elections. I think Mr. Chidamaram was some minister or something. He was on a flight from Delhi, from Chennai to Delhi, Averroa. And he said the person sitting next to him introduced himself as an IS officer. And he said, he asked him, what do you do?

Speaker 3 (54:18): And he said, sir, I’m the controller of exports and imports. So Mr. Chidamaram asked him, I understand controlling imports even. why are you controlling exports?

Speaker 2 (54:31): 1991 happened.

Speaker 1 (54:32): Mr. Chidamran becomes the Commerce Minister. The first thing was that office of the controller of imports and exports was dismantled. So it’s about control. Today, I don’t think we can give up control.

Speaker 2 (54:49): If anything, we’re going the opposite way. So what’s, you know, I don’t want to get into technical economics.

Speaker 3 (54:55): They call it industrial policy and those sorts of things, but it’s essentially more control. And so that’s why first, I think, theory goes back to Ashoka, seed it, does not start only with Swatantra Party.

Speaker 1 (55:12): The second, unfortunately, today, I think it’s even more the desire for control among political parties.

Speaker 3 (55:19): And I say that as a practicing politician in a mainstream party.

Speaker 2 (55:23): That desire for control is just even more than what it was. I think earlier there was this sense that, yeah, maybe we can’t control everything.

Speaker 1 (55:32): Earlier meaning, say, mid-90s, 2000s, mid-2000s. But now I think we have the opposite, the reverse direction.

Speaker 5 (55:41): Lady with the scarf there.

Speaker 9 (55:44): You began your deliberation by saying that one of your industrialist friends, who is one of the leading 10 industrialists in India. He was quite afraid of speaking out freely about some policy. But then we believe that it is the industrialists and the leading industrialists of India who influence economic policies greatly and shaping economic policies. And you also showed us the article written by your mentor, Dr. Manmohan Singh, whom I have highest regard for. But I just would like to ask you that, but in between all this that we have gone through, I mean, the fear and the domination, but we still had 100 unicorns. I mean, we witnessed that. My final question is, this year, while hoisting the Indian flag, Kargay ji said that very soon there’s going to be change of government in Bihar and at the center. So when is that happening?

Speaker 3 (56:53): Thank you. I’m no soothsayer, so I have no idea about Bihar. But, oh, okay. So neither in the center do I know yet. Now, no, but that was the whole point I was trying to make, which is you can have unicorns, but that doesn’t mean you’re more liberal.

Speaker 1 (57:17): That’s exactly my point. Maybe I should narrate this story that happened last week.

Speaker 3 (57:23): I’m looking for someone in the audience, but anyway. I talked about GST, remember? CII, the main industry body, the leading industry body, sends an email and a WhatsApp message to all industrialist members last week, which said, all of you, and this includes India’s top kind of business, you are all requested to thank the government for promising GST reforms.

Speaker 2 (57:57): Here is the draft tweet, and here are the people

Speaker 1 (58:00): who you should tag on social media.

Speaker 2 (58:05): Of course, someone sent it to me and I put it out,

Speaker 1 (58:08): and then I got calls.

Speaker 2 (58:09): But now, of course, our stock market capitalization can go up, is this freedom? Because he wanted me to talk about liberalism, not economic growth.

Speaker 3 (58:22): The gentleman there and then Amit. Just last couple of questions. Hello, sir. Can I use English, like Hindi-English mixed question?

Speaker 10 (58:32): Sure. Sir, you have talked about confused Indian liberals. This is about Adam Smith. I started the Industrial Revolution. So I want to talk about today’s context. Today, deep tech technologies are here.

Speaker 3 (58:44): There are quantum technologies. So, social media is about AI, biotechnology is revolutionized.

Speaker 10 (58:49): So, in today’s time, like, society is the political sphere. So, are we confused more or more liberalization? What would be a scenario?

Speaker 3 (59:02): Will AI bring in more political liberalism? I mean, more liberalism in political parties. I can understand Hindi. I can’t speak. I’m from China. So all these technologies, the changing structure of the technology revolution, so will they bring out more liberal society in political sphere? And as a society, like, what would be the scenario?

Speaker 1 (59:27): I don’t know, but seeing the last, I would say, decade or so with, you know, all the social media and all of that, because I’ve been in politics even before, social media, Instagram and all of that. And seeing that impact, I actually would say we will go the opposite way.

Speaker 2 (59:43): As political parties, the more, that’s what I said, the more technology says, oh, we will democratize more and more, the more scared we get.

Speaker 3 (59:57): And we would want to control it more and more. So I think it’s going to be an interesting battle.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02): So we have no idea what AI is going to do. Because we don’t know what AI is going to do, we would want to control it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07): Not knowing fully well that we can’t control it. Sir, the secret organization in USA, Palantir.

Speaker 10 (01:00:13): No follow-up, yes.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15): Just a cross-question.

Speaker 10 (01:00:17): So Palantir is like, you know, civilizing all these citizens of USA, all over the world.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23): So will we see similar kind of thing coming up with these technologies? See, I think your question is different. Your question is domination. Your question is domination by one few groups.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36): I think now it’s quite obvious, isn’t it? I think, you know, when I was a student of economics, all this was supposed to be bad monopolies and oligopolies. Now I think in literally every sector, not just in India,

Speaker 3 (01:00:48): in America, in technology, we, I think we are moving more and more concentrated market power. And that could be, Palantir is just one of them. I mean, I think, I don’t think that’s new. Okay. My clear question is, from confused liberal elite to confident liberal masses, how does the road ahead look like?

Speaker 2 (01:01:18): Like I said, I think these are, I mean, complex dilemmas. So for example, would you want freedom or would you want growth if it was a contradiction? I think, yeah, I mean, the classical idea is both, but even as those of us who write policy ideas for mainstream parties, we’ve been told constantly,

Speaker 3 (01:01:48): look at China, look at China, look at China. And China’s not exactly achieved growth by more freedoms, right? So they’ve sacrificed.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57): So I think this is a very, so what do we want? My hunch is we as a society cannot do without freedom. I think we would, maybe yes, right now, we still feel we’re growing, we need, but I think we’ll very soon reach a point where we cannot. I think as a society, we cannot tolerate dominance or unfreedom. And this goes back civilizations.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27): And so that’s my hope.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29): I’ll use my prerogative to ask the last question.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33): So Praveen, 1995, you talked about the demand for freedom and demand for liberalism, liberal ideas.

Speaker 6 (01:02:40): True liberalism, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41): Individual freedom is kind of missing, and therefore probably there is no supply.

Speaker 5 (01:02:46): I think in 1995, Liberal Times published by our Norman Foundation, published an article

Speaker 2 (01:02:51): by Ashok Deshai, where he talks about how the liberalization did happen in 1991, but it was never sold to the public. So I’m wondering if the demand has to come. I mean, kind of add-on continuing from what Amit asked.

Speaker 5 (01:03:04): I mean, where does the demand, you know, the sort of, the ask starts to come from?

Speaker 2 (01:03:10): What is the ignition? Where do you start to gather steam?

Speaker 1 (01:03:14): I think the demand will pick up when we get oppressed to such an extent that we just burst. out. I think, see, when I say liberalism and true liberalism and freedoms, I don’t, I mean,

Speaker 2 (01:03:28): my whole talk was about, I don’t mean it in the classical economic, just in the economic

Speaker 3 (01:03:32): sphere. So, and I actually believe the other freedoms come first. If we are trying to kind

Speaker 2 (01:03:41): of pretend that we have economic freedom by having some, you know, I mean, removing controller of imports and exports, but still trying to get CII to force them to send a message. I mean, you know, we don’t. And that’s what I mean by we don’t have demand. Right now, I think we’re at a stage where we’re still saying, okay, as long as we get

Speaker 3 (01:04:03): growth, it’s okay that we sacrifice some freedoms, but I don’t see that lasting too long, and hence there will be a natural demand. Okay.

Speaker 6 (01:04:12): Thanks.

Speaker (01:04:17): Thank you.