Peter Bauer

By SAUVIK CHAKRAVERTI

Summary

In this Centre for Civil Society ‘Viewpoint 4’ essay, Sauvik Chakraverti writes a tribute to the recently deceased development economist Lord Peter (P. T.) Bauer, hailing him as ‘the greatest development economist that ever lived’ and ‘a true friend of the world’s poor.’ Against what he calls the ‘bleeding hearts brigade,’ Chakraverti celebrates Bauer as the man who most trenchantly opposed foreign aid — Bauer’s line that government-to-government aid transfers wealth ‘from the poor of the rich countries to the rich of the poor countries’ — and argues that aid manufactured permanent Third World poverty by propping up corrupt, predatory states.

The essay builds its case through a series of Indian illustrations of Bauer’s insight that the poor possess economic skill and knowledge that planning ignores. Chakraverti uses widespread beggary (and the feeding of monkeys near Roorkee) to argue that begging persists not because India is poor but because its civil society is generously charitable; he praises poor traders who break bulk into tiny saleable portions, tribals who distil mahua, and rubber smallholders in Malaya, all as evidence of what Bauer called ‘the denial of the economic principle’ by development economists who treat the Third World poor as a stupid ‘intellectual-moral’ charge of the state. He contrasts Bauer with Gunnar Myrdal and Amartya Sen, who in his telling stress the state’s role in educating and uplifting a supposedly helpless poor.

The later sections extend Bauer’s anti-statism to population and infrastructure. Chakraverti endorses Bauer’s anti-Malthusian view that people are a resource and that the number of children should be decided by parents, not ‘the agents of the state,’ citing Sanjay Gandhi’s forced sterilisations and China’s one-child norm as the tyrannies that follow from treating population as a ‘problem.’ He blames the state’s road monopoly for urban overcrowding (‘If I had money, I would build roads…’), and closes by arguing that the truly influential economists are not the planners but dissenters like Bauer and B. R. Shenoy. A References section lists Bauer’s works and the Bauer-Myrdal debate.

Key points

• A CCS Viewpoint tribute by Sauvik Chakraverti to Lord Peter (P. T.) Bauer, presented as the greatest development economist and ‘a true friend of the world’s poor.’

• Centres on Bauer’s opposition to foreign aid as transfers ‘from the poor of the developed world to the rich of the underdeveloped,’ which props up predatory states and manufactures permanent poverty.

• Uses Indian beggary (and monkeys fed by Hanuman worshippers) to argue begging reflects a generous civil society, not national poverty — religious mendicancy, per Bauer’s 1965 observation, explains it.

• Celebrates the economic ingenuity of the poor — bulk-breaking petty traders, mahua-distilling tribals, Malayan rubber smallholders — as refuting ‘the denial of the economic principle.’

• Contrasts Bauer with Gunnar Myrdal and Amartya Sen, who in the author’s account treat the Third World poor as helpless and the state as their educator.

• Endorses Bauer’s anti-Malthusianism: people are a resource and family size belongs to parents, not the state; cites Sanjay Gandhi’s sterilisations and China’s one-child policy as the alternative.

• Blames the state’s monopoly on roads for urban overcrowding and de-population of satellite towns; ‘This State cannot educate people. It is itself in need of education.’

• Concludes that dissenters like Bauer and B. R. Shenoy, not compliant planners, are the truly influential economists; closes with a References section.

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