The Indian Libertarian

Summary

This issue of The Indian Libertarian (Vol. VIII No. 8, July 15, 1960), edited by Kusum Lotwala in Bombay and incorporating the ‘Free Economic Review’ and ‘The Indian Rationalist’, opens with an editorial on the threatened general strike by Central Government employees over pay and dearness-allowance demands, which it criticises as an unjustifiable ultimatum even while granting the reasonableness of cost-of-living linkage. The issue carries M. A. Venkatrao on the U.S.A. and Indian freedom (with a discussion of Ayub Khan’s Pakistan), M. N. Tholal on student indiscipline, a four-page Economic Supplement of free-market essays (Prof. C. R. Lawande on population and planning, an essay on agricultural development, and E. C. Riegel’s ‘Trade A Unifier’), Satya Roy on communist treachery, and the American individualist Laurence Labadie on the origin and nature of government, alongside the regular Delhi Letter, press gleanings, and news columns. Across the rendered pages the issue presses a libertarian case against state planning, coercive government, and socialist economic policy.

Essays

Editorial: Central Government Employees’ Threat of Strike

The editorial addresses the threatened general strike by Central Government employees, railwaymen and other workers demanding a linkage of wages to the cost-of-living index, a minimum wage, and pay rises beyond the Second Pay Commission’s recommendations. It accepts that automatic linkage of wages to cost of living is a principle accepted by liberal governments such as the USA, but rejects the workers’ fresh demands as outside the Pay Commission’s scope and condemns setting a strike ultimatum as a reckless tactic that could paralyse government.

• Central Government employees threaten a near-general strike over pay
• Demands exceed the Second Pay Commission’s recommendations
• Accepts cost-of-living wage linkage in principle
• Condemns the strike ultimatum as unjustifiable

The U.S.A. and Indian Freedom

By MA Venkata Rao

M. A. Venkatrao examines the relationship between the United States and Indian freedom, weighing the role of America as leader of the free world against India’s path. The article digresses into a discussion of General Ayub Khan of Pakistan and his defence posture, set within a broader argument about freedom and the Cold War context.

• Considers the U.S.A.’s role in relation to Indian freedom
• Discusses General Ayub Khan and Pakistan’s defence
• Set in a Cold War framing of the free world

Student Inducipline

By M. N. Tholal

Writing as a journalist, M. N. Tholal reflects on student indiscipline, recalling his own student days and a section (‘The Elder Brother’) on how an unsympathetic administration provokes disorder. He treats indiscipline as in part a response to heavy-handed authority within educational departments rather than a simple failing of the young.

• Reflects on the causes of student indiscipline
• Frames it partly as a reaction to authoritarian administration
• Draws on the author’s own student experience

Origin and Nature of Government

By Laurence Labadie

Laurence Labadie, the American individualist writer, argues that government arises from the evolution of man and that, in its actual form, it rests on coercion and indirect increase of power. He distinguishes the inalienable individual right of self-defence from the institutional apparatus of the State, contending that violence used by political authority is qualitatively different from a person’s natural defence and forms the coercive core of government.

• Locates government’s origin in human evolution
• Identifies coercion as the essence of the State
• Distinguishes self-defence from state violence

---

Generated by the v1.5 extraction pipeline. Awaiting editorial review.