The Mess We Are In

By N. A. PALKHIVALA

Summary

This Forum of Free Enterprise booklet reprints N. A. Palkhivala’s article ‘The Mess We Are In’ from The Illustrated Weekly of India (11 August 1974), a sweeping indictment of India’s condition as the republic enters its twenty-eighth year. Palkhivala opens with alarm at the country sliding down an ‘inclined plane,’ citing a forecast that India would suffer the highest level of political violence of any country in the 1982-1991 era, and warns that India uniquely combines dismal economic failure, fragile institutions, and a Constitution treated as pliable to the ruling group’s whims.

The heart of the essay is an economic diagnosis. Palkhivala invokes Keynes to argue that inflation is fundamentally caused by government over-spending and that the ‘inflationary gap’ can be closed only by increased production, not by wage freezes, credit squeezes, or dividend cuts that merely ‘cure the patient’s fever by cooling the thermometer.’ He blames India’s ‘archaic brand of socialism’ for stifling agriculture and job creation, contrasting stagnant domestic food output and mass unemployment with Indian enterprises that thrive abroad in dozens of countries. He couples this with a critique of governmental inaction on population growth.

The latter pages turn to the assault on institutions: the proposed Thirty-second Amendment that would force legislators to surrender their conscience to the party whip, the devaluation of the judiciary, and the broader subordination of the individual to the state. Quoting John Stuart Mill on ‘the worth of a state’ being the worth of the individuals composing it, Palkhivala closes with a list of conditions for national recovery, urging that at election time citizens weigh these substantive matters rather than ‘slogans and claptrap, caste and clan, creed and language.’ The rendered pages span essentially the whole booklet.

Key points

• Reprint of Palkhivala’s 11 August 1974 Illustrated Weekly of India article, issued as an FFE booklet.

• Warns India is sliding toward an ‘abyss,’ citing a forecast of the highest political violence of any country in 1982-1991.

• Diagnoses India as uniquely combining economic failure, fragile institutions, and a ‘pliant’ Constitution.

• Argues, via Keynes, that inflation stems from government over-spending and can only be cured by increased production.

• Condemns wage freezes, credit squeezes and dividend cuts as treating symptoms, not the root cause.

• Blames India’s ‘archaic brand of socialism’ for stunting agriculture, jobs, and food output while Indian firms succeed abroad.

• Attacks the proposed Thirty-second Amendment for forcing legislators to surrender conscience to the party whip.

• Closes by urging voters to weigh substantive issues over ‘slogans and claptrap, caste and clan, creed and language.’

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