There was this HT interview of Prakash Karat in
mid-April that has been nagging, and on Thursday I was
stopped from entering SPA. dignified irritability
about security circus gave way to obscene brawl as two
women, not of SPA, in
chauffeur-driven-air-con-big-car, without SPA sticker,
Rolled Right In! Maybe they were market scouting for
grooms. I figured it is less-than-no-point writing to
SPA eminences and have exercised no-point option of
writing to Mr Karat whom I think highly of. (To not
write ceased to be option after having been made to
stand-n-wait outside SPA gate sat on, climbed over,
blocked, unblocked, plain walked through for 25 years,
while maybe-market rolled right in). nuts, I know.
hence the cc to this list with a dozen nuts. read.
---
Sub: 'Marry Market to Planning', Interview, Sunday
Hindustan Times, April 17,2005, p.17
Dear Mr Karat,
In the above interview, in answer to the question, "Do
you agree with the Chinese model where the market
determines resource allocations rather than the
state?" you say, "We do not say that the market has no
role to play in resource allocation and pricing but we
have to marry the market to planning. Even the Chinese
have not given up planning altogether. They also have
a degree of centralised economy. India has to find its
own model".
I am a planner, writing to bring to your attention a
different perspective. So-called debate to negotiate
shares of state and market in the resource allocation
determination pie is valid if (a) anarchy (in sense of
no-ruler) as an option is open to consideration and
(b) polity is not in anomie (in sense of rampant
disregard of law). Otherwise, as at present, it is
contrived to continue till deviously settled fully in
favour of the market, notably by device of shifting
starting-premises -- Chinese-Model being currently in
fashion -- even as our half-century long endeavour to
embed growth with equity in planning law and
institutions could well guide us in refining (not
finding) the model we chose that the market would
rather we abandon.
Under Indian planning law and tradition, planning was
married to equity -- by planning principles and by
socialist thinking. Of late custodians of planning
have made it whore of the market and now you propose
the market be made to marry it. The assumption of
consent to desert equity that marks this drift is even
more contrived than the so-called debate that drives
it. In recent years, with Plans for cities across
India being revised, the machinations of this drift
have been on stark display and in the capital have
come to fruition in form of draft Master Plan 2021 for
which Public Notice is out. I have only as much reason
for despair about how Big People allowed it as I have
for hope that now Little People will reject the
reckless liaison between planning and the market that
this document seeks to legitimise.
It is not my case that any Plan, or even development
law, is perfect. It only seems tautological to me that
anomie is debilitating. As frog in a plannerly well
somewhat better wired to the real world than the ivory
towers from which that is run, I posit that anomie is
so also because it spawns atrophy in planning thought
-- to allow politics to envision for people less than
what is theirs by right in planned development and
hawk illusions crafted out of stuff-and-nonsense about
inclusivity, safety-nets, humane-facing, etc, in
purported pursuit of anyhow-changing yet
somehow-compelling flexi-visions -- till reality is
obfuscated to point of obliteration and the circle of
atrophy closes to make anomie irrevocable, freedom its
slave.
I enclose a request of 07/07/04 for representation and
one of 24/10/04 for a view on my perspective, an
earlier demand for debate and a subsequent request to
Lok Sabha Speaker and Standing Committee for Urban
Development. All this is only to assert a professional
position about planning that is fundamentally
different from, and raises different expectations of
Left politics than, what is suggested in the view
expressed in your interview to HT.
With regret about differences and apologies as may be
in order for expressing them thus,
Yours very sincerely
Gita Dewan Verma, Planner
cc: private eml list
__________________________________________________
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mid-April that has been nagging, and on Thursday I was
stopped from entering SPA. dignified irritability
about security circus gave way to obscene brawl as two
women, not of SPA, in
chauffeur-driven-air-con-big-car, without SPA sticker,
Rolled Right In! Maybe they were market scouting for
grooms. I figured it is less-than-no-point writing to
SPA eminences and have exercised no-point option of
writing to Mr Karat whom I think highly of. (To not
write ceased to be option after having been made to
stand-n-wait outside SPA gate sat on, climbed over,
blocked, unblocked, plain walked through for 25 years,
while maybe-market rolled right in). nuts, I know.
hence the cc to this list with a dozen nuts. read.
---
Sub: 'Marry Market to Planning', Interview, Sunday
Hindustan Times, April 17,2005, p.17
Dear Mr Karat,
In the above interview, in answer to the question, "Do
you agree with the Chinese model where the market
determines resource allocations rather than the
state?" you say, "We do not say that the market has no
role to play in resource allocation and pricing but we
have to marry the market to planning. Even the Chinese
have not given up planning altogether. They also have
a degree of centralised economy. India has to find its
own model".
I am a planner, writing to bring to your attention a
different perspective. So-called debate to negotiate
shares of state and market in the resource allocation
determination pie is valid if (a) anarchy (in sense of
no-ruler) as an option is open to consideration and
(b) polity is not in anomie (in sense of rampant
disregard of law). Otherwise, as at present, it is
contrived to continue till deviously settled fully in
favour of the market, notably by device of shifting
starting-premises -- Chinese-Model being currently in
fashion -- even as our half-century long endeavour to
embed growth with equity in planning law and
institutions could well guide us in refining (not
finding) the model we chose that the market would
rather we abandon.
Under Indian planning law and tradition, planning was
married to equity -- by planning principles and by
socialist thinking. Of late custodians of planning
have made it whore of the market and now you propose
the market be made to marry it. The assumption of
consent to desert equity that marks this drift is even
more contrived than the so-called debate that drives
it. In recent years, with Plans for cities across
India being revised, the machinations of this drift
have been on stark display and in the capital have
come to fruition in form of draft Master Plan 2021 for
which Public Notice is out. I have only as much reason
for despair about how Big People allowed it as I have
for hope that now Little People will reject the
reckless liaison between planning and the market that
this document seeks to legitimise.
It is not my case that any Plan, or even development
law, is perfect. It only seems tautological to me that
anomie is debilitating. As frog in a plannerly well
somewhat better wired to the real world than the ivory
towers from which that is run, I posit that anomie is
so also because it spawns atrophy in planning thought
-- to allow politics to envision for people less than
what is theirs by right in planned development and
hawk illusions crafted out of stuff-and-nonsense about
inclusivity, safety-nets, humane-facing, etc, in
purported pursuit of anyhow-changing yet
somehow-compelling flexi-visions -- till reality is
obfuscated to point of obliteration and the circle of
atrophy closes to make anomie irrevocable, freedom its
slave.
I enclose a request of 07/07/04 for representation and
one of 24/10/04 for a view on my perspective, an
earlier demand for debate and a subsequent request to
Lok Sabha Speaker and Standing Committee for Urban
Development. All this is only to assert a professional
position about planning that is fundamentally
different from, and raises different expectations of
Left politics than, what is suggested in the view
expressed in your interview to HT.
With regret about differences and apologies as may be
in order for expressing them thus,
Yours very sincerely
Gita Dewan Verma, Planner
cc: private eml list
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com