Prodigal Science

L ee Kuan Yew in his book 'From Third World to First' writes, " We believed in socialism, in fair shares for all. Later we learned that personal motivation and personal rewards were essential for a productive economy. However, because people are unequal in their abilities, if performance and rewards are determined by the marketplace, there will be few big winners, and considerable number of losers. That would make for social tensions because the society's sense of fairness is a offended." If food, water and shelter are the basic survival needs then medical care, pensions and education are their present- day contemporary. To provide for these is a moral duty of any government. But the purpose of action is to bring forth the country in a long run and not for the cause of people pleasing, aiming for electoral gains. The past announcements of state governments in Delhi, Punjab and Rajasthan are questionable. Of course the new player in arena is trying to make a name f...

In 1759, Adam Smith wrote 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' and 15 years later he came up with one of his best works, the Magnum Opus of economics — 'The wealth of nations'. Not many people know this but it was 'the theory of moral sentiments' that provided the ethical, philosophical , psychological and methodological underpinnings to Smith's later works. They may seem like two distant words but economy and ethics are interdependent. Economics without ethics:  Gospel of selfishness           According to Oxfam International report, 73% of the wealth generated in 2017 worldwide was possessed by richest 1% making up for 900 million poor people. An economy without ethics further deepens the cracks of inequality by creating more poverty , crime and injustice. Similarly the covid-19 vaccine crisis has revealed the inadequacy of capitalism to fulfill societal needs. It led to the clash between needs of humanity and principles of economy. Countries are arguing that...