Rent seeking inequality and injustice (Sari Hettige, South Asia Monitor)

In an earlier article, I pointed out that there was an urgent need to increase productivity of labour and value added production, in order to arrest the present downward slide of the economy and with it, society and polity. This has become all the more necessary because, unlike in the past, today, most people do not want to live frugal and simple lives.

There are about three million motor cycles in the country, in addition to over a million three-wheelers. Urban roads are full of all types of motor cars. All this is for just twenty million people in the country, which is by no means a developed one. None of these vehicles are produced here. We are just consumers of all sorts of transport machinery.

Political leaders have no shame. They talk about protocol in allocating different brands of vehicles among VIPs, but never mention about the need to deploy unproductive labour for productive activities. They are perhaps happy, that people are leaving the country in droves to work overseas and send remittances that can be used to import what they and others want.

http://southasiamonitor.org/detail.php?type=n&nid=16849