Retaining Balance: The Eternal Way

Dr. M R Venkatesh

Retaining Balance is a fascinating approach to deal with the challenges faced by the discipline of economics. This work critically analyses the prevalent conundrum of policy framers who place too much reliance on the individual, in the process ignoring traditional institutions of family, society and community. Rampant individualism, in turn, results in excesses leading to the proliferation of either a corrosive state, or an extortionist market.

Retaining Balance traces this conundrum to the Christian theology of original sin and broken self, necessitating salvation through an external agent viz., the state or markets, in the first place. This arrangement has spawned a series of excesses resulting in extant macroeconomic imbalances.

Retaining Balance argues that the institution of family, rooted to civilisational restraints, alone can deal with such individual excesses. Importantly, it seeks to introduce the grand idea of individual duties along with the fundamental rights to balance the skew in our constitutional arrangements. A must read for people in power.

Dr. M R Venkatesh one of India’s leading Advocates on economic-criminal laws and a much sought-after legal professional. He is also a keen student of economics and politics. As a professional, he is an advisor to several corporates and promoters on complex transactions involving cross-disciplinary expertise. His earlier book titled Sense, Sensex and Sentiments has been acknowledged by experts as one of the pioneering works in the field of Anti-Money Laundering.

He is a ranker in the final examination of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and well recognised for his professional integrity and acumen. MRV, as he is fondly called by friends, is a rare breed of Advocate who brings a trans-professional approach to the table. He has completed his doctoral thesis on the issue of Agricultural subsidies with SASTRA University.

He has authored Global Imbalances and the Impending Dollar Crisis (TR Publications, 2007), Sense, Sensex and Sentiments – Failure of India’s Financial Sentinels (KW Publishers, 2011) and Dr. Manmohan Singh – A Decade of Decay (Rare Book Publishers, 2013). He is regular panellist in leading channels in India and also a columnist in various print media.

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

1. Strange Alliance, Stranger Bed Fellows
2. “Mummy, What is a Daddy?”
3. To Destroy Family, Marx goes to Market
4. Culture-Emerging Frontiers of Economics
5. A Case for the Missing Middle
6. In Search of Utopia
7. Taxes are a price we pay for our Civilisation. Is it?
8. Needed: Economic Reforms or Reforms in Economics?
9. The Power of Restraint
10. Ram Rajya is Less of Lord Rama, More of Rajya