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Till 1991, decades of central planning, licence raj and big government had crushed the confidence of Indian youth in their ability to compete globally. Liberalisation changed all that. India integrated into the global economy, started modernising, and its national income shot up. No longer was it necessary to wait for ones relatives settled abroad to bring in tiny blocks of imported cheese. No longer was it necessary to apply for permissions in triplicate to get foreign exchange.

But something was amiss. For whatever reason, no one was stepping forward to claim credit for this Big Bang reform. No leader told us why liberalisation is good. And the many failures of basic governance continued, unabated. Two things stood out in particular: low levels of freedom and high levels of corruption.

Even today, nearly 70 years after independence, India ranks close to the bottom of the world in all global indicators of freedom and justice. And we have a Censor Board, we have laws about matters that should be within the purview of religion, and our governments directly manage or fund religious bodies and events.

As far as corruption is concerned, my stint in the IAS since 1982 showed me that Indias politicians were hopelessly corrupt and that corruption always started from the top. I was getting sick of serving under these despicable leaders.

In 1998 i decided to look for a political solution. Joining mainstream parties was not an option because of their involvement in corruption. What i was looking for was a liberal party that would fight for a small but strong government, for free markets and for equality of opportunity (not equal outcomes). It would form a government that undertakes a limited role of defence, security and justice. Such a government would have very little discretion in regulating peoples social preferences or economic affairs except to the extent they physically harm others. Such a government would never be allowed to use taxpayers money to operate businesses such as Air India or Ashok hotel.

Since the reforms needed for this to happen would require controlling the central government, this party would have to be national (as opposed to regional).

After an initial failed discussion with a few liberals about forming such a party, i resigned from the IAS in 2001 and moved to Australia to learn about modern governance and to continue my search for a liberal party. The key was to find leaders to take this forward. In a book that i wrote in 2008 to outline policies that such a party would implement, i invited liberals to form a team. This team grew bigger and we launched the Swarna Bharat Party in 2013. A huge task lay ahead.

SBP offers the vision of a golden India, an India that would lead the world in freedom and wealth, an India capable of competing with the best in every field. An SBP government would perform core functions (which current governments do not much care for) and leave the people alone to live their lives in a manner consistent with their beliefs (or lack thereof). It goes without saying that an SBP government would treat everyone equally under the law, not divide them on the basis of religion, caste, language or class.

Liberalism is the belief that we are born free and that freedom is the highest value. Liberalism is the idea that the common man is sovereign and the government is our servant. It is the belief that through their own free endeavours the people can achieve material (and for those so inclined, spiritual) prosperity: even greatness. And it is the belief that if anyone is left behind after putting his best foot forward then the government should top up such a persons income and lift him above dire poverty.

SBP is growing steadily. There is a small but growing group of young Indians, widely travelled, who understand that working together to increase liberty is pivotal to Indias success. But what about the other new parties that have found favour with the youth? Unfortunately, despite their good intentions, they are offering old wine (socialism and freebies) in a new bottle. One would hope they examine the proven benefits of liberty and reconsider their by now outdated approach.

Unlike in the UK or in the USA, the idea of liberty is skin deep in India. We have no counterpart of the 1215 Magna Carta or the 1689 Bill of Rights. We fought for independence from foreign rule, not so much to advance our personal economic, political and social liberties. Till today, our countrys conservative and socialist leadership operates on the premise that for Indians liberty does not matter.

The first stage will be to awaken the people. We will need to show them the enormous benefits of liberty and the real solutions to their problems, not the hype of Jan Lokpal or the magic of demonetisation. And it will be good enough initially if those who understand liberty step forward to contest elections. Winning will happen when its time comes.

I invite those interested in good governance to assess SBPs manifesto. Gokhale, Ambedkar and Rajaji were among Indias early liberals. Now it is time for a new generation of liberals to lead.

If this task is undertaken with persistence, the day will come when India votes for a liberal party. And then Indias reform journey and journey to freedom can finally begin.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Read the original post:
For a liberal India: The country now has its first liberal party, the Swarna Bharat Party - Times of India (blog)

Alberta Liberal Leader David Swann. David Bloom / David Bloom

As the Liberal leadership race sputters into gear, talk of a broader effort of uniting Albertas centrists is heating up with the involvement of former Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel.

Friday is the deadline for candidates for leadership of the provincial Liberals to submit their papers to the party, with two having done so by midday: David Khan and Kerry Cundal.

Khan, a lawyer who has run twice previously for the Liberals, definitely intends to run while Cundal, a lawyer and former federal candidate, hasnt yet made a final decision on whether she will contest the leadership.

FILE PHOTO: David Khan Submitted

In an interview Friday, Khan said he wants to rebuild the Alberta Liberals, who currently hold only one legislature seat the Calgary-Mountain View ridingof leader David Swann.

Weve got a great opportunity to rebuild this party and provide a real middle-of-the-road option for most Albertans who arent far-right or left, said the 42-year-old Khan, who ran for the party in Calgary-Buffalo in the 2015 provincial election and in Calgary-West in a 2014 byelection.

Cundal, who is an adviser to federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, declined to comment further as she weighs whether to enter the race. St. Albert mayor Nolan Crouse had been running for the Liberal leadership but abruptly pulled out earlier this week.

The formal start of the Liberal race comes as the election of former Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney as the leader of the Progressive Conservatives on a platform of unifying with the Wildrose has given new impetus to the idea of uniting moderates in the province.

Former Edmonton mayor and PC cabinet minister Stephen Mandel is one of the organizers of a meeting in Red Deer in two weeks that will bring together membersof the Liberals, the Alberta Party and some Progressive Conservatives.

In an interview Friday, Mandel downplayed what he said is a very preliminary meeting but said it is being held to discuss whether theres a willingness to join together.

Theres a lot of people talking about how to bring the centre together and a lot of people talk to me about it and I said, Ill see what I can do about bringing people together and see what happens,' he said.

Mandel said that on a personal level he thinks the PCs uniting with the Wildrose and shifting rightward is a bad idea.

Theres a tremendous number of people who think some of the Progressive has been lost (in the PC party), he said, numbering himself in that group.

Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark, who holds his partys only seat in the legislature, has confirmed he will attend the April 15 Red Deer meeting.

Clark, who has been hosting meet-ups across the province since the PC leadership vote, said the Mandel event is just one of many discussions being held about unifying centrists.

Theres a recognition that those of us in the centre need to get behind one thing anyone who wants to have that conversation, Im all in, said the Calgary-Elbow MLA.

Clark said that if common ground and shared values are found, he will advocate for the Alberta Party as the best vehicle to move forward. However, he said hewill listen to arguments for a different path, such as cooperation or a new party.

Khan said he had only recently heard about the meeting but he is interested in whats happening.

Im open to discussions with Albertans across the spectrum, he said.

jwood@postmedia.com

See the article here:
Liberals prep for leadership race as talk of uniting moderates heats up - Calgary Herald

Liberals are pushing in from the left with their own health-care solutions, looking to gain new ground after last weeks Republican meltdown over an Obamacare replacement.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political action committeethat aims to represent the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party, began circulating a petition Wednesday calling for every person to have access to a Medicare-type plan an idea supported by the partys left wing but viewed with some skepticism by moderates.

Theres broad agreement across the political spectrum that parts of the health-care law need fixing, most pressingly the premium spikes and insurer exits from the laws insurance marketplaces. Liberal advocates and lawmakers see a fresh opportunity for rallying their side around the issue after House Republicans abruptly halted efforts late last week to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

[Senate Democrats offer to work with Trump on health care but only if he ends attack on Obamacare]

I think Friday made it clear there is no consensus and no path forward from the right, and if theres going to be a path forward its going to come from progressives, said PCCC spokeswoman Kaitlin Sweeney.

Liberals still have little hope of enacting their solutions, with the GOP controllingthe White House and Congress. But theyre trying to lay the groundwork for electoral victories in 2018 and 2020 that could open new doors.

We are already working with our friends in Congress to build momentum for this idea and make it a high-profile 2018 issue, says the petition, which the group was emailing out Wednesday afternoon.

There are some small but notable signs that momentum is building for more government-run health insurance.

The House already had a single-payer bill in the form of HR 676, the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act, which Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) introduces in every Congress. Since the collapse of the GOPs American Health Care Act, three new Democrats, Reps. Donald Payne Jr. (N.J.), Nydia M. Velzquez (N.Y.) and Peter A. DeFazio (Ore.), have signed on as co-sponsors, bringing its total number of endorsements to 75. The measure had just 62 co-sponsors when Conyers introduced it in 2015.

And over the weekend, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a single-payer bill; on Twitter, liberal activists had already been pressuring other senators to endorse it.

Republicans, reeling from the Obamacare fight, have highlighted the single-payer push as evidence that the Democrats will go too far.

Obamacare is collapsing as a result of its top-down, government centered approach and the Democrats only answer is more government, Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee said in a statement. The question remains, how many other Democrats will join the chorus to appease the activist base of the Party thats clamoring for far-left policies?

But advocates and commentators on the left note that support for the idea of single-payer system is as high as its ever been. The PCCC petition points to a recent Pew survey showing that 85 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of Americans overall said the government is responsible for providing health coverage for all.

A Monday essay for the socialist magazine Jacobin by Harvard Medical School instructor Adam Gaffney argued that there was no better time to fight for single-payer than after the repeal fight revealed public support for wider coverage.

Politicians have yet to follow the populace, but, with enough grassroots activism, they can be pressured and flipped, or if recalcitrant confronted with primary challenges or defeated at the polls, Gaffney wrote. The insurance industry will no doubt fight to the death, but its enormously unpopular, and surmountable.

See more here:
Liberals see fresh opportunity in health care after GOP meltdown - Washington Post

OTTAWA The federal Liberals are putting on a political press to sell their child-care budget pledge, calling itambitiousin the face of questions about whether thefunding is too modest to make a significant difference for families.

The Liberals have promised to spend $7.5 billion over a decade on child care, starting with $500 millionin the new fiscal year that starts this weekend andincreasing to $870 million annually by 2026 to fund spaces in provinces and territories, as well as indigenous child care on and off-reserve.

For advocates who havewaitedyears for the federal government to kick in cash to help expand and subsidize child-care services, the money is seen as a start, but far from enough to cover the whole country.

The annual funding is belowwhat the Paul Martin Liberals offered provinces in 2005 and below whatfederal officialslast year told the minister in charge of the file would be needed to make a measurable effect on the number of child-care spaces countrywide.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government's pledge would have a "huge" impact on low- and modest-income families, calling it a "historic investment."

"These are the kinds of things that we need to do to ensure that every family has the opportunity to make the choices that are right for them," Trudeau said at a Winnipeg daycare.

The actual provincial and territorial allocations will be unveiled once funding agreements are signed, butfirst, the Liberals have to get provinces and territories to agree on the final text of a multilateralagreement that would lay out the key policy goals of the child-care money.

The money could potentially create 40,000 subsidized spaces for low and modest-income families over the next three years, about 13,000 spaces a year orabout 2.4per cent of theroughly 543,000regulated child care spaces in Canada for childrenfive and under.

The Liberals calculated the impact based on an annualfederal subsidy of $7,000 per space.

NDP families critic Brigitte Sansoucy said the promised future spending on child care is totally inadequate to meet the needs of parents andbelow what her party had proposed in a plan the Liberals attacked for being too slow.

"The Liberals should be supporting child-care programs, such as the one in Quebec," she said. "This budget fails to do that."

Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu said in Quebec, home to the largest subsidized system in the country, and other parts of the country there are long wait lists for spaces, suggesting the need is enormous. The Liberal plan, she said, only amounts to about 40 new child care spaces per riding, per year.

"I'm happy to see them start, but I do think there's a difference between the fanfare that they're making and what actually appeared in terms of dollars in the budget," she said.

Speaking at news conference in Toronto, which hasthe highest child-care costs in the country, Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said that if the Liberals are going to take gender equity seriously, then they mustdo the same when it comes tothe soaring cost of child care.

Duclos said the Liberals plan to take $95 million from the money announced in the budgetto close data gaps on child care and put $100 million in an innovation fund aimed at finding ways to get the most bang for the government's buck.

Jordan Press, The Canadian Press

Read more:
Liberals plan to spend $195M on research into child care in Canada - rdnewsnow.com

Liberal MP Craig Kelly with Tony Abbott on the backbench during question time. Kelly says Australia should ditch the Paris climate agreement if the US does. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Australia will need to review its participation in the Paris agreement on climate change if Donald Trump follows through with his threat to withdraw from the treaty, according to the chair of the Turnbull governments backbench committee on environment and energy.

Craig Kelly told Guardian Australia on Wednesday hed predicted immediately after Trumps election that the Paris climate deal was cactus and he stood by that assessment.

Trump on Tuesday night Australian time signed a new executive order to unravel a number of Barack Obamas regulatory measures to combat climate change, including eliminating the clean power plan, which sets limits on the amount of greenhouse gases that power plants emit.

The latest executive order is seen as a prelude to the US following through with the campaign commitment to withdraw from the Paris deal.

Australian conservatives are watching events in the US closely.

Kelly said he was aware of the new executive order, and if Trump went the extra step and withdrew from the Paris agreement: I think we have to review it.

The former Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who now sits on the crossbench, holds the same view.

It is clear America intends to withdraw from the Paris agreement and it would be folly for Australia to be part of it, Bernardi said. I dont think we should subsume our national interest to international bodies.

Bernardi this week sparked a rebellion inside the government by proposing to disallow an extradition treaty with China on the basis the countrys legal system was deficient.

The disallowance motion prompted a number of Liberals to express opposition to the extradition treaty.

If Trump withdraws from the Paris deal, Bernardi will likely use the development as a recruitment drive for his new Australian Conservatives movement, which will put pressure on conservative MPs in the government.

Kelly, who chairs the governments backbench committee on climate and energy, has been campaigning internally for months, arguing that the federal renewable energy target should be frozen at its current level.

The Sydney Liberal backbencher said regardless of what the US ultimately did, he had concerns about what the Paris deal could achieve.

Kelly said even if you accepted that fiddling with the CO2 knob could influence climate change, he had doubts that countries could meet their Paris commitments without a technological breakthrough.

Asked whether a majority of his Coalition colleagues would be in favour of quitting the Paris deal in the event Trump pulled out, Kelly argued it would be a close run thing.

He said government MPs were under pressure from voters who believed renewable energy targets were responsible for higher power prices.

The prime minister has signalled Australia will stay the course if the Trump administration follows through with its threats to quit the Paris deal.

Turnbull told reporters last November it would take four years to withdraw from the agreement after ratification.

Read more here:
Conservative Liberals watching Trump's lead on climate, key ... - The Guardian