In Defence of Indian Libertarianism: Not Left, Nor Right, But Forward

Public debates in India often reflect a poor grasp of political philosophy. Discussions of ideologies and other political ideas are marked by conceptual confusion. Whilst Indian academia seems to have caught up with mainstream political theorisation, it is difficult to say the same of our public commentary.

Such bleakness manifests time and again, most recently in Ujjawal Mishra and Ritik Bhandari's tirade against libertarianism in a piece published in Swarajya.

In it, they assert that libertarianism is not a serious proposal for governance. Why? They allege that 'libertarian policy wonks' develop 'precision-engineered' technocratic policies that are void of the contextual realities of India.

Libertarianism, they argue, does not engage with questions of caste, community, and India's political reality. This 'alien' idea, they claim, designs 'blueprints for a species that does not exist, and for a society that never has been'. Above all, they accuse libertarianism of shifting decisions from democratic scrutiny into an 'unaccountable' sphere of the market.

But that's as far as the piece gets. There is much they don't tell us. They never engage with what libertarianism is. They don't tell us who Indian libertarian commentators are. Instead, they resort to vague labels such as 'libertarian policy wonks' and 'policy adjacent folks'. Their essay collapses libertarian philosophers, free market economists, and technocratic reformers into one indistinct category.

I understand their intention: to critique the policy 'wonk' culture that's dominating social media and the think tank world. These are wonks who are well read, adhere to data absolutism, and offer one-stop solutions for everything. If that was their target, collapsing this eclectic group into 'libertarians' is an odd howler. Such wonks are often left leaning, employing data to call for expansive government interventions.

But before I address their claims, it will help to understand what libertarianism is. It is your choice to live life free, minus government interference. Freedom is its paramount political value, and any coercion on an individual, even by the state is understood as an antithesis of that freedom.

Mainstream libertarianism is a unique philosophy. It marries left-wing social liberty with right-wing economic conservatism. Protection against non-consensual interference is combined with an understanding of property rights and free markets as essential to personal liberty. To safeguard liberty then is to have a minimal state uphold rule of law and enforce private contracts. No more.

Libertarians also reject the idea that social order can be imposed by central or top-down design. Society is far too complex for deliberate design by people. No one planned social institutions like money and law. They are instead products of a 'spontaneous order'. The state doesn't design society. Billions of individuals coordinating their actions voluntarily with those of others do. This belief in spontaneity makes libertarians hostile to technocratic planning, or a planned order.

Now that we know what libertarianism is, let's appraise their claims.

First, Mishra and Bhandari tag libertarian policy solutions as precision engineered. This is a conceptual mistake. Policy commentators who advocate such top-down solutions to 'flatter technocrats' are not libertarians. If some commentators dress up technocratic interventions in libertarian language they are being disingenuous. One may not blame libertarianism for that. The libertarian ideology is suspicious of such policy engineering.

Second, they charge libertarian philosophy with ignoring communities in favour of individuals. Libertarians are accused of treating society as nothing more than a heap of atomised persons.

It is true that libertarians see the individual as the basic unit of social analysis. It helps to explain social phenomena through the concreteness of the individual, and her choices. This does not deny the existence of communities, of course. Libertarians do not advocate individuals as self-sufficient units. Adam Smith and his tradition never ignored the social nature of people. What libertarians reject is the idea that systems of justice should hinge on communal markers such as caste or religion.

Liberty, moreover, is not antithetical to the development of community. In fact, it's a precondition! The 19th century French economist Frédéric Bastiat warned that restrictions on liberty isolate people by dividing them into hostile factions. Libertarianism which treats individuals as ends in themselves is cautious of such situations. This is why it insists that individuals be protected in case their own community wrongs them.

Third, libertarian ideas are accused of being alien grafts divorced from India's everyday context. But is this true? Is there no such thing as Indian libertarianism?

Like all other ideas, Indian libertarianism has a genealogy. In India, libertarianism found its best articulations soon after independence through the work of intellectuals such as Rajaji and Minoo Masani. These ideas were then institutionalised through the Swatantra Party.

The charge of 'foreignness' of Indian libertarianism is therefore irrelevant. Indians did not receive handouts of libertarianism. They provincialised it and repurposed it to speak to the Indian condition. They made it thinkable in a multilingual and plural society that looked nothing like the world of Locke, Hume, and Kant.

According to economic historian Aditya Balasubramanian, these erstwhile libertarian intellectuals were selective in their interpretation of Western market liberalism.

Pages of bygone journals like The Indian Libertarian, or Freedom First, bespeak a vivid engagement with national and sub-national issues of the time. If these are proclaimed as 'alien' ideas divorced from Indian problems, the authors are being uncharitable. The same can then be said of most 'isms' that found their way into popular Indian life. If Karl Marx was not Indic, why single out Adam Smith?

Fourth, Mishra and Bhandari's accusation is this: libertarian commentators suggest aping foreign policies disregarding India's cultural heterogeneity. For them India's heterogeneity is an 'inexorable tinderbox' waiting to be ignited, a reality they claim Indian libertarians overlook. This is their most compelling charge and there's much to be said about it.

Good practices followed elsewhere serve as waystones in the path to development. When commentators, whether libertarian or not, call attention to good practices in Hong Kong, Singapore and China, the question is not about aping them. The point being made is Indian policymakers pay attention to what works around the world.

Their appraisal of India's diversity is shallow as well. Cultural heterogeneity is a condition. Instability if it comes into being is a product of how that condition is governed. Conflicts emerge when groups seek state-mediated recognition and favour. Diversity management by an all-powerful, intrusive state sparks this conflict.

Libertarianism offers a correction. Stemming from liberalism, it is indeed a theory of multiculturalism. As political philosopher Chandran Kukathas argues, the libertarian stance to tackle cultural heterogeneity is best tagged as 'politics of indifference'. The non-paternalistic state that libertarians advocate does not dictate how people should live. Instead, it guarantees individuals the right to associate as they want and exit communities that oppress them.

Without realising it Mishra and Bhandari supply the strongest argument for such a libertarian framework. They describe how 'every group wants its share of the pie'. Exactly, and when the state is the baker of that pie, identity becomes a weapon. Groups which they mention mobilise as Jats, Gujjars, Adis, Marathis or Kannadigas because political power determines who gets benefits and protections.

A centralised state by recognising identities turns them into matters of political strategy. The libertarian position then is for the state to do nothing. If India's heterogeneity is indeed a tinderbox as they claim, why ignite it? Is doing nothing so difficult?

Our authors also share the plight of tribals whose autonomy is confronted. They mention cases of tribal resistance at Niyamgiri, Hasdeo and Siang, against mining and hydropower projects.

They misdiagnose the origins of these conflicts. These struggles arise not because of markets, but because the coercive state asserts ownership over tribal land. It then decides how to allocate them to cronies. In each of these cases, the state's coercive authority collides with the freedom of individuals and communities who wish to govern their own resources.

Libertarianism doesn't call for the state to industrialise, for it is not the state's job. There's nothing libertarian about a policy wonk calling for the state to engage in infrastructure projects, uprooting tribals. Contrary to their claim, libertarianism is not a simple 'cut-taxes, privatise-everything' ideology. At its core it is a theory of non-coercion.

That said, if tribals voluntarily want to exchange their land, they should not be prevented from doing so.

Given India's heterogeneity, simpler policy proposals would work best. India's low state capacity and messy popular politics make complexity a liability. Libertarian scholarship doesn't pretend that politics can be kept out of policy either; they begin from this reality and advocate for policies designed to withstand perverse political incentives.

Fifth, the authors dismiss libertarianism as an ideology of intellectual convenience. Libertarianism imposes unfair moral imperatives, they assert.

They fail to recognise ideologies as constructive worldviews that are bound to be intellectually convenient. All ideologies put forth certain moral imperatives, or ethical claims. Conservatism as an ideology puts forth why communities ought to be organised through tradition. Socialism opines why communities ought to be organised through equality of outcomes. All other ideologies including libertarianism have their own ought to-dos.

That said, in a world where the rhetoric of inequality gets laudatory applause from academic and activist circles, being a libertarian is anything but convenient.

Finally, they claim that libertarian ideas remove decisions from democratic, public spheres and place them in the private, 'unaccountable' sphere of the market.

Markets aren't unaccountable. They are accountable in a way that is different. If a politician fails, people wait for five years. If your local restaurant fails, it does not wait five years for a vote, it goes to the wall.

Markets then are not just about profits. They are about losses too. Free entry and exit of enterprise is what libertarians champion, not cronyism. In a free market system, cronies don't thrive. If the services they provide are subpar or overpriced, then incumbents are thrown out. Monopolies cease to exist.

Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian economist, termed this process as 'creative destruction'. It keeps private players accountable, ensuring real authority gets democratised with private consumers. Big businesses resent this. So they commingle with the state seeking special privileges. It could be lobbying to gain a sumptuous contract, or to outlaw a smaller firm's business.

Mishra and Bhandari's caricature is one of crony conservatism. They invent a libertarian phantom and conflate it with all things not libertarian. They contrive a 'libertarian consensus' out of thin air. In this day and age of wilful misapprehension, conceptual cogency is important.

Hence it's worth repeating: libertarianism is market-friendly, not business-friendly. It is not left or right. It is forward.