PRAKASH M SWAMY
CHENNAI: Dr. M R Venkatesh is the author of ‘Retaining Balance – the eternal way and the book deals with 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. He advocates change in Indian Constitution, which is highly western oriented, and India is perhaps only country in the world that has two official names – Bharath and India.
He is a right-wing economist with moorings in Bharatiya culture that does not believe in absolute unrestricted freedom. His expansive sweep of study takes in all that is good or bad with western civilization, economic and political thought. He doesn’t mind mincing words when he claims that most modern western philosophies are primarily based on Christian theology. He goes into classical capitalist theories and also into disruptive and miserable communist theories.
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 corporate and promoters on complex transactions involving cross-disciplinary expertise.
He says Hindu Dharma had never frowned upon acquiring wealth and fulfilling your desires in a rightful honest way, unlike Abrahamic religions. On the contrary it has always emphasized on the Purusharthas at different stages of life. This balance stressed upon in our scriptures between the material and spiritual world has been brought out beautifully in this book in contemporary idiom.
India is one of the most misunderstood and consequently misperceived countries. The Idea of India is colorful and attractive in nature but very difficult to decipher. One can reasonably claim that every civilization has few unique characteristics. But the uniqueness of India is not simply because of its culture. Indian culture is the manifestation of Indian thought and hence, the uniqueness of India emanates from its worldview.
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 panelist in leading channels in India like The Republic and also a columnist in various print media.
Retaining Balance -the eternal way”, an incredibly phenomenal work – which will make people look at economics in a way it, has never been viewed before.
It was published by KW Publishers, New Delhi. The book is an awesome effort by MRV and the political dispensation of India should take up the contents of the book seriously and course corrects the economy by giving due importance to familial, cultural and civilization angles.
Retaining Balance is an original contribution to Indian political economic thought. I have purposely hyphenated politics with economics because economics merely looks at human beings as a material person looking solely for fulfillment of his/her material desires. MRV takes an entirely fresh look at this assumption. He establishes that there has been far too much emphasis on the individual and alternatively suggests that family needs to be at the center of all economic policies.
Simultaneously, he goes on to pick up wisdom from Indian classical knowledge system and its Itihasa, its civilization guiding literature of Ramayan and Mahabharat and then presents the spirit of Ram Rajya in modern perspective. He is frank, unapologetic and objective in his criticism as well as his advocacy of Ram Rajya as the guiding principle in modern terminology. MRV takes off from where Integral Humanism left off.
Obviously then, socio-economic models that work elsewhere may not be applicable here at all. The traditional Left-Right binary is a case in point. Although M R Venkatesh is known as a rightwing thinker, his thinking essentially reflects what is generally referred to as the Third Way. The book is available for sale in Amazon online and at several bookstores across India.
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