The return of the critic

It’s been quite a while since I last criticized the academicians. In today’s rather dull and monotonous ‘Infrastructure Appraisal, Financing, Privatization and Regulation’ lecture that dormant gene was once again activated. If you look at it, I have a tendency to nitpick on the concepts taught in subjects dealing in one way or the other with the institution of government, probably because ideas related purely to the art of business can’t be fundamentally incorrect.

So there I was sitting in the front, a certain fate if you arrive late in the class. The words of the professor somehow managed to register and the first thing I heard sounded like finest quality bullshit.

Here it goes, some researcher trying to figure out the inputs for growth, regressed the inputs such as capital, labor and so on against the dependent variable growth. And what he found was that a certain portion of the growth was not explained by these inputs. So that unknown something resulting in growth was ascribed to technology and infrastructure. And he proclaimed in the proud voice that infrastructure has no direct relationship with growth and that it is a ‘catalyst’ to growth. Now this train of logic is a perfect example of the result of a f***d up epistemology. The epistemology in this case is “ascertaining a thing by non-knowledge”. You in a most arbitrary manner ascribe an unknown to infrastructure and not just that, also mirror the properties of the unknown (Properties again deduced from your own ignorance) to infrastructure.

Without getting into the specifics, let me just leave you with the simple truth that in the sphere of economic calculation by the private enterprise, all inputs or costs are included even if it is such infrastructure such as education and a direct relationship is sought to be established. To deny this will be tantamount to ignoring the role of the ubiquitous H.R. department!!