Deepak Lal

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Deepak Lal (born January 3, 1940 in Lahore - † April 30, 2020 ) was a British economist of Indian origin. He was Professor Emeritus of the James S. Coleman Professorship (Professor of International Development Studies) for international development at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was Professor of Economics and Political Science at University College London, Research Administrator of the World Bank and has been consulted by many governments and international agencies. He was Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at University College London . From 2009 to 2010 Deepak Lal was President of the Mont Pèlerin Society .

He has authored over 50 books, more than 200 journal articles and co-authored numerous reviews for international organizations. His fields of interest ranged from cultural and religious history , economic and political history to current areas of economic, financial and development policy . Deepak Lal's unconventional theses meet with opposition , especially from representatives of egalitarian positions.

Life

Deepak Kumar Lal was born in Lahore into an extensive and wealthy Indian landowning family. With the partition of India on August 14, 1947, the family lost their property and all of their land in Pakistan and had to flee to India. At the request of the family, Deepak Lal was to study engineering and began studying mathematics in Delhi before turning to history. As the best in his year, he received one of the rare Indian scholarships abroad and was able to study economics, philosophy and political science at Jesus College in Oxford . After completing his studies, he first joined the Indian diplomatic service in 1963 and worked for a short time at the Indian embassy in Tokyo. In 1966 he quit the diplomatic service to pursue an academic career.

In the 1970s he was a member of a governmental Indian planning commission which, according to his own statements , healed him from the socialism of which he had been convinced until then . From 1984 to 1987 he was research administrator at the World Bank . Deepak Lal was married to Barbara Ballis and had two children.

Positions

Deepak Lal was a proponent of economic liberalism . In his books and lectures he advocated the dismantling of obstacles in international trade, advocated the unconditional freeing of exchange rates and denounced an increasing dirigism in the western democracies. In his opinion, there is an increasing tendency in the western states to force distribution and welfare goals to the detriment of individual civil liberties .

Since floating exchange rates are superior to fixed exchange rates, the now inoperable IMF can be abolished, and since globalization has led to a massive decline in poverty, the World Bank has become superfluous. In his opinion, the imperial supremacy of the USA created the prerequisites for free trade, while international organizations such as the United Nations , the IMF and the World Bank were increasingly under the influence of NGOs , which acted as a brake on global economic development. These organizations are becoming more and more prisoners of the NGOs and therefore do more harm than good. The same applies to the environmental movement.

Lal considers the development aid practiced over the past 50 years, particularly for Africa, to be a complete failure, since it has hindered, rather than promoted, economic progress that is compatible with the cultural and mental conditions in Africa. The fight against 'Poverty in the Third World' is now a veritable industry that secures a good income for many middle-class professionals. The NGOs have become lobbyists on their own behalf, who have a strong interest in securing their own livelihood over the long term. The political forms implemented from outside lack legitimacy since they do not go hand in hand with the cosmological ideas, the culture and the mentality of the peoples concerned. The Americans' high sense of mission, which manifests itself, for example, in exaggerated demands for global democracy , is viewed by Lal as extremely problematic.

In his most recent book, Reviving the Invisible Hand, he expresses a caustic criticism of the green movement and the supposedly anti-development behavior of many international NGOs. He bluntly expresses his skepticism towards the general moral claim that is widespread in the West. He sees the green movement as a secular substitute for religion in a world in which Christianity and with it its ethical standards have lost their effectiveness and regulatory function. As a substitute for religion, the green movement has the potential to bring global economic globalization to a halt once more. In Reviving the Invisible Hand , he also doubts the existence of anthropogenic climate change and its negative consequences and advocates the use of genetically modified organisms and DDT as an insecticide in agriculture.

His theses about the new regulation of global resource exploitation are controversial. He advocates the establishment of an International Natural Resources Fund , which is to organize the exploitation of raw material deposits in the countries of the Third and Fourth World, so-called failed states . Dictatorships, such as in Iran , Libya or African countries such as the Congo , do not use the money they generate for the good of their people, but to implement reprehensible goals such as the alimentation of international terrorism, the development of weapons of mass destruction or the export of Wahabism , the state doctrine Saudi Arabia, to other Islamic states.

The global economic crisis is not due to the failure of the market, rather it is caused by the failure of politics. According to Deepak Lal, the crisis not only darkens the economic situation, but also leads to long-term economic damage such as national debt and inflation . He sees the causes of the economic failure of western governments and western-dominated supranational organizations in a demoralization of society. The globalization have indeed brought a modernizing world. However, this should not be equated with westernization. The crisis in particular makes it clear that there is a need to further develop our own value systems , especially in Asia.

Another topic that preoccupied him was the genesis of capitalism in the western world. Unlike Max Weber , who locates the emergence of western capitalist economic attitudes in the rational ethics of an ascetic Protestantism , Lal saw the laying of the foundation stone of western economic systems and the blossoming of the capitalist economic order in the writings of Augustine .

As for his position on the European Union, Deepak Lal, who was a member of the advisory staff of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet from 2000 to 2009 , was one of the supporters of the United Kingdom's entry into the EEC in the 1975 referendum . However, as he says, he feels deceived by the europhile political elite. "Whilst selling us a free-trading area they were in fact surreptitiously co-opting us in the creation of a political union, a United States of Europe: a state run by unelected technocrats."

Awards

Fonts (selection)

  • War or Peace. The Struggle for World Power . Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018. ISBN 978-0-19948212-2
  • Poverty and Progress. Realities and Myths about Global Poverty. Washington DC: Cato-Inst. 2013. ISBN 978-1-93804884-5
  • Lost Causes. The Retreat from Classical Liberalism. 2012. ISBN 978-1-84954288-3
  • Reviving the Invisible Hand. The Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty-first Century. 2006. [1]
  • The Poverty of "Development Economics". 2002.
  • The Praise of Empires. Globalization and Order. London: Palgrave Macmillan 2004.
  • Unintended Consequences. The Impacted Factor Edowments, Culture and Politics on Long-Run Economic Performance. 2001. ISBN 978-0-26262154-0
  • The Political Economy of Poverty, Equity, and Growth. A Comparative Study. 1999. ISBN 0-1-9829432-8
  • Stagflation, savings, and the state: perspectives on the global economy. Publ. For The World Bank. Ed. by Deepak Lal and Martin Wolf. 1986. ISBN 0-19-520496-4
  • The Threat to Economic Liberty from International Organizations. In: Cato Journal. Vol. 25, No. 3. 2005. pp. 503-520. ( PDF )
  • Enlightenments, old and new - I. What can the history of the European enlightenments tell us about the chances of an Islamic enlightenment? In: Business Standard. September 19, 2014 [2] full text
  • Enlightenments old and new - II. Why the best hope for an Islamic enlightenment comes from the Shia clerics of Iraq. In: Business Standard. October 17, 2014. [3] Full text

literature

  • Georg Schwarz: Unintended Consequences of Church Greed. Deepak Lal's provocative success story in the West . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. No. 35.2000.
  • Georg Schwarz: Culture as part of the economy . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. September 4, 2009.
  • The Indian Deepak Lal builds bridges . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. April 24, 2009.
  • Martin Hostettler: Environmental protection as a secular religion. Dirigism and green clouds darken future prospects . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 2006. No. 210

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from: Georg Schwarz: Culture as part of the economy. 2009.
  2. ↑ Deepak Lal: The eco-fundamentalists. In: Business Standard. January 23, 2015, accessed May 1, 2020 .
  3. ^ Jonathan H. Frimpong-Ansah: The Vampire State in Africa: The Political Economy of Decline in Ghana . Trenton, New Jersey: Avrica World Press 1992. Chapter: Theory of Economic Decline. Pp. 45-47
  4. ↑ quoted from: Cornelius Boersch , Guido Westerwelle [Hrsg.]: The summa summarum of politics and economy: An overview of the most important economic-political debates of the present . Wiesbaden: Gabler 2009. p. 329
  5. ↑ Hofstettler 2006
  6. ↑ Hofstettler 2006.
  7. ↑ Deepak Lal: Reviving the Invisible Hand. The case for classical liberalism in the twenty-first century . Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2002. pp. 214-230
  8. ↑ Depak Lal: Reviving the Invisible Hand. The Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty-first Century. 2006. S, 235.
  9. ↑ Deepak Lal: Unintended consequences. Endowments, Culture, and Politics on Long-Run Economic Performance. 2001
  10. ^ Gerhard Schwarz: Unintended consequences of church greed. Deepak Lal's provocative success story in the West. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , February 55th, 11th, 2000.
  11. ↑ Stephan Wirz (ed.): Capitalism - an enemy image for the churches? Zurich: Theologischer Verlag 2018. p. 111.
  12. ↑ Quoted from: Srinivasa Roghavan: Obituary: Economist and BS Columnist Deepak Lal passes away at 80. In: Business Standard. May 1, 2020, accessed on May 1, 2020 (English): "While they were selling us a free trade zone, they secretly co-opted us into the creation of a political union, the United States of Europe, ruled by unelected technocrats"
  13. ↑ Longxi Zhang (Ed.): The Concept of Humanity in an Age of Globalization . Taipei: National Taiwan University Press 2012. p. 203.
  14. ^ Professor Deepak Lal - Professor Emeritus of International Development at UCLA. Center for Policy Studies, archived from the original on December 15, 2014 ; accessed on May 2, 2020 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Lal, Deepak
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British economist
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Lahore
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 2020