Deepak Lal

Deepak Lal ( born 1940 in Lahore ) is a British economist of Indian origin. He is the owner derJames S. Coleman Professor ( Professor of International Development Studies) for international development at the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA). He was a professor at University College London for Economic and Political Science, Research Administrator of the World Bank and was consulted by many governments and international agencies. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at University College London.

He is the author of over 50 books, over 200 journal articles and co-author of numerous reports for international organizations. His areas of interest range from cultural and religious history, economic and political history up to current areas of economic, financial and development policy. Deepak Lal's unconventional theories, however, are supported by broad empirical facts obtained, produced primarily on the part of representatives egalitaristischer positions on contradiction.

From 2009 to 2010 was Deepak Lal President of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Life

Deepak Kumar Lal was born in Lahore in a widespread and wealthy Indian landowner family. With the partition of India on 14 August 1947, the family lost their wealth and all the land in Pakistan and had to flee to India. At the family's request Deepak Lal should study engineering, also first began to study mathematics in Delhi, to then turn to the study of history. As valedictorian, he was one of the rare Indian foreign scholarships, and was the study of economics, philosophy and political science at Jesus College, Oxford record. After graduating, he entered the diplomatic service in 1963 initially in India and worked there for a short time at the Indian Embassy in Tokyo. In 1966 he resigned from the diplomatic service to pursue an academic career.

In the 1970s he was a member of a State Planning Commission of India, who have him in their own words from socialism, from which he was convinced by then healed. From 1984 to 1987 he was research administrator the World Bank. Deepak Lal is married to Barbara Ballis and has two children.

Positions

Deepak Lal is a committed and eloquent advocates of economic liberalism. In his books and lectures, he advocates the removal of barriers in international trade one, advocates an unconditional release of the exchange rates and denounces a growing statism in the western democracies. In his view, intensified in the western states increasing tendency to force distribution and social welfare goals to the detriment of individual liberty rights of citizens.

Since moving exchange rates were fixed to consider the IMF has become functionless could be abolished, and as globalization have led to a massive reduction in poverty, the World Bank had become superfluous. In his view, the imperial supremacy of the United States creates the precondition for free trade, while international organizations such as the United Nations, the IMF and the World Bank are increasingly under the influence of NGOs, which acted as a brake on global economic development. These organizations would increasingly become prisoners of NGOs and therefore harmed more than they took advantage. The same is true for the environmental movement.

The practice in the past 50 years, development aid especially for Africa holds Lal for a complete failure, as they have a economic progress, be compatible with the cultural and mental conditions of Africa, handicapped, have even prevented, rather than to promote him. The implemented from outside political forms lacked legitimacy because they were not accompanied by the cosmological ideas, the culture and mentality of the peoples concerned. The high sense of mission of the Americans, which manifests itself for example in exaggerated claims for global democracy, Lal regarded as extremely problematic.

In his latest book Reviving the Invisible Hand, he expresses a caustic critique of the green movement and the development of hostile behavior of many international NGOs. He speaks bluntly of his skepticism about the moral General claim widespread in the West. The green movement, it evaluates as a secular substitute for religion in a world in which Christianity and its ethical standards would have lost their effect and regulatory function with him. As a substitute for religion, the green movement has the potential to bring the world economic globalization once more to a halt.

Controversial are his theses on the reorganization of the global exploitation of raw materials. He advocates the creation of a " International Natural Resources Fund ", which is to organize the exploitation of natural resources in the countries of the Third and Fourth Worlds, so-called " failed states ". Dictatorships, such as Iran, Libya or African countries such as Congo put the generated amounts of money not for the good of their people a but to enforce reprehensible goals, such as alimentation of international terrorism, the development of weapons of mass destruction or export of Wahhabism, the official doctrine of Saudi Arabia, Islamic in other states.

The current economic crisis is not due to the failure of the market, they have a lot more their cause in the failure of politics. The current crisis is in accordance with Deepak Lal not only a darkening of the economic situation, but would also lead to long-term economic damage, such as public debt and inflation. The causes of the economic failure of Western governments and Western -dominated inter-governmental organizations, he looks in a demoralization of society. Globalization has indeed brought a modernization worldwide. However, this should not be equated with Westernization. Especially the crisis makes it clear that a need to further develop their own value systems exists, especially in Asia ..

A further issue, which employs him is the genesis of capitalism in the Western world. Unlike Max Weber, who situates the emergence of western capitalist economic sentiment in the rational ethics of ascetic Protestantism, Lal sees the foundation stone of Western economies and the flourishing of capitalist economic order in the writings of Augustine.