yazadjal.com

Two articles recently linked Nepals Maoist rebels to the Shining Path, Peru’s violent marxist guerillas of the 1980’s and 90’s.

The Shining Path was one of the most gruesome terrorist movements in a small, impoverished country. Most write-ups on the Shining Path seem to credit a military crackdown by then Peruvian president, Alberto Fujimori. But it was not the power of the gun, but the power of ideas that brought down the Shining Path. The ideas of Hernando de Soto and his path breaking book, The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism.

The basic idea was that there is a lot of capital and potential in the poorest of communities, but it cannot be used because it is locked up largely due to a lack of property rights. From de Soto’s homepage:

Between 1988 and 1995, he and the ILD were responsible for some 400 initiatives, laws and regulations that modernized Peru’s economic system. In particular, they designed and ran Peru’s property system which has given titles to more than 1,200,000 families and brought into the law some 380,00 firms which previously operated in the black market, allowing Peru’s poor to acquire more than $9 billion in net benefits. ILD also streamlined government procedures to open up the legal system to greater participation by the majority. In addition, they initiated the policies for the stabilization of Peru’s economy, tamed inflation, and allowed Peru to return to international financial markets.

ILD=Institute for Liberty and Democracy, the Peruvian think tank started by de Soto

De Soto’s work has a lot of significance for India as we too have our People’s War Group and Naxalites. There is only so much that military action can do. The challenge lies in including them into the mainstream and that can be done only with institutional change. The right to property is just as fundamental as the right to life.

As an aside, the Shining Path was one of the minor reasons why I didn’t much care for the “India Shining” ad campaign.