The Peruvian economist

We all know about the groundbreaking work of Professor Abul Barakat of Dhaka University on land administration and land management in Bangladesh. He has found in his research that of the 14 crore citizens of Bangladesh 12 crore are involved in some form of court-case about land and property. An amount of Taka 24 thousand and 860 crore had so far been spent for these cases and only 1 percent of this money had gone to the state coffer. Rest went to lawyers, touts, payment of bribe to court officials, magistrates etc. He thinks if something could be done about this pointless litigation, the national income per capita would go up from 400 dollar to between 1200-2000 dollar.

This is a frightening picture. But unfortunately no one has been able to do anything about this enormous loss of money and energy, though everyone agrees that land management and land administration is the mother of all corruption in our country.

I came across, almost by accident, a book by one Peruvian economist who along with his team of co-researchers has done extensive research on property ownership, property management and property laws of the world's developing and ex-Soviet countries. He has summarised the result of his extensive and 5-year long research in a book entitled, 'The Mystery of Capital: Why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else'. His first book, "The other path" has largely helped to eliminate the notorious 'Shining Path' terrorist group in Peru. Although I am not an economist, this second book created an enormous impact in me. It is a simply written 300-hundred page book but contains some stunning truths about property and property management laws. Speaking in favour of capitalism it diagnoses some of the main reasons of failure of capitalism in the developing countries. It also prescribes some simple, but difficult to implement due mainly to vested interest, remedies of those maladies. On further studies, I found that the author, Herando de Soto, has already founded an institute, The Institute of Liberty and Democracy (ILD), through which he and his colleagues have started a campaign for reviving of what he calls, dead capital, all over the world's developing countries. I visited their website (www. ild.org.pe) and found some exciting comments about his work and his book. He has been mentioned in almost all the major newspapers and journals in the world.

He has his critics who contend that he is selling a simplistic universal solution to many different, often culturally specific problems. He has his answers. They may be read in the Economist or in his book. I wrote an article on this breathtaking book in the Bangla monthly magazine 'Kali O Kalam' in January 2004 and drew the attention of our economists, political leaders and planners. But alas, haven't yet heard anything or read anything about this great book.

I am drawing the attention of your readers all over the world to take a look at this book.