The best metaphorical analogy for democratic capitalism seems to emerge from the field of biology. Like organisms, which mutate, learn and evolve to more efficient life-forms so does the market in a democratic eco-system. The next level is by no means perfect. There will be new problems and fresh mutations, for the pursuit of perfection in biology is always directional and does not result in arriving at one unique destination. Political economy seems no different. When you have tops-down attempts to fix the problems of an economy, the leaders and their academic backers have a sense of control. But this sense, which in any case is largely illusory, is bought at the expense of risk-taking, experimentation and progress. The latest hot story of American business is not that investment banks have caved in and become commercial banks (that’s day-before-yesterday’s news) but that Google is launching a cloud-based operating system to challenge Microsoft’s desk-based one. Here innovation is at work again and value is being created. Even though personally we might like to take sides, if one of these giants were to go bankrupt,

it would reassure everyone that risk-taking is fine, new wealth can and will replace old wealth and whoever wins all of us will be collectively better off.

So here’s raising a toast to messy, crisis-prone, debate-driven, learning, evolving democratic market capitalism. May our children and their children drink from its waters.

The writer divides his time between Mumbai, Lonavla and Bangalore

jerry.rao@expressindia.com