It may seem odd to begin a piece regarding the on-going struggle surrounding the centuries-old Sabarimala temple in Kerala with the first lines of a book, published relatively recently in 1974 by an American, which deals primarily with the rights of people and what the state can do. But it is actually quite relevant.
The preface in Robert Nozick’s book Anarchy, State and Utopia begins with the simple declaration that —
“Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?
Here we go again. Now that India’s 2019 general elections are just a few months away, Mr Modi wants you to help him “transform India.”
“War is a judgement that overtakes societies when they have been living upon ideas that conflict too violently with the laws governing the universe … Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations.”
In a 
For anyone concerned about the poor and poverty, the first task is to clearly define the words “poor” and “poverty.” Wealth and income are reasonable measures that usually serve in defining a poor person: one who has less than some defined minimum of wealth and/or income.
But that definition is not comprehensive. What if a person could borrow the money needed for an investment with a sufficiently high return such that it would be possible to return the money with interest, and still have some left over? Then the person is not poor. Meaning, anyone able to borrow is not poor. Conversely, anyone who is unable to borrow is “credit-constrained” and is comprehensively poor.
