PV Indiresan was firmly against Keynesian ‘pump-priming’

I’ve been reading a number of books simultaneously, including PV Indiresan’s Vision 2020. Indiresan, although not trained in economics, seems to have broadly understood a number of economic concepts. He does make a few errors here and there, but he is definitely not socialist, nor Keynesian. Not entirely classical liberal, his views are broadly consistent with classical liberalism.

In particular, he has some harsh words for Keynesians:

For four decades, the government went on a spree creating jobs whether they were needed or not. The prevailing view was that employing people was a good in itself – even if there was no work to do, or the work done was not commensurate with the wages paid.

Keynesians consider themselves expert in this area. Stung by the disastrous loss of competitiveness that resulted from their policies, they have been lying low for nearly ten years. Now, they are back at the centre-stage insisting that pumping money into the economy, and increasing fiscal deficit, is the only remedy for unemployment. Fiscal deficit puts all that money and patronage into the hands of politicians and officials. Neither of them is always wise or even honest.

Applied across the board, as Keynesians would do; pump-priming is like rain, it falls both where it is needed and where it is not, even where it may do much harm. So, the consequences of classical Keynesianism are problematic at best and disastrous at worst. [Vision 2020, p.93]

I’ll summarise his key points separately, but this section was good enough for me to scan, OCR and publish.