champion of individuality

I haven't been posting of late. Planning to make it up by posting my most recent publications.
Here's a piece published in Deccan Herald 9.11.2008, on Ayn Rand. We read and raved over her books as teenagers, as generations before and after us. The supremacy of the individual, the championing of the right of the individual to grow to full potential, these are indeed admirable. when is there need for curbs and control? Where can we strike the right balance between the needs of the individual and of society as a whole?


Today when blazing flames from Wall Street to Dalal Street are reducing the wealth of nations to ashes, many are questioning the premises of free market economy and mulling over the merits of strict government control.

Ayn Rand’s classic cult novels and philosophy of Objectivism can now be read from a fresh perspective. Ayn Rand (born Alice Rosenbaum, Jan 20, 1905-1982) was a Russian-born American writer, best known for advocating the supremacy of individual rights.

Her passionate pleas supporting personal freedom and laissez-faire capitalism won her many admirers. She defined her ideal of the independent, unfettered genius and a social system where economics need to fit the needs of people, in her bestselling novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). The noted economist Alan Greenspan was among her early enthusiasts.

Read the full article here