Informal Credit Market and Black Money-ERRATA

of values and norms. As Arrow puts it bluntly in his perceptive essay, 'A Cautious Case for Socialism' (in Howe, I (ed), "Beyond the Welfare State", Schoeken Books, 1982): "The model of laissez-faire world of total self- interest would not survive for ten minutes; its actual working depends on an intricate network of reciprocal obligations, even among competing firms and individuals/' Once this is appreciated, it becomes possible to understand many features of society without recourse to artificial 'economic' arguments. Consider, for instance, the threat of violence. It is well known that one way in which a moneylender in a backward agricultural region ensures that money owed to him is repaid is by using the threat of violence. This would appear as a paradox to the economist ("Why does he not anyway use such a threat and export money? Why does he bother to lend the money in the first place?"). But as soon as we accept the idea of norms and morality, such behaviour becomes easy to comprehend.