Free market ideologue you can count on

Reuters' Nita Bhalla is, of course, just an honest broker of the news;

Debroy, a free-market ideologue, said people had to be careful when focusing on goals and should not make "value judgments" on people's lifestyle.

Our bold in the above. Nita is passing judgment on Indian economist Bibek Debroy, who as an adviser to the Indian government had the temerity to criticize some United Nations' initiative as overly ambitious, at a press conference;

"I am going to provoke my hosts, but I am greatly disturbed by what is happening on the SDGs. Eight goals, 21 targets, I can understand. But 17 goals, 169 targets? We'll go nuts. Imagine the plight of the countries which will now have to collect data for these, if collecting that data at all is possible," he said.

'SDGs', you ask? ' Well, the 's' is for 'sustainable'.

World leaders are due to adopt a set of new development objectives in September, to replace eight expiring U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These will include objectives like ending poverty, reducing child mortality and tackling climate change.

The one thing that has been sustainable for many, many decades is the ability of UN paychecks to arrive on time, for the people who are always setting goals for everyone else. But, you're an ideologue if you say;

"For example, should people have piped drinking water? Everyone will say yes. But in India in 2001, 45,000 villages had populations less than 100, some of those villages are in hilly areas where they get perfectly clean drinking water from streams," he said.

"So what is the objective? Is it to get drinking water from taps or just to get clean drinking water?"

Maybe the people themselves could decide.