Amit Varma, India’s foremost blogger and award-winning columnist, has been busy recently.

His first novel, My Friend Sancho releases this week in fine bookstores all across India. Click here for launch details — so far, it’s Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai. If you’re in any of these towns, this is bound to be a fun event. Amit is a delightfully witty and amiable chap, if we say so ourselves.

And, by the way, it appears that we may have to add another adjective while describing the multi-faceted Mr Varma. According to Business Week magazine, Amit is one of the (ahem) 50 most powerful people in India. Who knew?

Blogger Amit Varma brings a particular libertarian point of view to his columns and blog items, but also a risqué sense of humor that keeps readers hooked. He won the 2007 Bastiat Prize for his columns in Indian business paper Mint, and for a select group of Indians, he represents a libertarian, anti-tax and anti-government sensibility that is still quite rare in the country.

Another friend of ours, Reuben Abraham, who is among many other things, a professor at the Indian School of Business has been selected as one of the Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum. By the way, Reuben is a true citizen of the world. He visits more countries than almost anyone else we know — we suspect he adds new booklets in his passport twice a year. So, if you’re an IEB reader in Patagonia, rest assured that you’ll get a chance to meet Reuben sooner rather than later.

And, where it’s relevant, Happy New Year as well!

Many thanks to long-time IEB friend, Manish Vij for the photo.

No, we’re not going to do a volte-face and join the gonzo lefties…

Instead, we’re kibitzing ways and means to improve IEB’s layout & design, to be executed by the inimitable Madhu Menon, full-time chef and restaurateur and part-time tech guru.

What would you, dear readers, suggest with regards to layout & design?

The areas in question are

I) Layout
a) Masthead
b) Font
c) Color combination
d) Template
e) Anything else

II) RHS sidebar
a) Would you like to see most recent posts? If so, how many?
b) Currently, we display the last 20 comments. Change or not?
c) We’re investigating if we can also categorize the posts by contributor ie, if you click on Nitin Pai, you’d get all the posts he’s done. Can’t promise anything yet, but we’ll try.
d) Other ideas

III) Comments Section
a) Is a comments policy necessary? If so, what’s the ideal?
b) Do we need to add a spam filter for comments?

IV) Anything else that I’ve not listed above?

If it’s a feature from another web site/ blog, please provide the link.

The more specific you are, the more bhav you’ll get.

As one of my favorite lyricists said, “In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”.

Comments section, zindabad!

Update:

a) How easy is it to find posts on a particular topic/ person/ issue? Do you use the search feature and/ or go by the categories on the RH sidebar? Which blog makes it easiest to search their archives?

b) Would you like us to list recommended books on India/ economics on the RH sidebar? Check out http://marginalrevolution.blogs.com/ for an example.

c) Is there any academic/ professional journalist blogging about Indian economic/ finance issues apart from Ajay Shah? We’d like to add them to our blogroll.

The funny, brilliant and eclectically prolific Amit Varma is on the final short-list for the Bastiat prize.

Regular readers of IEB won’t be surprised, I’m sure. And if you aren’t a regular reader, isn’t it time you became one? You can’t afford to miss all the fun.

It’s possible that I’m biased, but we believe Amit is the most widely-read blogger in India. However, don’t just take our word for it. Check out the man and his writing yourself.

Links

The columns from Mint that won Amit his nomination
– Where’s The Freedom Party?
– A Beast Called Government
– The Devil’s Compassion

– Amit’s post on this nomination

– Manish Vij’s take (we desi bloggers like to stick together. As I never tire of saying, it’s a small brown world after all).

Congratulations and good luck!

IEB was launched formally two years ago this day, and we’ve come some ways since. A few changes to the list of contributors but our focus hasn’t — we remain, then and always, a forum to discuss issues facing the Indian economy.

The readership has grown steadily and averages around 2,000+ visitors a day, if one includes various RSS feeds (including Bloglines) and news aggregators (like LexisNexis and EBSCO).

The most pressing challenge facing this blog has been the lack of time, which is inevitable for an all-volunteer effort. All of us have day jobs and such like, but we do what we can.
Let me insert a little plug here — if you’re interested in blogging on IEB, please ping me.

Thank you for stopping by, whether you’re a regular visitor, a passer-by, a lurker or a commenter. We love you all.

Venue: Bombay Palace

Date & time: 22 July 2007, 1 pm

We are adding three new guest bloggers: Shefaly Yogendra, Dweep Chanana and Pragmatic Earth (who will remain incognito, given the nature of his job). All three have diverse interests, which should make for some fun blog posts.

IEB has become the most popular blog on Indian economic issues in the short time it’s been around, and our posts manage to find their way to all sorts of interesting places.

Not bad for an all-volunteer effort, even if we say so ourselves.

Currently, we’re facing a resource crunch — many of the IEB contibutors are swamped, with work and/or personal matters.

Hence, we’re looking for new contributors to IEB.

Your profile: You are an economist/ writer/ blogger, who’s written about India and/ or economics, and the material is accessible online. Our contributors hail from a dozen cities across the world, so location is not an issue. Writing ability and knowledge of India’s economy, however, are absolutely critical.

You could opt to be a “regular” contributor (weekly posts) or a guest (more sporadic posts). We’re flexible – can work posting specs that work for both sides.

If you’re interested, please ping me at prashant-at-stringinfo-dot-com, with links to your blogs/ written material.