This is a game that is being played out in the media for a while now. Pick a number, preferably in percentages, below 93 and above 0. Then, say that number, is the percentage of people who live in dire (or choose your adjective) poverty. Read this post to see how this game has progressed [...]
…with the best stats you have ever seen by Hans Rosling. This, from TED, a must see site. A slightly dated, yet, relevant link. I could not embed the video, so, for now, you have to click the link above. It is worth it…
Let’s have unilateral trade liberalisation Abi is right. Dweep didn’t go far enough. What India needs to do is to say “to hell with the WTO” and unilaterally, completely, dismantle trade barriers. For that matter, so does everyone else. Here’s Sauvik Chakraverti on the topic on TCS Daily: Unilateral free trade is a very good [...]
In today’s DNA Mukul Asher & Amarendu Nandy argue that the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is ill-equipped to fulfil its mandate of providing retirement income security. The EPFO is an unusual national provident fund in combining the features of a defined benefit scheme (Employees Pension Scheme or EPS, introduced in 1995) with those of [...]
Why strive for excellence when mediocrity will suffice? You can’t blame Dr Manmohan Singh for telling us what the problem is. Soon after he took office, he told us that fixing the bureaucracy was crucial for India’s development. Last year, he said that the Naxalite insurgency is the biggest threat to internal security. And, now, [...]
Bongop’o’ndit rips apart another Pankaj Mishra article: Pankaj Mishra writes an opinion piece for Outlook’s India at 60 issue , seemingly cautioning on excessive championing of and reveling in India’s current resurgence at the cost of insensitivity to myriad problem that still plague the country. I say seemingly because that’s how he starts, and then [...]
And in the process, discover your Inner Economist Tyler Cowen wants to give merit-based gifts to Indians. Yes, this involves economics professors and free-market fundamentals. He has made an announcement on his blog, and it may be worth your time to check it out. With your email, send a one sentence proposal of how the [...]
INSEAD Affiliate Professor Patrick Turner surmises that the speed of entrepreneurship development in China is likely to erase the lead that India currently enjoys in entrepreneurship over its northern neighbour. In his view, the entrepreneurship bandwagon in both the countries has been fueled by a combination of a number of overseas residents returning to the [...]
I have worked in India and in Indian organisations abroad for a large part of my professional career. However when I think back I cannot recall more than 2 physically disabled colleagues during that entire time. Mind you, I am a sociable kind of person so my visual – and conversational – range extended beyond [...]
What should Indian governments do to help citizens get jobs? The central government clearly has wrong ideas—it intends to impose job quotas in the private sector for ‘backward’ communities/classes, which is perhaps the second worst thing it can do (the worst being “creating” more government jobs before giving them away). And we are not even [...]
“What sort of a woman are you? When this child was born, it seems she was born with your brain, so you have none left.” These were the words of a manager I once had. Let’s call him “M”. Luckily – for me, that is – these words were spoken by him to his wife, [...]
…and the twain shall never meet. It was a gathering of retired, about-to-retire and planning-to-retire Indian military officers – an amorphous rendezvous, where most of the participants were attempting a successful transition from the uniformed to the corporate life. Atanu Dey was also there and he addressed them in his usual manner – luculent, frank, [...]
My first experience of seeing mental illness, beyond the one-word shorthand in Hindi ‘paagal‘ and the figurative usage ‘dimaag kharab hai‘, came when I was an engineering student. I used to visit my rakhi-brother in the medical college. Now a specialist in child psychiatry and a professor at one of the world’s leading medical schools, [...]
Nitin Rao, who blogs at Next Billion sent us this guest post I recently met a senior teacher at a small private school in Hyderabad. What differentiates her school from the neighboring schools, she proudly told me, is the superior IIT Foundation coaching. Schools charge premium tuition and teachers higher pay for IIT Coaching. As [...]
Res ipsa loquitur The official figure for the shortage of officers in the Indian army is 24.1%, a shortfall of 11238 officers against an authorization of 46615. Imagine the impact on the army budget, if all the deficiencies in the officer cadre were to be suddenly made up. The current revenue to capital expenditure ratio [...]
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