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 [...]
Pragati – The Indian National Interest Review is a monthly magazine on strategic affairs and public policy; and is devoted to promoting economic freedom, an open society and realism in international relations. It regularly features articles and essays from many IEB bloggers. You can download and subscribe to the free digital community edition of the [...]
This week’s Economist carries a letter from a certain Murali Reddy of Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey. SIR – So, Krishnan Ganesh, one of the proud products of India’s higher-education system, is busy developing tools to help improve the quality of primary education in America by outsourcing teaching over the internet (Face value, June 23rd). Meanwhile, [...]
Ravikiran Rao asks more questions than he answers in the June issue of Pragati – The Indian National Interest Review. Advocates for Indian family businesses claim that they can teach a thing or two to the rest of the world, both about family values and about running a business. But family values are not unique [...]
But India needs to renew its love for rights and freedoms Jerry Rao’s op-ed in today’s Mint is a must read. That is why we are forced to ask ourselves: should we not have a political party that is a khullam-khulla defender of markets and an opponent of an intrusive state? S.V. Raju of the [...]
Aaditya Mattoo, Deepak Mishra and Ashish Narain, in the Times of India, on the problem and solution for Indian agriculture: So, here’s the paradox: the hard-working Indian farmer — one of the world’s low-cost producers — is unable to compete globally. What is hobbling the Indian giant? A recent World Bank study finds that the [...]
Televisions don’t need sewers Preeti Aroon, over at FP Passport, asks why the slum-dwellers of Dharavi prefer TVs to toilets. I’ve visited Mumbai many times myself, and I’ve always wondered about the TV antennas poking through thatched-roofed shacks. How can “these people” buy TVs when their kids are malnourished and wading through sewage-infested water? I [...]
Anyone who writes about there being “two Indias” is necessarily wrong. Anyone who describes India’s jettisoning of the licence raj in 1991 using words like “neo-liberal” is necessarily confused. And anyone who writes about Indian agriculture quoting P Sainath and no one else is necessarily unbalanced. Rajinder Sahota, writing in the Financial Times (they actually [...]
Yes, the IT industry has to do more for India. But not what Amartya Sen says it should Amartya Sen made a JFK-esque speech asking the IT industry what it had done for India. His point was not that the IT industry isn’t doing anything for the economy at large—he concedes that it is—but that [...]
Some interesting commentary in the papers this week: Anantha Nageswaran’s opening salvo, in the newly launched Mint: Central bankers in most of the developed world have taken that to heart in dealing with financial markets. Financial markets, in theory, have more participants than those engaged in the economic marketplace. Hence, the outcomes of their buying [...]
Anthony, the third member of the Amar-Akbar-Anthony gang watched the remake of Don recently and came away with the following thoughts: In 1978, Vijay earned 11.75 rupee after singing the whole day. In 2006, he earns 3,000 rupee in three days — that’s 1,000 rupee a day. This is an 85-fold (or 8,411%) increase. According [...]
People who don’t practice what they preach are not necessarily hypocritical. Perhaps they are merely not sufficiently intelligent to realize that what they do is inconsistent with the logical implications of what they preach. This gap between what they insist to be true while doing something which reveals their words to be false can be [...]
Resolving the ‘agrarian crisis’ requires understanding the laws of economics P Sainath’s years of experience covering India’s countryside lends a credibility to his voice. How unfortunate it is then that he should expend it on framing the issue in partisan, rich vs poor, urban vs rural terms. Here’s an excerpt from a recent interview he [...]
As someone who grew up in the deprived 1970s and 1980s, I love the options Indians today have — in cars, telephones, apparel, jobs and so much more. Rejoicing in this choice (available to a small but rapidly increasing number of Indians) is one thing. And quite something else to suggest that the entire country [...]
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