Sri Aurobindo was born on this day, Aug 15th, in 1872. Among the intellectual and spiritual giants born in this land, Sri Aurobindo has a special standing. Go read about Sri Aurobindo and lament the fact that dwarfs rule the land today. Here’s Sri Aurobindo on Indian spirituality: Spirituality is the master key of the [...]
The DMK came to power in Tamil Nadu state promising a free colour television for every household, regardless of income or the number of television sets already owned. And now it is setting up a company to provide cable television. Bad? Not quite. As Badri Sheshadri writes, it is probably the only way to inject [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
…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, [...]
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 [...]
Safety in numbers Indian Army’s record has many parallels with that of the Indian cricket team; one unmitigated disaster (1962), one unqualified success (1971), two stalemates (1948 and 1965), a cataclysmic foreign policy blunder (IPKF in Sri Lanka) and a pyrrhic PR victory in Kargil (1999). The pusillanimous display by the top brass and their [...]
Budgeting- ‘Guns versus Butter’ The Indian budgeted defence expenditure (DE) for the current year (2007-08) is Rs. 96,000 crore and the Indian Army’s share of this pie is approximately 47%. The DE is 2.07% of the GDP; the corresponding figures for Pakistan and China are 3.4% and 2.8 % respectively. But there is a caveat [...]
The Fundamental Questions The Indian armed forces, in the broadest sense, comprise the three defence services – the army, navy and the air force; the federal or central police or paramilitary forces; and the state police forces. These categories are very broad and many defence organisations fall in either-or / both categories. The most glaring [...]
So here I am, back in India after a couple of years, doing research for a project in the relatively rich rural district of West Godavari in Andhra Pradesh. Some biased observations based on the few data points here. Train prices are increasingly affordable and hence demand outstrips supply. For the first time, I was [...]
Wonk nirvana The 2007 ICT Opportunity Index, the ITU explains, “has benefited from the expertise of several international and research organizations, (and) is based on a carefully selected list of indicators and methodology. It is an important tool to track the digital divide by measuring the relative difference in ICT Opportunity levels among economies and [...]
I received an email from a gentleman named Annamalai Veerappan recently which raised some interesting questions that I am not qualified to answer. I’m posting his entire email here, in the hope that IEB readers will pitch in. I’ve been following the US housing bubble for the past 2 years and it’s been amazing. How [...]
Mohammad Younus has an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal on how microfinance can be used to rebuild the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. But can microfinance work in all conditions? I don’t know much about the local economies of New Orleans or Mississippi, but it’s not been a roaring success in India yet. [...]
When populism is so stupid, what does it say about people? IANS reports: The Kerala Assembly united on Thursday to condemn ostentatious weddings in the state and came out with suggestions to curb wedding expenses. With the increasing demand that the state government should intervene to curb extravagance in marriages, Law Minister M Vijayakumar said [...]
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