Atanu Dey suffers from a rather severe form of attention deficit disorder. After his bachelors in mechanical engineering, he moved to computer science and received a master’s degree. Product marketing at HP in the Silicon Valley kept him occupied briefly for six years. Then he traveled in India, US, and Europe for five years before realizing that he knew nothing about economics. So he studied economics at the University of California at Berkeley and received his PhD for his thesis on the Indian telecommunications sector. His critique of the New Telecom Policy 1999 is worth a read, even though his thesis will only appeal to hardcore economists and is guaranteed to distress socialistic Indian policy makers. Playing hooky while at UC Berkeley, he slummed at a junior university called Stanford as a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow 2001-02. Rumor has it that there he actually developed a model which he calls “Rural Infrastructure and Services Commons (RISC)” that promises to bring about the economic transformation of rural India. Someone asked him to demonstrate that claim and so he is off in India trying to implement the RISC model, leaving behind a lot of very relieved people in California where he spent nearly two decades. In his spare time (about 90% of his total time) he listens to classical music, practices Vipassana meditation, reads physics, gives lectures on Buddhism, maintains a sporadic blog, and occasionally makes sense. He plans to become a philosopher when he grows up. He would also like all to know that he is a published poet.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 
hello sir,
actually i am not posting a comment…but i am resorting to this window just because i want your contact info and wish to discuss with you and have your inputs on a project i am doing in the area of ICT for schools in villages.
i am a student of product design at IDC IITB.
SIR, WHERE CAN I MEET YOU AND WHEN and can i kindly get your mail id..becoz my browser gave error to the mail id link in your blog page
thanking you
sincerely,
Ajay
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Hi Atanu,
1. I ran into some of your writing which appear to strike a chord in the heart of my mind. Good , sound idea and the hope that some day the momemtum of change in rural india shall rid us of the shakles of rogue beuacracy, and policians who are even more brutish and loathesome.
regards
sunil
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Great bio, Nu!
Thank Buddha that you are out of Kali-for-ni-a! Thanks also for leaving Cal, we desperately need the slot you gave up for our qualifying students at Berkeley.
Come back soon though! You probably have overdue fines at the Bay Area county libraries. Any spare changes are greatly appreciated!
best regards,
buu
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my name is vyoma nenuji. i came across ur article ” A BRIEF BOIGRAPHY” while searching for attention deficit disorder. i m 19 yrs old and suffering from ADD. i have always been a good student through out my entire academic life, but for the last three years my productivity has been sharply decreasing and my confidence levels have become low. this has affected my relationships with my family, friends and teachers. i also suffer from procrastination. it has been alosing battle for me and i fear failure. but ur life history has added a ray of hope in my life. i would be very thankful if u could tell mehow did u deal with add effectively and went on to build a successful career.
thanking you,
vyoma
p.s.do reply back.
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I like your piece on why India needs more efficient railways. However, I think a better way to implement that would be to identify some hubs – the 4 metros plus Hyderabad, Bangalore etc. – say around 10 in total – and build high speed rail links from these hubs. Say these high speed rail links would cover a radius of 100 km each.
If we supplement this with better road and air links between the 10 hubs – along with better infrastructure for exchange of goods and services at these locations we would be contributing a lot to national development.
Yes, we can’t dismiss the fact that we need high speed rail links between major cities, however, that can wait till the time we have built enough spokes around major cities.
Like you overall blog though. Difficult to believe you have been working so long as your ideas carry and imply a lot of vitality.
Your blogs now one of the few that I intend to read regularly.
When you get time – check my short idea on hypersonic trains
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Vyoma, I think the add thing was a joke! The point was that he’s shifted to several different fields, not that he literally has ADD.
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