A few days ago on my way to work, I glanced at the book a fellow passenger on the train was reading. It was a 12th grade book and the subject was nuclear physics. It had diagrams of protons, neutrons, and electrons orbiting the nucleus and all that sort of stuff. After a bit, I asked the teenager why he was reading nuclear physics. He said that it was required. But, I asked, was he interested in the subject. No, he wasn’t but he was …

“My uncle died sadly due to his habit of drinking tea?”
“That’s amazing! I have heard of people dying because of alcohol. But tea?”
“Yes, tea lead to his death. He was crossing the road to get himself a cup of tea, and a bus ran over him. Tea caused his untimely demise.”

Little drops of water
Little grains sand
Make the mighty ocean
And the beauteous land
I think the time has come to speak of little things. Things that add up like little grains of sand and little drops of water. Individually, they seem irrelevant and inconsequential. But they matter very much in the end.
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Saturday evening plans included meeting friends for drinks at the Cricket Club of India near the Churchgate station. Karthik said it was so close to the station that anyone …

Many years ago I had come across the Zurich Axioms on the usenet. I don’t recall now who it was that posted it there but here it is for the record.
A set of simple (major and minor) rules devised by a set of Swiss investors, on how to succeed on the Stock Exchange – but which are generally applicable to any situation of selecting and managing risk.

Here is an item of interest that I got from Reuben’s weblog.
Bajaj Auto’s 3-wheeler utility vehicles are about to be released in the US.
Now that is precious, ain’t it?
A number of interesting lessons can be drawn from that. First, and foremost, that Indian innovation is not something that can be easily dismissed. Indian firms can come up with solutions that have wide applicability. Second, that of learning by doing and the importance of a large domestic market for creating comparative advantage. Third, the need to think and …

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) are benchmarks of progress in a global attempt at alleviating poverty. The eight goals and their associated targets clearly address a complex set of effects the fundamental cause of which is poverty.
For the record, here are the MDG:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
2. Achieve universal primary education.
3. Promote gender equality and empower women.
4. Reduce child mortality.
5. Improve maternal health.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
8. Develop a global partnership for development.

Global Information Technology Report 2002-2003 – Readiness for the Networked World
The Global Information Technology Report is the most comprehensive assessment of “networked readiness” — how prepared an economy is to capture the benefits of technology to promote economic growth and productivity. As the world experiences an economic slowdown, the Report highlights that the use and application of information and communication technologies (ICT) remain among the most powerful engines of growth. This year’s Report benchmarks the performance and monitors progress in networked readiness of 82 countries.
Finland ranks numero uno in …

A report in the online edition of India Today, INDO-US RELATIONS HIGH ON TECH starts off imaginatively with
Imagine a commercial satellite blasting off from the Sriharikota Space Centre with NASA-ISRO painted on the launch vehicle. Or building modern weapons using Indian software and US technology. It is the kind of vision Indian and US strategists dine on.
While the Indian and US strategists dine on the mouth-watering prospect of building modern weapons, the poor in India get to dine on nothing. To a large extent, chronic hunger is …

FOR A HUMAN CHARACTER to reveal truly exceptional qualities, one must have the good fortune to be able to observe its performance over many years. If this performance is devoid of all egoism, if its guiding motive is unparalleled generosity, if it is absolutely certain that there is no thought of recompense and that, in addition, it has left its visible mark upon the earth, then there can be no mistake.
Thus begins one of the most inspiring stories that I treasure. It is by Jean Giono and …

Rambling on about transaction costs from the last post.
Transaction costs are all over the place. When I travel to talk with someone, the cost of the travel in terms of time and money is the transaction cost of the talk. I could use the phone to have a talk. That reduces the transaction cost of having the talk. Telephones are a lower cost substitute for transportation in this case. This is one way that information and communications technologies reduce transaction costs. It is cheaper to move electrons …

In my last post (Transaction Costs — Part 1) I claimed that the fundamental role of ICT is reduction of transaction costs. What, you may ask, is transaction costs? The answer is this: pretty much everything is transaction costs, with a little bit of physical stuff thrown in.

It is worth pondering this question: What exactly is the role of ICT in any economy?
This week, I would like to address myself to that question in detail. The answer can be succinctly stated as: It reduces transaction costs. It will take a pretty long time to explore that answer. But first a few personal experiences to set the stage would be appropriate.

Are you as tired of reading the next article on the out-sourcing of white-collar jobs from the US to India as I am? If not, here is one by Katharine Mieszkowski in Salon.com called “Gone in the blink of an eye”.
A couple of UC Berkeley economists, Ashok Bardhan and Cynthia Kroll, estimate that 14 million white-collar jobs are at risk of being outsourced, or about 11 percent of the total, by 2015.

The subtitle of a recent Infoworld article India Plans to $2.7 billion IT investment is Government embarks on four-year effort to bridge digital divide and it fills me with dread.

A few days ago in this weblog, I wrote about our wonderful reforms and wondered why we don’t ask what it was that made our economy so desperately in need of reforms. The causes are many. As they say, dhoondo ek, milenge hazaar. Yet there must be a core set of causes that essentially constrain the Indian economy. I believe that one of them is what I call the personality cult disorder (PCD).
Tavleen Singh in an Oct 26th Indian Express article titled Midnight Alley to Dawn’s …

Yuvaraj Galada alerted me to the October 26th, 2003, edition of Fortune in which Warren Buffet worries that “America’s Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling the Nation Out From Under Us.” Then he suggests a remedy for the problem. The solution he says is to balance imports and exports. It is an interesting article and I would recommend reading it. Buffett does some amateur model-building and I think he gets it right. He does not do any deep analysis, and rightly so. Deep analysis confuses people and the …