The recent spate of leaked exam papers is crying out for a solution. Here is my proposal. It is simple and cheap and will avoid the humongous costs of leaked questions.

If one ponders the question of why cobbler’s children often go barefoot, one comes to the obvious conclusion that cobblers are traditionally poor and cannot afford the luxury of the same shoes that they produce for others. It is not that they don’t desire shoes; only that shoes lose out in a cost-benefit analysis.

Here’s a story I heard some time ago, about a farmer who consistently won the first prize for his fine crop of corn every year at the county agricultural contest. Peculiarly, after the contest he would give away the seeds of this prize-winning corn to the neighboring farmers. This puzzled some people, until someone finally asked him why he shared his good fortune. He answered, “Well, growing corn in my field requires pollen from the neighboring fields. If they don’t have good corn in their fields, I will never be …

What is globalization? My definition of globalization is this: the web of material and informational connections that spans the globe and includes within it about 20 percent of the world population held together through socio-economic, political, military, and religious links.

By and large, I am coming around to the conclusion that Indians must be amongst the most hardworking people on the planet. They are not lazy. At least they are not physically lazy. If there is an easy and simple way of doing something, that is not for Indians. Find a process that is tedious, complicated, involved, and pointless — Indians apparently will not only design such a process, but for the most part accept it without a complaint.
Thus have I heard that the Tathagata once said while …

Just like India is the world’s largest potential market, India is also the world’s largest potential democracy. I don’t think what we have currently in India to be a true democracy. It is what I would call a cargo cult democracy. It is instructive to examine explore the two ideas of democracy and markets in the Indian context.
First, markets. One of the most important lessons mankind has learnt is that markets work. There are, however, very important pre-conditions for markets to work. When …

Some years ago during the Kargil episode, I had analysed the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir as a dollar aution (DA)and written a piece called Dollar Auctions and Deadly Games.
I believe that the model has interesting implications and is worth pondering. The DA game involves the auctioning of a dollar bill similar to an ordinary auction where the winner gets the dollar but with the special requirement that the second highest bidder has to pay the second highest bid amount to the auctioneer.

My business partner at Deeshaa, Rajesh Jain has been focusing his Tech Talks under the heading As India Develops where discusses challenges and opportunities along the road to a developed India. The topics he introduces in these series of Tech Talks lie at the core of what needs to be done for India’s transition from an underdeveloped to a developed economy.

The Slimes Times of India is a widely read English newspaper in India. It perhaps reflects the concerns, the choices, the culture, and the mindset of those whom I refer to as the residents of India (as opposed to the residents of Bharat, the larger non-English speaking rural population). The print edition of the paper lands on my desk every morning.

This weblog is about India’s development as seen from my personal viewpoint. Like many others, I too have a vision for India although it is not as well known as the famous Vision 2020. Among all the visions that I have had the privilege to see, Nani Palkhivala’s has resonated the most with what my vision is.
I had found it on the usenet some years ago. Unfortunately, now I cannot trace exactly when it was that Nani delivered this address to the Australian College …

B-Span is “an internet-based broadcasting station that presents World Bank seminars, workshops, and conferences on a variety of sustainable development and poverty reduction issues.”
A recent video Some Lessons from Economic Reforms in India features Montek Singh Alhuwalia, and has Brad DeLong, Richard Eckaus, and Nurul Islam as discussants. From the site, here is what I gather.

Advances in telecommunications technology is at the core of the revolution that defines our present global economy. We need
to remember, however, that technology itself is embedded in a larger social context which is shaped by regulation and other
political economy considerations.

The latest issue of Businessworld has an in-depth interview with Vinod Khosla in which Vinod refers to the economic model RISC — Rural Infrastructure & Services Commons. (Unfortunately, the reporter does not get the name of the model correct in his reporting.)

I usually reserve my political views for my other weblog at Berkeley Life is a Random Draw. I am calling a time-out and I will post one personal opinion on a matter that is not directly related to economic development. I received a heads-up from Prakash Swaminathan about a rediff.com article Outsource to India, without compromising US interests by one Mr. John Laxmi.

John Kenneth Galbraith’s A Journey Through Economic Time (1994) is, like all his works, fascinating reading. One cannot read a single page without pausing to think and reflect. It is slow going consequently.