Mumbai is a fascinating place. It is place where the rich and the poor live cheek to jowl, where the so-called first world, the second world and the third world co-exist in the same geographical space. In a manner, it is a microcosm which reflects the global economic condition.

Recently the Indian Postal Services have started offering a service which can be characterized as “mediated email services.” You write out a message on a piece of paper and bring it to a post office and they will transmit the information to an email address after any required translation. On the return route, they will print out an email and a postman will deliver it to the addressee who does not have direct access to email.
I subscribe to an email list where matters relating to India’s …

{Continued from People Matter: India’s Population Problem.}
A big picture description of an economy would have to include at its minimum the resources within an area, the technology available, the population and how they are organized. The available resources are strictly limited in the short-run. For a given area and its resources, a factor called the carrying-capacity can be defined. This indicates the level of population which the area can sustain without resource depletion. Any population larger than the carrying-capacity would lead to unsustainable resource depletion. By …

Economic analysis can be broadly categorized as either ‘positive’ or ‘normative.’ Positive analysis refers to the investigation of how things are, whereas normative analysis is concerned with how things should be. The former is supposed to be value-neutral whereas the latter is necessarily an expression of one’s values. A study by the UN determined that about a billion people around the world live in absolute squalor in the world’s cities and that every third person will be slum dweller within 30 years. That is a positive statement. The …

From Anish Sankalia:
The President is said to have informed her that according to Section 5 of the Citizenship Act of 1955, she has no right to assume the office of the Prime Minister of India and that he was seeking the advice of the Supreme Court on this issue. Section 5 of the Citizenship Act of 1955 says the rights and privileges allowed to foreigners who become citizens by application (not by birth) are conditional upon the rights and privileges granted to Indians in the country of the concerned person’s …

They are succeeding mightly in dragging India back to where it was, oh say, about 55 years ago so that they can repeat the good old days of dismal 2 to 3% “Nehru Growth rate”. The market went down the tubes and the proverbial stuff hit the big rotating blades as soon as the commies opened their mouths. One feels sorry for the impoverished hundreds of millions who would suffer down the road due to this, of course. But that sorrow is partly mitigated by the realization that to …

Time to take a look once again at the population-poverty trap.
In 1965, about 40 years ago, there were less than 500 million of us. By 2004, the population of India has more than doubled. The effect of this incredible increase has been a falling standard of living in general, shortages, untold misery and conflict. It is foolish to expect that we can provide a decent standard of living to so many in such a short time. The vast majority of us do not have adequate …

There is an interesting anthropological curiosity which arose amongst the islands in the South Pacific after the Second World War. It is known as the Cargo Cult. I first came across it in Marvin Harris’s book Cows, Pigs, Wars & Witches many years ago. (By the by, I highly recommend Harris’s book OUR KIND: Who we are, Where we came from & Where are we going — Evolution of Human Life & Culture.)
The islanders had noticed that Europeans had some sort of powerful magic which …

There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly… I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern. [Source]
The above, in case you haven’t figured it out, is the ever articulate President of the United States of America.

Andhra Pradesh (AP) election results are in and Chandrababu Naidu is out. He was an unusual CM. He wanted to make Hyderabad into a Singapore, and make AP a shining state. From what I hear, it appears that his stress was on the use of hi-tech for bringing about transformation. I am not too informed about what the game plan was but it appears that the common person did not obviously share his vision and they voted him out. Perhaps he fancied himself to be a Lee Kwon …

I am never quite sure why people insist that the Indian democracy is so great. To me it appears to be the greatest curse imposed on India from up on high. It is totally politically (sic) incorrect to take this view, of course. But I don’t apologize for believing so and I am convinced that the Indian voter is corrupt.
Rajesh Jain’s blog has an item on lessons from India’s elections which got me thinking. The claim made by Shekhar Gupta of the Indian Express is that India’s …

Last week on May 3rd, I began discussing Liberation and Development which I will continue now. I had written that
I will further argue that it is possible to bootstrap the process of development but only if resources are used efficiently and if problems are solved by addressing causes rather than by alleviating superficial effects.
The point I was making is that energy, credit, and knowledge are the basic ingredients for economic production. Economic production is a pre-requisite for development. Efficient use of the three basic …

Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of one whose concern was with enlightenment and awakening. I wrote a small piece on my personal weblog at UC Berkeley to mark that occassion.

Lord Acton observed that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. He was of course referring to political, economic, and social power. I argue that power liberates, and absolute power liberates absolutely. I am referring to power that drives machines, or energy. This point is so important that I am forced to raise it to the status of a law. The The First Law of Liberation.
Since I am at it, I may as well outline the The Second Law of Liberation: Credit liberates, and absolute …