A friend of mine, who was a fellow grad student at UC Berkeley, gave me as a gift Michael Bishop’s How to Win the Nobel Prize [Harvad Univ Press 2003]. “In 1989 Micheal Bishop and Harold Varmus were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery tha normal genes under certain conditions can cause cancer”. I’d like to quote from the chapter, People and Pestilence, because it is relevant to my obsession with India’s population problem.

Every now and then, I screw up enough courage to read the newspapers. I am faint of heart and avoid newspapers because they generally report such stuff that nightmares are made of, such as Islamic terrorism killing a few hundred in Russia (recently but around the world with sickening regularity.) But occasionally they report news from a surreal world and my morbid curiosity wins over my basic distaste of horror stories. A few days ago, I came across an item that gladdened my heart: Sibal plans GPS project to help …