I am outraged. Yes, I not so much saddened as I am outraged.
It is a great tragedy. So many lives needlessly wasted. So many children dead, so many more with little hope of a decent human existence. Millions homeless without proper water, food, healthcare and education. Entirely preventable because we have the technology and the resources to avoid all this suffering and death. In the end it comes down to human frailty–greed, short-sightedness, ignorance, the lust for power.
And then there was an incident on Sunday when an earthquake …

What do we want in India? If foreigners want these things, we want them twenty times more. Because…in spite of our boasted ancestry of sages, compared to many other races, I must tell you that we are weak, very weak. First of all is our physical weakness. That physical weakness is the cause of at least one-third of our miseries. We are lazy, we cannot work; we cannot combine, we do not love each other; we are intensely selfish, not three of us can come together without hating …

Conferences can be terribly boring affairs. But for real tedium, you cannot beat a conference on ICT and development. So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I ended up in Bhopal a few days ago to attend one. All I had to look forward to was an endless series of talks on how ICT will totally transform everything and finally deliver the holy grail of development to the billions who are pathetically underdeveloped.

To think of technology as know-how is immensely useful. At its core, technology is knowledge. The artifacts of technology are essentially embodied-knowledge. Some of this technology is very sophisticated and we call it “hi-tech”. Examples of technological artifacts with embodied knowledge abound such as nuclear bombs, computers, DVD players, cell phones, shoes that make irritating squeaky noises and light up, digital cameras, jet planes, drugs that help people have fun, spam and spyware, laser guided cruise missiles, satellites, search engines, triple heart-pass surgeries, and nanotechnology.

Rajesh’s blog has an item on
Amartya
Sen on India and China. Of late Indians have been forced to accept
unfavorable comparisons between India and China. And with good reason.
But Indians find some grounds — often flimsy — to tilt the
comparison in India’s favor. Sen writes:

While India has much to learn from China about economic policy and also
about health care, India’s experience with public communication and
democracy could still be instructive for China…With stunning success,
China has become a leader of the world economy, and from this India—like
many other countries—has been learning a great …

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils for time is the greatest innovator.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Last week I presented a paper on ICT and education at a conference in Bhopal organized by the All India Society for Electronics and Computer Technology. In the paper I explored the opportunity the current state of the art of information technologies (IT) provides for re-inventing education.

When I was growing up in Nagpur, I had a friend who used to proclaim “India is ruled by toads” whenever we discussed India’s politicians. Being called a toad was the worst insult we could come up with. He later joined the Indian Police Service, worked in Mumbai as a Deputy Commissioner of Police, and was killed in the line of duty. He was one of the most decent human beings I have ever had the good fortune to know.
What brought all this to mind was an …

These days the domestic airlines have evidently been instructed by powers up on high (so to speak) to warn the passengers that aerial photography of Indian territory is prohibited. Together with the usual instruction on how to fasten a seat belt (is it possible that someone who is able to navigate through the complex process of waking up in the morning and being able to tie his or her shoelaces cannot fathom the intricacies of how to fasten a seat belt?) and what to do in case …

During a recent visit to Hyderabad on work, I took some time off on a Sunday to visit the Golconda Fort which dates from the 13th century and is located on the western outskirts of the city. Like most tourist places that I have visited in India, the place is in ruins. It appears to be standard operating procedure that maintenance of these so-called ‘heritage sites’ is pathetic. But then one may argue that India is a poor country and cannot afford to keep these places …

Sonal Vaidya requested that I put a link to
The Color of Bhutan blog post which is about a
photo exhibition the proceeds of which will benefit
Bhutanese children.

Folk wisdom captures very succinctly the idea that life is about tradeoffs in the saying that one cannot eat one’s cake and have it as well. If you eat the cake, it is gone and you no longer have it. Economists call it opportunity cost . The opportunity cost of eating the cake is not having it; conversely, the opportunity cost of having the cake is that of not eating it.
Remarkable results follow from exploring the idea of opportunity costs. The whole theory of comparative …

“ICT for Development” seems to be all the rage these days. One cannot turn anywhere without being bombarded with the conventional wisdom that ICT will solve all developmental problems, so much so that people have begun to employ the idiotic shorthand “ICT4D” without so much as a beg-your-pardon.

Thus have I heard, that once when the The Blessed One, the Tathagata, was resting in Rajagriha during the season of rains, he carefully pondered the economic truths. Among those assembled were Shariputra, the son of a noble family, and Avalokiteshwara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, the Buddha of Infinite Compassion, and lots of monks too numerous to name here.
Shariputra asked The Blessed One, “What is the chief lesson that one can learn from a careful study of economics?”