Atanu Dey on India’s Development

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Entries from December 2004

An Entirely Avoidable Great Tragedy

December 30th, 2004 · 9 Comments

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 […]

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Tags: Disaster

Hopelessly Disorganized Immensely Selfish Mobs?

December 29th, 2004 · 3 Comments

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 […]

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Tags: Alternative Viewpoint · Development

Choosing between WCs and PCs

December 28th, 2004 · 10 Comments

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 […]

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Tags: Digital Divide · My Favorite Bits

Re-inventing Education — Part 2 (The Imperatives of Technology)

December 26th, 2004 · 2 Comments

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 […]

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Tags: Education

Comparing India and China

December 26th, 2004 · 4 Comments

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 […]

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Tags: Random Draws

Re-inventing Education in a Brave New IT World

December 23rd, 2004 · Comments Off

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 […]

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Tags: Education

On Being Ruled by Toads

December 15th, 2004 · 1 Comment

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 […]

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Tags: Indian Bureaucracy and Politicians · Ruled by Monkeys

India’s Picture-perfect Bureaucracy

December 14th, 2004 · 5 Comments

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 […]

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Tags: Bureaucracy

Ripping-off Foreign Tourists

December 13th, 2004 · 6 Comments

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 […]

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Tags: Bureaucracy · You might be a third world country if ...

The Color of Bhutan

December 9th, 2004 · No Comments

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.

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Tags: Random Draws

Casting Spells to Fix the Broken Car

December 9th, 2004 · 9 Comments

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 […]

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Tags: Development · My Favorite Bits · Opportunity Cost

Mud-wrestling with Pigs

December 7th, 2004 · 3 Comments

“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.

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Tags: Digital Divide · Information and Communications Technology · My Favorite Bits

The Tathagata’s Sermon on Economics

December 2nd, 2004 · 8 Comments

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 […]

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Tags: Economics · Humor and Silliness · My Favorite Bits