The principle that exposure to economics should convey is that of the spontaneous coordination which the market achieves. — James M. Buchanan
The last time I was out having lunch with my economics guru, I pondered the question that is foremost in the minds of most Indians. “What,” I asked the great guru, “explains the shoddy quality of goods and services that one finds in India generally?”
“That I can tell you in one word: competition.”
“How so?” I said. “Isn’t competition supposed to ensure lowest prices, and highest quality instead?”
“Certainly. But you …

… Professional publicists know there is always a good living to be
made by catering to the public’s craving for optimistic reports. Such
behaviour finds no justification in the attitude of the Buddha,
expressed five centuries before Christ: “I teach only two things: the
cause of human sorrow and the way to become free of it.” The present
work, though written by a non-Buddhist, proceeds along the Buddhist
path — first to reveal the causes of human sorrow in population
matters and then to uncover promising ways to free ourselves of the
sorrow.

Hearing the Buddha’s statement today …

Natural disasters bring in their wake a feast for scavengers who find the victims easy pickings. Here is a story about Christian missionaries feasting among the vulnerable victims of the tsunami.

Imagine you get invited to a feast and when you arrive, at the door they hand you a ticket randomly drawn out of a hat. That ticket determines which of three different meals you will receive at this feast. You, like 15% of the invitees, could get a top-class ticket. You would have a lavish meal with meats, fruits, and desserts seated at a nice table and be served the food.

“Another damned, thick, square, book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?
- William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, upon receiving the second volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the author, 1781.
Well, what do you know!
This blog won the Best Indiblog Award. To be more specific, of those who cared to vote (around 600), this blog got around 38 percent of the votes. Thanks to each of you who considered my modest attempt worth noting. My sincere appreciation for that vote.
I admit that I am not …

I will be traveling till the 25th and will not have access to the web. That is why I will maintain web silence and not because I am done with the topic at hand.

I stand corrected by TTG on the point about the entire khandaan of Nehru-Gandhi family not having one single solitary degree. It appears that Cha-Chaji was not entirely untutored. Thanks to TTG I actually came to learn another fact about another hero of mine — Mother Teresa, the Merciless — she had supported Indira Gandhi’s dictatorship. I …

The last posting, Why is India Poor?, has drawn sufficient attention that there needs to be a follow-up addressing some of the points raised in the comments.
It is interesting to note that the arguments against my view of Nehru and his failed economic policies are generic. I will repeat them and my counter-arguments here.
My argument. Economic policies matter. If you have sound economic policies, you get commensurate economic performance. India’s economic performance sucks. It performs dismally in any sort of ranking of human development and economic performance tests. Half the …

What India is today is to a large extent the result of policy choices made by its leaders — especially post India’s independence. Prior to 1947, India’s fortunes were dictated by the British. The British were in India for — not to put too fine a point on it — looting the place. That is totally understandable. Every institution they created was directed towards the final goal of enriching themselves. Colonizers don’t go about colonizing foreign lands out of a sense of altruism. They do it for the moolah.
After …

From my friend, Barbara Murphy, in California:
I do not like thee Doctor Dey
The reason isn’t hard to say
Although you are so far away
I do not like thee Doctor Dey.
Not terribly original, as it is based on the rhyme “I do not like thee Doctor Fell…”. Still it is good to know that one is liked and all that.

To my mind, the ability to make distinctions is one of the more important characteristics of a fully civilized human being. Savages, very small children and animals do not share that characteristic. An untutored person will not be able to distinguish between two related but separate concepts. Indeed, the ability to do arithmetic depends on the ability to distinguish numerical information. I cannot stress enough the importance of being able to do arithmetic because those who refuse to do (or cannot do) arithmetic are doomed to speak nonsense. A bit …

Yesterday I wrote about the small stuff. That brought to mind some related stuff that I had written earlier and I thought I would refer to them here, for the record. Adopting Innovations:
People, societies, economies which can successfully adopt innovations tend to do better than those that don’t adopt innovations. The operational word is adopt. Innovations happen all over the place and all the time. Who innovates and how is not what I am concerned about although it is a fascinating subject in itself. What I am concerned …

Some months ago, I had recorded here the ideas of the Tathagata (It’s the small stuff, stupid) on the importance of taking care of the itsy-bitsy small bits. Today I was struck yet one more time about that truth. I was waiting at the Kandivali local train station when a huge board caught my eye. It was a listing of EMERGENCY and IMPORTANT PHONE NUMBERS.

Economic development is clearly possible. Examples of economies which have developed are not hard to find. Western Europe developed following the industrial revolution first and later the United States also developed rapidly. Japan’s development was closely followed by the development of the East Asian economies, starting with Taiwan. Given so many instances of economies–large and small–developing is persuasive evidence that economic growth and development does belong to the realm of the possible.
Why has not India developed during the last 60-odd years when other economies …

It is morning in Africa and
As the sun rises over the plains
The gazelle awakens knowing that
If it cannot outrun the fastest lion
It will be dead.
It is morning in Africa and
The lion awakens knowing that
If it cannot outrun the slowest gazelle
It will die.
It is morning in Africa and you had
better start running.

{source: unknown}

Suhit Anantula reports that globally an astonishing US$4 billion has been pledged for tsunami relief till date. That is an incredible amount. Assuming that about 4 million people are directly affected (certainly an upper bound), $4 billion implies a lower bound of $1000 per person. My guess is that the aggregate promised aid exceeds the aggregate annual income of the affected population. The actual aid delivered will probably be much lower than the pledged amount, if one were to extrapolate from the past performance.
Some have advocated the creation of a …

The story goes that a man goes to a Chinese acupuncturist for treating his headache. The doctor examines the man thoroughly and then starts to stick needles into the patient’s forearm. “Doctor,” the patient complains, “I have a headache. Why are you concentrating on my arm?” The doctor smiles and says, “See arm, see head. See! they are connected!”
Simple story but has a great deal of wisdom. The body is a unity and when one bit hurts, it is a signal that there is something wrong with the system. The …

The IndiBloggies 2004 voting is under way. Some well-meaning person nominated this blog in the category Best Indiblog. I kid you not. So if you are one of the half a dozen readers of these ramblings, and if you have nothing better to do, do hop on over there and vote for some of the excellent blogs listed. Vote early and vote often, as they say. I would have surely won the award if I had Bush’s team of Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney and gang to fix the votes for me. …

When Kamala, the courtesan in Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha asked the young brahmin ascetic what skills he had, he replied that he has learnt “how to think, how to wait, and how to fast.” To my mind, that is a complete education. Being able to fast is the ability to live on a limited amount. Freedom is inversely proportional to the external resources one needs to survive. One is free only to the extent that one does not depend on resources external to oneself. …

Calvin: It’s true, Hobbes. Ignorance is bliss.

Once you know things, you start seeing problems everywhere…
And once you see problems, you feel like you ought to try to fix them…
And fixing problems always seems to require personal change…
And change means doing things that aren’t fun! I say phooey to that!
But if you are willfully stupid, you don’t know any better, so you
can keep doing whatever you like!

The secret of happiness is short-term, stupid self-interest!

Hobbes: We’re heading for that cliff!

Calvin: I don’t want to know about it.

[They go …

The extent of the damage and loss of life due to the tsunami has now become clear. Soumen Chakrabarti emailed me and wrote:
You recently wrote:

That is why I claim that natural disasters like the recent tsunami cannot hold a candle to the destructive power of humans.
I did a little arithmetic that adds support to your statement from unexpected quarters. This sounds very insensitive but is not really so. Each and every person destroyed by the tsunami is irreplaceable. I was …