Atanu Dey on India’s Development

Farce is funny when staged deliberately. It borders on the tragic when it is splashed across the front pages of the nation’s newspapers and is eagerly slurped up by the gullible even in high places.
Just the other day I was taken to task for not high-lighting the successes of Indians and instead focusing on problems […]

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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our chief weapons are fear and …
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This one is too good to pass up. Myke sent me Jim Kunstler’s column about Pentecostals and evangelicals. The post is worth reading, including the many comments. For the record, here are the first and the last paragraphs of the post.
Last […]

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If the industrial age was characterized by increased specialization and standardization, then the post-industrial modern age — often referred to as the information age — is subject to even greater specialization and standardization. Since education forms the very foundation of this information age, one should expect greater standardization and specialization in the production and delivery […]

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An item in the Nagpur local newspaper The Hitavada caught my eye as I had breakfast. “Surjeet, Bardhan to visit Pak next week” read the headline. Surjeet is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Bardhan holds the same post in the sister communist organization, CPI. The paper reported that they […]

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Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is […]

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Over the last weekend I spent a little time at the IIT Bombay, the alma mater of many a successful and celebrated Indian, resident as well as non-resident. IIT — the Indian Institutes of Technology. Sometimes called the Institutes of Indian Technology.
I had gone there to sit on a panel […]

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One of my favorite bits from Shakespeare. This one is from Act 3, Scene 1 of The First Part of King Henry IV:
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? […]

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Yesterday at a meeting where we were discussing India’s development, someone mentioned Justice Louis D. Brandeis. That recalled to my mind something that Justice Brandeis had noted about the dangers of government which I find absolutely applicable in the Indian context.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the […]

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Yesterday I wrote about being homeless and just for comparison used Finland in my blog post. I love Finland. And I love Monty Python. So the combination
is double-love.

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How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain […]

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Blogs are all very fine and democratic. But the opportunity cost of all the time listening to vox populi and reading stuff on blogs is pretty high considering that the world has an enormously stupendous store of amazingly insightful words which can instruct, entertain, and even enlighten. What would you rather re-read: […]

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On this blog, I have pondered the matter of education quite a bit because development and education are inextricably related. Irrespective of how rich an economy is by the usual measures of GDP, if the population is not educated, it is not a developed economy. An economy may have a high per capita GDP, due […]

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Rajesh Jain blogged about
a News.com
contest on underplayed IT innovation. My take on the underplayed
trend is based on Rajesh’s ideas. I entered the following.

The PC-centric world of computing evolved in an age when networks did
not exist and users were technologically sophisticated enough to
comprehend the complex system. In a world where networks are
ubiquitous and fast, where […]

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One of the greatest challenge that India faces is that of rural development. Successfully solving any problem requires a proper formulation of the problem. Fundamental questions arise when the matter of rural underdevelopment is considered in depth. Is rural development the development of rural areas, or is it about development of rural populations? They are […]

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Bringing the benefits of ICT to rural populations is
a commendable goal. The use of kiosks with connected
PCs for bringing services to villages is a model worth
considering among various means. The advantages of
kiosks are many. Primary advantage is that of proximity.
Villagers do not have to incur any travel cost to obtain
the services delivered. Next, the investment […]

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