Dateline May 4th, 2005, Kolkata: The Slimes Times of India reported that IIT entrance test set for overhaul:
The IIT-Joint Entrance Exam may soon be easier to crack. The Union HRD [Human Resource Development] ministry feels the examination is too tough, causes immense stress to candidates, and needs to be toned down immediately.
The ministry has formed a committee … to modify the IIT-JEE pattern.
Clever, isn’t it? In related news, another ministry has expressed concern about the fact that hunger is a problem to some few hundred million people …

{A continuation of my previous post Me write pretty some day.}
My obsession with fully comprehending a problem before attempting to solve it springs from a simple personal trait: I am unbelievably lazy. How to get something done with the least effort is my constant obsession. My motto is work as little as possible to get only those things done that cannot be avoided. So of course I have to identify a minimal set of things that are unavoidable and then figure out the most efficient way of getting them done. …

I am sorry that I have not had the time to continue with the various threads I have started. But by next week I will be caught up. In the meanwhile, I strongly urge you to read an article by Deepak Lal and another from the von Mises Institute on “employment-at-will”. Both are related.
I will be back soon.

Buddha Purnima is a good time to remind ourselves of the Buddhas that walked the earth. According to tradition, the historical Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha was born during the full moon in the month of May, attained enlightenment on the same day in the 35th year of his life, and died on this day when he was about 80 years of age.
In India the day goes largely unnoticed. My conjecture is that because Buddha Purnima is not celebrated in the West with the traditional gusto accorded to Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Santa …

In response to my mentioning Thomas Friedman in my post The World is Mad, Prashant Kothari posted a comment and included an article from the NY Press titled Flathead. He did not warn me to fasten my seat-belt before reading the article and I ended up rolling on the floor laughing my head off. I was tickled but also felt envy: wish I could write like that.

Time has come for a bit of stock-taking. I have been writing this web log for a while now and it is time to examine what motivates it and what justifies its existence. Until the motives are clearly understood, it is likely to be misunderstood, as some have done after a superficial reading of some items in this blog.
First, a tip of the hat to Rajesh Jain for insisting that I write a blog specifically dealing with Indian economic development and growth. I already had a personal blog Life …

Bestsellers touting the benefits of globalization are a regular feature of our times. Case in point: Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat. The title is supposed to shock the reader. “Damn! I thought the world was round. Thanks Tom, you are a bloody genius.”

I have been described as a typical brooding intelligent introverted Bengali. Perhaps I am but I do have a couple of very Bengali traits: an obsession with food, and love of adda. What is adda? An intimate free-ranging discussion with a bunch of friends. The New York Times has more.

My Dear Abhishek:
You, like all newborns, are a Little Buddha.
Welcome to the world and may you have a long and happy stay here. In this letter I will try to tell you a few things that may help you along.
You are just a month old. The universe you are born into is infinitely older than you. I hope someday you would learn what the relation between you and the universe is and appreciate the unique place you occupy within it. You will spend quite a bit of time …

Greater Vehicle, Lesser Vehicle, no matter.
All vehicles will be towed at owners’ expense.
It all began innocently enough. Three friends meeting in Pune’s Koregoan Park quarters to have lunch and chat. We finished lunch at a roadside dhaba and walked back to Shrikant’s car parked in a quiet little street only to find that the car was missing. Scrawled on the spot next to where the car should have been was a message in chalk: “Bund Garden Road.”
We surmised that the car had been towed to the Bund Garden road transportation …

Alan Watts is one of my heroes. From his talks and writings, one can gain significant insight into the nature of the world. The World as Just So is a series of delightful lectures that I first came across on public radio. In them, he explores Indian thought – Vedantic and Buddhist. Trained as a Zen master, he made esoteric wisdom accessible to millions. A very deep bow in his direction. He used to live in Berkeley CA but passed on into the great beyond before I made Berkeley my …

“Magarpatta City” lies in the south-east outskirts of the city of Pune in Maharashtra, my home state. Searching for place to live in led me to Magarpatta City yesterday. Since moving out of my Mumbai apartment in mid-February, I have been a homeless person leading a rootless life living out of a suitcase. February saw me in New Delhi, Nagpur (my home town), and Bangalore; March was spent in New York City, Long Island NY, Boston MA, and Newark DE; April I was in Berkeley CA, Saratoga CA, Seattle WA, …

A guest post from Naveen Jaganathan marks the return of this blog from vacation.
R.A. Mashelkar once said “Even if India does not do anything it is inevitable that we will emerge as the knowledge power in the next 5-10 years. If you look at our successes in the past and our emergence in the field of software technology, then this is fairly clear”.
It didn’t appear a tiny bit clear of how India will emerge as the “knowledge power” when I read this way back in 2003. Only thing …

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your aggregator to the new URL to be http://www.deeshaa.org/feed/.
This blog is back on-line after a few technical changes. I assure you that I have definitely not left the building.