Visiting Singapore is both an exhilarating and a depressing experience for me. To observe the transformation of a mosquito-infested swamp full of poor people into a vibrant developed nation of prosperous people in a brief span of 40 years is exhilarating. Comparing Singapore to India from an Indian’s perspective is depressing: how did we–given all the advantages we had in 1950 compared to Singapore–squander it all and end up being a poor misgoverned over-populated country? That is the depressing bit.

In a land where reportedly every generalization is trivially true, one generalization holds non-trivially and with overwhelming force. It is this: Indian governments are pro-poor. Every policy that any government ever espouses, fundamentally it always is pro-poor, irrespective of any minor variations such as pro-market or pro-planning or pro-industrialization or pro-globalization or pro-self sufficiency or whathaveyou.
My claim is that this pro-poor policy is not mere rhetoric. The policy works and how. I argue that all other policies have not yielded their expected results but the pro-poor policies have delivered …

It is always instructive to learn what our policy-makers are thinking. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is especially edifying since he is at the helm of the ship of the Indian state. I therefore recommend the recent interview (Aug 16th, 2005) of Dr Singh by Rajat Gupta published in the McKinsey Quarterly.

Two major threads weave through Joel Cohen’s book How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1995): the insufficiency of our present understanding, and the finiteness of time.

“Don’t drive like my brother” is usually the last bit of advice that “Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers” give to their around 2 million listeners of their weekly National Public Radio show Car Talk on 370 radio stations.
I used to listen to them religiously. They are funny and irreverent and clever and poked as much fun at the callers as they did at themselves. In the closing credits, they acknowledged the research done by Paul Murky of Murky Research and thanked their law firm Dewey, Cheetham, and Howe. They …

Didn’t know much about history, Indian or otherwise when I was in school. I went to a missionary school and I recall reading about English history (King Arthur comes to mind) and a bit about Indian history (Chattrapati Shivaji figured along with all sorts of Mughal emperors) but there was no attempt at communicating what I call a sense of history or instilling a spirit of inquiry about the history of India. My school did alright when it come to science and mathematics, but failed dismally in the social …

From Donal McIntyre’s site on the legacy of Mother Teresa:

Dear friends,
As you know one of the biggest problems today is that Indian journalists are not always proud of their own culture and roots and as result tend to have a very negative outlook on India, which in turn influences western correspondents posted in India. It is therefore very important that we train a new generation of Indian journalists. It is for this purpose that we have started a new school of journalism in Bangalore called the Sri Sri …

A couple of weeks ago, I went with my friend and colleague Shrikant Patil to New Zealand to understand the New Zealand schooling system.
I loved New Zealand for a number of reasons — its natural beauty and what the people have been able to do with the natural resources of that country. It is a prosperous and egalitarian nation of friendly people with a great sense of humor. (See “Even Hell has its Standards“.)
Gordon Dryden was our friend, philosopher, teacher and guide. I think I can do worse than point …

I have been associated with India Rural Development Fund (IRDF) from its very inception many years ago. IRDF was started by my friend Uday Kumar when we were both working for HP in the Valley and it does a remarkable job of providing primary education to many villages in Andhra Pradesh.
Since I am listed on the “About Us” page of the IRDF website, I do occassionally get emails from various agencies working in rural areas. I got one today which I think is too good to keep to myself. Here …

They call themselves Kiwis — a flightless bird and also a fruit. And they have a wicked sense of humor. As they say, they like to take the mickey out of themselves and each other.
We’re now approaching Auckland international airport, and will land in a few minutes if we can get these sheep off the runway. Please set your watches back 25 years.
I did not see any sheep on the runway, though. Mind you they do have sheep there, 40 million of them. The sheep outnumber the human …

In case you been wondering whatever happened to me — I am back home after wandering strange and exotic places. New Zealand and Singapore to be precise.
Sorry for not keeping in touch for the past couple of weeks. There are tales to be told and as soon as I settle down, I intend to record my impresssions of my wanderings around the globe.

Following my post yesterday on abusing children Mother Teresa style, I came across Christopher Hitchens’ article in the UK Mirror, “Why Mother Teresa Should Not Be a Saint.” I will quote only a bit here for the record but really you have to read the article to get a better understanding of what Teresa was all about. (I got to know of the article from a post by Anthony Loewenstein titled Mother Teresa Slammed Again.)

If you ever wanted a brief on what the proximate origins of the Islamic terrorism you see around the world are, Juan Cole’s Informed Comment has a must read item called Fisking the “War on Terror.” Go read it.

On Aug 1st British television carried an investigative piece by Donal McIntyre about the treatment of children in an orphanage run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. He quotes Dr Aroup Chatterjee, a medical doctor in London and the author of Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict, as saying that “the Indian government is “terrified” of her reputation but if similar practices were found in any other home, it would have been shut down.”

Economists conventionally list land, labor and capital as the three factors of production. If combined appropriately using the right technology, stuff is produced. This produced stuff is then the total income. Productive efficiency is important of course for a society to be economically secure. Then there is the matter of equity. You have to distribute the stuff produced equitably. Productive efficiency and distributive equity must be part of a healthy economy. But then if sufficient factors of production exist and the technology is also available, then how does one account …

Close to the Worli Seaface in Mumbai around 10 am today. The rain has been coming down since midnight last night. The wind is pretty high, as you can see below.

The high tide today was not as high as it was last Tuesday. The Haji Ali mosque seen from my friend’s 13th floor apartment.

Well, thank goodness that there are options when it comes to transportation around here. This SUV is not going to be stopped by streets with 6-foot deep water levels. At water levels that would leave cars totally immersed, this fellow will barely notice it.
Now aren’t you glad that we did not go with those compact Japanese models of elephants? Sure they gave more miles to the bale of hay, and were easier to park in the crowded streets, but they were useless when it came to crossing overflowing …