Atanu Dey on India’s Development

I think when it comes to education we need to go back to the basics. We have made the system needlessly complex and it has not surprisingly failed.
A few years ago, at the university, all of us in the student housing co-op were required to attend a presentation by a HIV+ man. At one […]

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Also Sprach Carl Sagan:
“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands […]

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Here is the slide set I used at ISB on the 9th of March. The background reading material starts off with “Inclusive Economic Growth.”

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So then the two state-owned Indian airlines are going to merge (according to this rediff report — hat tip: Tejaswi) and the merged entity will be called — umm, let’s see now — “Air Indian,” the title of a blog post last month on the merger.
I have written earlier about the stupidity of […]

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Two fish were swimming along a stream when they come upon a third fish which remarks, “The water is absolutely fine today.” The two carry on without a reply. Later upstream one of them says to the other, “What the heck is water?”
Talking fish is not the point of the little story, of course. […]

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Why support free speech, asked Gaurav in a comment on a previous post here. The short answer is: because we are not infinitely wise, our rationality is bounded; because we are not equally wise; because ideas matter, and because markets work.

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The matter of the freedom of speech and expression is not just at the heart of economic growth but also of development. I make no apologies about my unconditional and eternal support of free inquiry, speech, and expression. If the exercise of free speech offends someone, then that person belongs to a lower order of […]

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Related to my previous post on Fanatics and Development, I think this poem is rather funny.

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Hopeless ignorant masses need some sort of refuge. In many materially and culturally impoverished parts of that world, religious fanaticism affords that refuge. Monotheistic intolerant faiths such as Christianity and Islam are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for evoking the fanatical response. Combine a dangerous belief in a homicidal cruel monomaniacal god with […]

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Take a look at this video. Damn, the world does have some very clever and creative people. Thanks to the wonder of the world wide web, we get to enjoy stuff from the comfort of our desktops.

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Brand Blanshard wrote eloquently about American education in his essay “Quantity and Quality in American Education.” The essay was published nearly half a century ago but the message is universal. Thanks to Anthony Flood for making it accessible. It is a long and thoughtful essay, worth reading in its entirety. The last bits resonate most […]

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Economic growth is an imperative if the widely discussed goal of development has to be achieved by India. There are a number of well-known causative factors that lead to economic growth. Among them are an educated and healthy population, reliable and adequate infrastructure, a free and fair market-driven economy, and the availability of public goods […]

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Julius Caesar was warned by a soothsayer to “beware the ides of March.” The ides of March is today, the 15th of March. Good old Julius disregarded the warning and on this fateful day in 44 BCE he fell dead, assassinated by his friend Marcus Brutus. As Shakespeare wrote, it was the most unkindest cut […]

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A French journalist, Marianne Enault, is writing a piece for a French newspaper about cricket fever in India and wrote to me requesting help.

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Where there be challenges, there be opportunities. That is a mantra well-known to every entrepreneur. That immediately implies that India is truly the Land of Unlimited Opportunities. The challenges have been created by a persistent attachment to a certain way of thinking and doing. As Einstein astutely noted, the significant problems we face cannot be […]

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Here is a brief video on the Zen Mind — An Introduction. I like Zen Buddhism. It is profoundly simple and direct. The voice-over states clearly at the end of the clip that “… do not differentiate yourself as apart from others, or from the world outside. The search for self-realization is powered by our […]

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Where is India today? How did it get here? Where should India be going? And how should it get there? These are the big questions that I try to grapple with. And that is how I began my presentation.
ISB at night [source]
Recently I was on a panel discussion titled “Business Strategies for Inclusive […]

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The business plan was about creating a business which would help the blind become more productive. But the presenter took elaborate pains to avoid the word “blind”and instead constantly referred to the “visually challenged.” I suppose the PC police would have immediately handcuffed and hauled off anyone who was so insensitive as to directly point […]

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The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

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“Short, therefore, is man’s life; and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.” Marcus Aurelius Antoninus - (121-180) noted that in his Meditations. Here is a picture of how small the earth is whose narrow corner we dwell.

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