Inspiring read.

I was an engineer who changed to economics for similar reasons. But unlike you, now I got entangled again and joined corporate, but am trying hard to leave ( there are too many responsibilities, but will take the risk again).

The thing you mentioned about Public Library system in USA is just great. We sorely miss decent libraries. I grew up in a town in WB where the library only contained translations of some russian fictions and the staff did not let anyone to get in and surf the library. Everyday staffs displayed some few books and we had to choose among those. The only decent library I came across was in my PG days and I spent almost 50% of my two years there.

Sudipta,

If you want to shift to economics in India, then I will urge you to look at ISI, DSE and IGIDR in this order.

Raghunathan (of IIM, Ahmedabad) has a book on it called “Games Indians Play – Why We Are The Way We Are?”. He explains, with game theory and behavioral economics, why we behave so. A nice read.

-Mike

thanks for sharing a little autobiographical info. about yourself.

Completely agree with you on what you generally say as to why we are Poor. But, this is the question i always ask –
‘How can we change this?’
‘Who can change this?’
‘Can i alone change this?’

The answers to these questions seem to completely elude us.

I remember talking this with you while you were in pune. You said that “You started thinking about why India is poor?”. However I couldn’t think of it then, so writing it now, since the opportunity is there. “We are poor because of the people and there is no other reason”. This is somewhat related to type -1 problems I have mentioned. When one spends his time boasting about the “५००० साल पुरानी संस्कृती” and not worry about the conditions in which he/she lives in, the problem lies there and it has to be addressed at that level (if at all people themselves want it to be addressed!)

Regarding the Cab incident – “It is really unfortunate” is what I’d say. But thinking more about it.. here’s my reasoning for this.. A person makes more money for the “indispensibility”. In the example above, the driver and the middleman is not “indispensible”, the question to ask is how does one make the driver indispensible and the cop redundant..

Corruption is just a symptom of inherently inefficient systems, and the systems themselves will never be efficient, unless people observe, evaluate and do something about the systems themselves. This again comes back to the original “type -1″ problems.

On the road near my home, I see cops stopping practically every truck for hafta. The country is paying a heavy price in time and money by indulging these goons. Maybe, the electoral system needs to be modified with a “We vote for nobody” option and if “We vote for nobody” wins the election, there is no MP/MLA for that region. A few less goons in the system.

Let me add on to that: read Games of Strategy, by Dixit and Skeath. It’s easier to read that Schelling (who you must read anyway if you are interested in nuclear deterrence, bringing up children and suchlike)

Too many times, the detractors of free markets point to examples such as this as “proof” that capitalism is a recipe for corruption, failure, and social injustice.

It takes three big cultural milestones for a community or nation to prosper: the right to property, the right to freely trade said property or labor, and the rule of law to enforce agreements and contracts.

It seems to have worked everywhere it has been tried.