Atanu Dey on India’s Development

In a recent comment Ashutoshg says:
You might have heard about 7bn$ fraud at Societe Generale in France. As news says, The guy who is responsible didn’t got rich because of the fraud. He just traded badly. Bank lost it and that guy didn’t make it then, where did this money go? Who got rich? […]

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Came across a month-old post by Seth Godin “Only two years left” (via Myke’s Weblog) which is worth paying attention to. An excerpt below the fold:

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Arvind Lavakare in an article titled The Myth of Mahatma Gandhi notes that the Gandhi icon had been losing its sheen for years until the present government began giving it a nice new varnish. Maybe it is an attempt to “to fuse the original Gandhi image with the Italian one” he hints. I am convinced […]

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Pranab Bardhan, a professor of mine at UC Berkeley, whom we have met before here (see Crouching Tiger, Lumbering Elephant, and Pranab Bardhan on the Indian Economy, for instance) has an excellent article in the Boston Review titled “What Makes a Miracle: Some myths about the Rise of China and India.” (Hat tip: Yuvaraj Galada.)
He […]

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The following is a review of Francois Gautier’s Rewriting Indian History. (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing 1996). The reviewer is C J S Wallia who writes:
From my own perspective as a secular humanist, I believe that any whitewashing of historical record is counterproductive. No matter how lofty the ideals of a current cause, any whitewash […]

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The following is a 1-minute video of a contestant in the Miss Teen USA 2007 contest. The video has been viewed around 22 million times on YouTube and accumulated over 65 thousand comments, and hundreds of video responses. Here’s Miss South Carolina attempting to answer a question which explores why many Americans are ignorant of […]

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Some readers have been asking, “Atanu, when will you write more about SSRS?” As luck would have it, I got an email from someone who has actually met the man. He wrote me a very nice email saying that he has read all the SSRS posts patiently and then proceeded to inform me that he […]

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The other day, a BBC producer from London called me up and asked me if I would care to comment on the recent big sell-off in the Indian stock markets. I confessed that I am not fully qualified to do so but added that in all honesty that my guess would be as good as […]

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2.5 million MBAs? Really?

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(Hat tip: Jan Manik)

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Just a few days over a century ago Jacob Bronowski was born in Poland. Among the people whose sojourn on this material plane overlapped mine and whom I admire, Bruno (as his friends and family called him) is up there with a select few. I consider him to be one of my spiritual teachers in […]

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Arvind Lavakare’s piece in sify titled “Let us all salute Narendra Modi” includes a quote from a letter that K M Munshi wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru:
In secularism’s name, politicians adopt a strange attitude which, while it condones the susceptibilities, religious and social, of the minorities, it is too ready to brand similar susceptibilities in […]

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Go ahead. Speak your mind. Stop lurking if that is what you have been doing. Bouquets and brickbats. Whatever it is, just say it. This is an open thread but like all other posts, the comments close after 21 days.
By the by, I am in Mumbai tomorrow at at panel which is discussing “Inclusive Growth.”

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A recent Wall Street Journal article, World Bank Disgrace, (hat tip: Prakash Advani) reports that an internal review of five WB health projects in India totaling US$ 569 million in loans shows major corruption. The report begins with
Credit Robert Zoellick for knowing how to put the best face on a profound embarrassment. On Friday, […]

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From The Straight Dope, a great piece of satire: Fifty years later, does America need a stupider motto?
Seriously though, the US is showing signs of serious trouble. Huckabee is raving lunatic, as Pharyngula reports.
PS: My favorite bit in that satire bit is “… and Mexicans continue to occur.” ROTFL with the idea of Mexicans occurring […]

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In the previous post I claimed (not unlike some other observers) that the Nano is game-changing. The Nano has to be seen not just in the Indian context but in the bigger global context. That is why I made the point that it can be seen as the “Peopes’ car” and not “Indian People’s Car.” […]

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In the image above, you see Ratan Tata in the Tata Nano. What a priceless shot. Notice that it says “Peoples’ Car” and not “People’s Car” — it is a car meant not just some people but for a varied group of people. It is a car for the various peoples of the world. I […]

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Just over a month ago, I wrote about Prof C N R Rao’s take on what ails Bangalore. A respected academician and an adviser to the Prime Minister of India, I considered Prof Rao’s opinion to be extremely misguided and wrong. He is at the very least at the top of the heap of educated […]

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And now for something entirely different.
Well, not really. I mean that in the Monty Pythonesque sense. If you are familiar with Monty Python, you know upon hearing that line that what was going to follow was more of the same absurd insanely humorous ridiculous nonsense that considers nothing sacred. Perhaps nobody expects the Spanish […]

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Why is the US so Cheap? – Part 2
This is a response to the comments on the last post “Why is the US so Cheap?” I had argued that the US is more efficient in producing stuff compared to India. The people in the US are more productive because they don’t face as many hurdles […]

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