My colleague Rajesh Jain writes to the about-to-be-formed new government of India in today’s Wall Street Journal and says, “Get us Involved and Lets [sic] get going.” He advices the new government (but I guess it will be the same old guys) that the areas where they need to focus on are, among others, education, transportation, urbanization, digital infrastructure, and good governance. Naturally I agree with Rajesh because that set of interventions is what is needed for India to develop and I have been saying as much on this blog. …

I was talking with a friend of mine in Pune about the election results, expressing my disappointment. More than the results, what struck me was his attempt at consoling me when he said, “India is a third-rate country. What do you expect — a first-rate government for a third-rate country?”
Yes, I still expect a first-rate government even through reason says that it will inevitably be a third-rate government because the people desire it to be so.
That’s unreasonable but all progress gets its start from unreasonable expectations.

For every election cycle that the Congress gets to govern India, India suffers a generation’s setback. The dozen or so elections since India’s political independence that the Congress has won the right to rule India, India’s development has been delayed by around 200 years. In that period, hundreds of millions of Indians have lived lives of utter destitution. Today one of out every two children below five is malnourished — the implications of which are so staggering in terms of retarded mental and physical development that it makes one weep …

What’s up? Thoughts on the election results which we should be getting in today?
How’s the weather? What you find interesting? What you find boring here? What you find interesting elsewhere?
Say what you will.

I am a big fan of Sir Ken Robinson and have been so since I first came across his talk on TED of Feb 2006 (which I had blogged in September 2006). Here’s a treat for those who have not watched that performance — and I say performance advisedly as he could be a stand-up comic any day of the week.

One of the many important point he makes is that the current school system kills creativity. In a more recent talk, he goes into how the current school paradigm …