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 …

Urbanization of the population implies greater demand for housing in cities. There has to be a portfolio of housing options available for the diversity of people which constitute a city. I am familiar with the property prices in the San Francisco Bay area, one of the highest in the US. Even I get a sticker shock when I see the prices of housing in Mumbai. I cannot imagine how the poor manage to survive. Which partly explains why about half of Mumbai’s 11 million people live in slums.
Last week Saturday …

I was invited to write a guest post on One Laptop Per Child News by Wayan Vota in connection with the recent news that 250,000 OLPC laptops have been ordered by two government agencies in India and one private sector firm. And I complied. Thanks, Wayan. I appreciate the opportunity. Below the fold I reproduce the post in full.

Are there no depths that the Congress party led UPA government will not plumb to protect the criminally corrupt? When exactly will the Indian public wake up to the realization that the pervasive corruption that hollows out the Indian state is the sole achievement of the Congress party over its decades of misrule — practically all of India’s existence as an independent country in modern times? If even the unspeakable misgovernance by Mr Manmohan Singh does not enrage the Indians, what on earth will it take — a thousand thermonuclear …

Gurcharan Das writes in the Times of India (10th May) that “The Future Belongs to India.” That’s his argument which I suppose he made in a debate in London on the proposition that “the future belongs to India, not China.” I understand perfectly the need for such an argument because I too feel a lot of distress when I compare what China has achieved relative to India and have to seek comfort in a lot of twisted rationalization to excuse India’s disastrous journey.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a report, “Megacities Threaten to Choke India,” has a catchy but misleading title. Megacities are not threatening to choke India. The megacities are choking already. What is choking India is basically primal human frailties revealed by circumstances that come about through individual rationality but end up in collective irrationality.

Tuitions cost, and how! Rediff reports that industry body Assocham has found that “middle-class spends a third of their income on kids’ tuitions.” (Hat tip: Reuben.)
This is one of the most potent signals of a broken educational system.

The Mumbai domestic airport terminals are quite presentable. I like the way that the infrastructure has been done. Yesterday I was there to catch a flight to Hyderabad. I am in Hyderabad today as part of a working group which is looking into how the urbanization of India has to be managed. As Reuben said (quoting someone), urbanization is “the second green revolution”. More about that later.

People respond to incentives. That’s probably the most powerful lesson a study of economics provides. It appears to be trivially true but it is quite surprising how often that is neglected by policy makers, analysts, and indeed by the average guy on the street.
Fortunately, every so often you do come across happy examples of properly designed incentive mechanisms that elicit the desired (and expected) behavior from the public without the need for authoritarian meddling. An item in businessGreen.com reports that a combination of charges and loyalty points have reduced …

The primary advantage of not having to shave your mug is that you don’t have to face yourself in the mirror every day. Unless of course if one is totally shameless or is already barefaced (as in a barefaced liar.) I am just saying.

You know that you have arrived when you find that your writing has been banned in some place. Nihar, when he was traveling in Iran, found that some blog posts of mine are banned there. He sent me a screen capture which you will find below the fold. Now at least I hope you are impressed. Or will you be impressed only after the Indian government bans this blog?
PS: I don’t think it will be long before the government of India bans this blog. There are too many things here …

Google has to be the most technologically advanced company on earth, if not the whole universe. They have the capacity to bring you emails before they are sent.
Here’s the screen capture of an email that Google delivered to me about 2 minutes before it was sent. I had to wait for 2 minutes and then the counter said “0 minutes ago” — for the world to catch up with gmail.
I tell you, wonders will never cease as long as Google is around.

In a short article in SEED magazine, theoretical physicist and president of the Santa Fe Institute, Geoffrey West explains “why the future of humanity and the long-term sustainability of the planet are inextricably linked to the fate of our cities.”
A few excerpts below the fold.

Continuance of the UPA in power will jeopardize national security, according to Lt Gen S K Sinha, who retired as the Vice Chief of Army Staff. He is referred to as the “Scholar – Soldier”
An email received from Cdr P.P. Batra, describing the lecture by Lt.Gen(retd) SK Sinha, on 03 May 09, at the Constitution Club, New Delhi, is reproduced below the fold.

An excerpt from today’s mail from Keith Hudson, a respected friend who lives in Bath, England. “Ideas in one’s head are slippery, slidery things and it’s not until one acts on them — in the form of changed behaviours or the production of tangible items — that their validity can be fully tested in the real world. Writing about them is only a halfway stage. However, the words one uses (and perhaps the new terms one invents) are rather like seeds that plants produce. They can float away in the …

[Download May 2009 pdf edition of Pragati 3.7 MB.]
In an editorial piece for Pragati, Nitin Pai writes:
At a time when China seeks to play in the same league as the superpower of the day, it is to be expected that it will try to extract advantageous positions in the Indian Ocean region at India’s expense. The big scandal is not that China is securing bases in India’s neighbourhood by shoring up nasty regimes and abetting their outrageous policies; but rather, India does not even show any sign of doing …

Nihar sends this picture from Ko Tao in Thailand — “Ko Tao (เกาะเต่า), literally Turtle Island, is an island in the Gulf of Thailand in the south of Thailand.”

Note what’s on the laptop screen