Sorry if you fell off your chair on reading the post title. But I could not resist using the title of a rediff slide-show (they put it on multiple pages so that the number of page clicks goes up) that some people have started breathlessly forwarding. These people are the type who are always in a hurry to report that “India is the second largest this” or “India has the most of that” and other hyper bullshit generally peddled by the likes of The Times of India and other rags. …

One thing that constantly astonishes me is my ignorance of Indian history. I admit that freely and feel sorry for myself — and for the hundreds of millions of Indians who are ignorant like me. I am partly to blame but we should remember that the Indian government — what I should really call the British Government 2.0 which started off with faux Britisher Jawaharlal Nehru at the helm — did much to misrepresent Indian history. Thanks to the interwebs (and thanks to Al Gore for inventing them internets), slowly …

I am totally thrilled to report that our campaign to raise around US$2,200 for Chandrasekaran Balakrishnan’s visit to the US to present his paper at a conference is successful. Congratulations are in order all around.

Update Saturday 8 AM:
I have not done the exact calculation, but I suspect that the goal has been reached. Thank you all. Please do not pledge any more. I will do the sums shortly and report back.

Thanks to all who have responded to my previous post seeking financial support for Chandrasekaran. The details of support pledged so far is as follows.

This is a public service announcement seeking support for a scholar whose paper has been accepted at a conference in the US. He lives and works in New Delhi and has approached me for financial help to attend the conference. Details below the fold.

Steve, a friend who teaches at UC, sent an email with that subject line. Enjoy.

This is a personal post about where in the world I am. I am in Pune for a couple of days, and then in Nashik for the weekend. Of late, I have been traveling a lot. Last Saturday I was in Goa for six hours — landed at 1 PM and left at 7 PM. I had gone there to have a chat with Manohar Parrikar, the ex-CM of Goa. Next Saturday I will be heading off to Hyderabad for the Takshashila Foundation Roundtable. I should mention …

I had not heard of Gene Sharp until Rajesh forwarded me a link to a NYTimes profile on him. He appears to be an interesting fellow. A BBC article says this about him, “His central message is that the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern – and that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble.”

My friend Veer asked me to comment on what is posted at this site — 10 Economic Charts That Will Blow Your Mind. OK, my mind is blown away. One thing is apparent to me. The US is in economic decline. But it is not clear whether that decline is long-term or not.

Cities and urbanization has been a constant theme of development — and consequently of this blog. Urban economist Ed Glaeser in his book, “Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier” argues that case. In a guest post on Freakonomics, Glaeser says that “to get America growing again, it’s time to unleash our cities.”

I believe that a person is at his most pathetic when he makes excuses for his failures and justifies them saying that they are primarily due to circumstances beyond his control. It is not merely an abdication of responsibility but what is worse, it precludes the possibility of corrective behavior. If it was not his fault, there’s no reason for him to change. He believes that when circumstances change, he will not fail.

A few days ago, a Pakistani singer by the name of Rahat was caught smuggling around $130,000 out of India. It does not matter what the prescribed penalties are for such an act but the interior minister of Pakistan called up the Home Minister of India, P. Chidambaram and thanked him for facilitating Rahat’s release. Thanks to Mr Chidambaram’s intervention in the matter, it all ended well for the singer. But not for the country.

Just got off a call with my friend CJ. He had watched Dr Manmohan Singh’s TV personalities’ press conference. Eager to get an outsider’s perspective on it, I asked him what he thought of it. He thought it was a fascinating glimpse of the Indian character.

Why is Dr Manmohan Singh the perfect ventriloquist’s dummy? Because he has no guts and no spine, which makes it easy for the hand up his behind to control him.

In a license control quota permit raj, the link between big businesses and the government is bi-directional. The government hands out licenses in exchange for part of the loot that the businesses make from their monopolistic businesses.
Just the other day a friend was telling me how one major business house (starts with a B) used to give freebies to one of India’s prime ministers (starts with a N). N would be hosted and feted by B, and in exchange, N made sure that B got licenses for steel or …

Sheela Bhatt’s piece in Rediff.com, titled “I will implicate Sonia Gandhi in the 2G case“, has interesting stuff on Dr Subramanian Swamy. Here are some excerpts, for the record.

Amul’s ads are clever. A few days ago I caught their take on the revolution in Egypt. “Hosni, kranti Mubarak ho!” Translated, “Hosni, felicitations (mubarak) on the revolution (kranti)!” Wonder what Amul will say now, now that Mr Mubarak has departed for greener pastures. Hosni Mubarak, from what I gather at the wiki entry on him, was like any other corrupt ruler of a Third World country.

There’s something fascinating about the Congress party which is only infrequently noted. It’s a party of sycophants and brown-nosers. The better a person is at bending, bowing, scraping, groveling, and sucking up to the members of the Nehru-Gandhi family, the higher his or her position in the whole sordid hierarchy.

Not only does Jesus save, his followers save as well. Here’s a comment that one of Jesus’s own (whose handle is “Jesus Loves You”) wrote:

A few quotes from Thomas Jefferson, for the record, as they appear to refer to India’s present predicament.