I was reminded of Gun Shy one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite singers, Natalie Merchant — lead singer and songwriter of the band “10,000 Maniacs.” It’s from the album “In My Tribe.” What I find moving … Continue reading →

In my previous post about Satya Sai Baba, my point was that he was a fraud. Just to be sure, I define a person to be a fraud if he uses fraudulent means to achieve an end that benefits him. … Continue reading →

Satya Sai Baba is dead. He disproved his own prediction — that he’ll die at age 96 — by kicking the bucket at 86. I suppose Yama Raj, the Lord of Death, didn’t get the memo and came by on … Continue reading →

{Why? Because in the last few months, I bought a big fat LCD tv (Samsung), a network blu-ray player (Samsung), a big fat internet-ready 7.2 receiver (Onkyo), a big fat sub-woofer and other assorted speakers (Polk Audio), and other bits … Continue reading →

In a Foreign Policy magazine article, “More than 1 billion people are hungry in the world“, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo ask what if its really true. It is an extract from their book, “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of … Continue reading →

The title of this post echoes the title of Alexis de Tocqueville’s two-volume “Democracy in America” (1835 and 1840). Inequality in America is the subject of Joseph Stiglitz’ piece in Vanity Fair (May 2011), “Of the 1%, by the 1%, … Continue reading →

I know, I know. I am suffering from writers’ block. I wonder if William Shakespeare ever stumbled upon a writer’s block. Probably. Or probably not. Anyway, it’s his birthday today and I am glad that he was born. Or at … Continue reading →

I have not read Joseph Lelyveld’s book on Gandhi. Of course, neither have any of those who are heaping invective upon Lelyveld’s head for having written the book. I will probably borrow the book from the library one of these … Continue reading →

Anna Hazare in the context of rural development praised the work of chief ministers Nitish Kumar and — here’s where he slipped up and deviated from the script — Narendra Modi. That’s going to cost him. But Narendrabhai is a … Continue reading →

Just thought that an old post from over three years ago in Jan 2008 is worth revisiting since it appears that some idiots people in India are waking up finally to the truth of how NREGA causes inflation. “Does the … Continue reading →

How should we live, how should we treat others, and how should we govern our society. Normative questions like those keep philosophers busy. To that extent we are all philosophers. Our society is a reflection of our collective philosophizing on … Continue reading →

Anna Hazare’s indefinite fast for getting the “Jan Lokpal Bill” passed has met with almost universal approval. The media frenzy has caught the Indian public’s attention to an extent that they generally reserve for more important matters such as a … Continue reading →

My colleague Rajesh Jain has a “Big Ideas Contest” going on at his blog. Here are the details:

‘Italian by birth and Catholic by baptism‘ is the title of a very brief item by John Maclithon in DNA. It can be best characterized as a confession. He was the only foreign journalist to be awarded the Padma Shri, … Continue reading →