A piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, “America’s Insurgent Pollster: Understanding the tea party is essential to predicting what the country’s political scene will look like,” prompted thought on some differences between the US and India in the context of the oft repeated fact that both are democracies. The article is of interest to me since I want to know how governance in India can be improved. So here’s what I take away from the article, and one other matter.

India suffers severely from PCD — personality cult disorder. I mentioned that in a post soon after moving to Mumbai from Berkeley in 2003. I believe that the disease under the Italian Sonia Gandhi has intensified. Here are my thoughts from way back when.

A sense of optimism is an absolutely essential necessity for any future success. That’s true not just at the individual level; collective optimism is as indispensable for national success. However, misplaced optimism grounded on delusions of grandeur can ensure failure through misalignment of priorities and mis-allocation of limited resources. So it is not out of plain crotchety contrariness but rather out of welfare concerns that one must take a dispassionate look at reality to base one’s expectations on, and to chart out a course of action. The balance sheet must …

The Aug 6th edition of the online Wall Street Journal has an article, Asian Entrepreneurs Are Bullish on the Future (behind a subscription wall) which reports on a Legatum Institute study comparing the entrepreneurs in India and China. What it says about India should not come as a surprise to anyone who studies India. The article concludes with this.

My apologies for not keeping in touch. I am afraid that this dry spell on my blog is going to continue for a couple of weeks more. I am on a road trip and the whole of the coming week I will be on the road to Yellowstone National Park. So I thought I would reply to a few recent comments on this blog.

Scary title added out of plain mischief. Nehru was bad enough; recycled Nehru would be unimaginably bad. So fear not, dear reader. I mean to just quote from on old post on Nehru. Only the post from January 2005 is recycled, not Nehru, god forbid.

Since I focus a lot on the mis-governance of India by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and its hangers-on, the matters discussed here are generally depressing. It’s time to contrast that with the successes of Gujarat under Narendrabhai Modi.

C’est la vie! I have been all over the place — literally. Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Ahmedabad. Hence the more than usual neglect of this blog. For now, here’s a quiz: Who asked his father permission to transfer to Oxford because “Cambridge is becoming too full of Indians”? Clearly shows a huge contempt for Indians. Easy answer but please don’t peek below the fold before answering.

Actually, have your best running shoes on when you start telling people what they don’t want to hear. What they generally don’t want to hear is anything that shows them up to be boobs. They don’t want to hear that they are being screwed over by the government. Add to that the fact that they are also very proud of being a “democracy.” Which makes it especially painful for them because if you tell them that their government is raping them, they don’t want to know it because it would …

It is generally true that most of the problems humanity suffers are created by humans. It is also generally true that humans eventually figure out solutions to those problems. However it is important to note that the two sets of humans — the problem-creators and problem-solvers — are disjoint sets. We can paraphrase Einstein’s astute observation: Problems cannot be solved by the same set of institutions and organizations that created them. India’s myriad modern problems have their genesis in one institution alone, the Congress party. In this post, …

I.
The drive to the airport last week in Mumbai was no different from most drives in Mumbai. It was congested and progress was excruciatingly slow much of the way. The line at the security check was long. Only two of the five machines scanning the carry-on bags were working and progress was slow. That was the cause of the congestion at the security check. When the boarding time came — and went — I asked at the gate when will boarding start. At the check-in counter, I had been …

Sorry people, I have been distracted with things — traveling places, meeting important people, thinking deep thoughts — you know the drill So do write what’s on your mind in the comments. It’s been a while since the last open thread. Say what you will. Also, here are a few random things that I have come across recently.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reported how the US is pressuring India to (what effectively is) surrender its interests to Pakistan’s whims. “U.S. Aims to Ease India-Pakistan Tension“. Why? Because Pakistan presented to the US administration “a litany of accusations against the Indian government,” and suggested “the U.S. intercede on Pakistan’s behalf.” Which the US is in essence doing.

The Chinese leadership knows how to think big — which is more than what one can say about the Indian leadership, which one must remember has been mainly from the Congress party led by the Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty. One case in point is how big the Chinese leaders think about railways.

In a 11 March rediff article titled “Mediocrity has become the norm“, the transcript of an interview of Arun Shourie makes interesting reading. I especially like his views on how Indian education has to change.

I don’t know what zone-h.org is. Someone pointed me to the site saying that he could not access it from India and believes that the government of India has banned it. He said that he has “heard (from a reliable source) a rumour that the Government of India has a fairly regular habit of issuing fiats to ISPs to block various websites that it feels are objectionable for some reason.”

The power of ideas has been a constant underlying theme of this blog. All transformations, good and bad alike, are fueled by adoption of ideas by people. Allow me to quote from a book that I am currently reading.

I find two items interesting today. One is an online petition titled “Demand for withdrawal of a flawed book on Hindu History published by PENGUIN” is making the rounds. Addressed to the presidents of the Penguin Group and Penguin India Pvt Ltd, it says, “The Hindus: An Alternative History” by Wendy Doniger “is rife with numerous errors in its historical facts and Sanskrit translations. These errors and misrepresentations are bound and perhaps intended to mislead students of Indian and Hindu history.” The other item is the story about M F …

The open thread on comment policy post generated a bunch of thoughtful comments. I think it would be nice to haul some of them out and put them in a post for consideration. Here are some.