In the information technology sector, the two well-known categories of goods are hardware, the stuff you can hold in your hands, and software, the bits that have no weight. The third category is termed vaporware: hardware that exist only in the fevered imagination of their promoters and which will never hit the stores.

“The Citizen at War” is my article in the July issue of Pragati–The Indian National Interest Review. (Click on the cover image to open a pdf version of the magazine.) Below the fold is the text of the article, for the record.

The April 2011 edition of “Pragati — The Indian National Interest Review” is here. I have a piece in there — The Illusion of Freedom. Here it is below the fold, for the record.

It’s been a while since I contributed to “The Indian National Interest Review: Pragati.” I had to write a piece. I didn’t want the editor, Mr Nitin Pai, to get mad at me. It’s always best to be on his right side. Never get the press angry, is what I always say. Now if you know me, you know that it takes me forever to write anything. At the very mention of writing, I feel a writer’s block coming on. Writing is the hardest thing I try. But anyway, I …

In the February 2010 issue of Pragati I argue why India needs new livable, sustainable and well-managed cities. The text of the article appears below, for the record.

The August 2009 issue of Pragati is out. I have a contribution in there. My perspective is that the Indian government must stop subsidizing Muslims who go on haj, and the more general case that the government must stop meddling in private religious affairs of the citizens. The text of my article is below the fold, for the record.

This month’s Pragati is about “What the new government should do in its first 100 days.” I have a piece in there about the structural changes required in education. What else is new, you’d ask. Below the fold are the editorial comments for the issue. Please read and distribute.

Richard Feynman has claimed that “it is safe to say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics.” He was serious about it because of the complexity of the subject and the counter-intuitive consequences of the theory. Sometime I think that the global financial system is also beyond comprehension. But that is not quite true. Unlike quantum mechanics, the financial system is an artifact, albeit a very complex one. Also, it is possible to understand something and yet be unable to fully control it all the time. Once in a while, it …

Today’s Mint has an opinion piece by yours truly which they titled “India needs a good 3G order.” I confess that I don’t know what that title means. Whatever that means, here is the full text of the piece below the fold.

My contribution to the August issue of Pragati. I am reproducing the piece here below the fold, for the record. Regulars to this blog pretty much know my position on what needs to be done on education. Still you may find something of use.

The following is an article by me that appeared in ISB’s in-house magazine insight June 2008 issue.
There is a definite positive relationship between the size of the habitation and the productivity of the population.”
The full article is below.

I have a piece in today’s livemint.com on India’s Energy Challenge. The money quote is this:
The advanced industrialized economies were lucky to have had their development fuelled by cheap fossil energy. Today’s developing economies have a much tougher challenge. It was a very short window of opportunity which opened just about 150 years ago and is likely to close in the next 40 years, by when the known reserves will be depleted at current levels of consumption.
All told, 200 years is a very brief interlude considering thousands of years of …

Big Change on a Tiny Screen is the title the editors of Indian Express chose for my column on the mobile phone I did for them today.
The greatest technological advancement of the modern world, after the personal computer, has to be the cell phone. The power that it gives its approximately three billion users around the world arises from its participatory nature. Consider the recent protests against the Chinese repression of Tibetans. The use of mobile phones to send pictures of the protests in Lhasa and elsewhere and regular …

I have a piece in today’s Mint. It is titled “The Magic of Technology.” Here it is, below the fold.

Yesterday’s Indian Express carried a piece by me on the perverse oil subsidy that the government of India provides. I begin that piece with my favorite Douglass North quote: “Economic history is overwhelmingly a story of economies that failed to produce a set of economic rules of the game (with enforcement) that induce sustained economic growth.” I used that quote in the other piece published in Mint today.
The reason I like that quote it because it goes to the very heart of the problem of India’s economic development. Indians as …

The business of business is profit. That’s the whole point in doing business. If a business is following the rules and legally making a profit, it is discharging its social responsibilities. I wrote an opinion piece in today’s Mint arguing that corporations are not responsible for solving social problems.
Here’s the text of the article.

Yesterday, the Indian Express carried a column by me on the OLPC, a favorite topic of mine. There’s nothing new in there for those who have read my views on the OLPC before. The text of the column below the fold.

Today’s Mint carries my opinion piece “Walking Around the Elephant” — a write-up on my conversation with Pranab Bardhan, professor of economics at UC Berkeley. The transcript of the conversation is also up on the Mint website under the title “Reforms do not address the anxieties of the general population.”

Perhaps you have read it before on this blog. Now “The Age of Profound Ignorance” is available to a wider readership on LiveMint.com. (If the previous link does not work, please use this one.)