Anyone familiar with the disastrous state of India should not be overly surprised to learn that the Indian parliament has an overwhelmingly greater percentage of criminals than the general population. How effectively a nation functions and how successful it is depends on its leaders who make public policy and thus critically determine the outcome. India’s failure to develop and achieve its potential is proof positive that its leadership is lacking.
Underdevelopment, poverty, and all other ills that plague India are an unavoidable consequence of poor public policies and choices.

Pragati July issue is available.

Dear Mr.Tata,
I trust that you will take the decision to locate the proposed commercial port in coastal Orissa only after due consideration about, and the serious study of, the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle. Thank you.
Kind regards,
Atanu
[Reference.]

Google says it is building the Indic web. Now they support transliteration in 5 languages — Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. I checked out their automatic English to Hindi translation. I typed “What is your name” and got back “kya aapkay naam” — not terribly impressive.

Did you know that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy? It will be 400 years since Galileo Galilei, the starry messenger, demonstrated his telescope to the world (actually, Venetian politicians) in August 1609. To commemorate that event, IAU and UNESCO are going to release a movie.
The vision of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 is to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery. All humans should …

The April 2008 issue of Pragati is available for download here.

The first two articles are on the loan waiver to farmers.

Caesar ignored the soothsayer’s warning to “beware the ides of March” and on March 15th in 44 BCE was assassinated. Cassius was among the attackers. Caesar knew that there was something suspicious about Cassius. He had remarked to Antony:
Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Be very wary of people with lean and hungry looks who think too much.
[Here’s Act 1, Scene 2 of The Life and …

So there’s a new political party in the making — the Jago Party. A very hopeful sign. We need more and more people to enter the political arena. The consequence of good people not engaging in politics, as the wise counsel, is that you get ruled by your inferiors. The more choices one has in terms of political parties, the more likely it will be that a reasonable outcome may obtain.

Emergic: Rajesh Jain’s Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Enterprises and Markets is back on the air after a hiatus of a few months.

If you had been wondering when I will get with the new technology, wonder no more. I have created an SMS channel on MyToday.com and so you can keep abreast of announcements related to this blog and yours truly.
It’s simple. If you are in India, send an SMS saying “Start AtanuDey” (case insensitive, and without the quotes) to 575758 or to 098453 98453.
You will start receiving messages that I publish, starting with an acknowledgment message from “ATANUDEY”. What will it cost you? Nothing except whatever it costs to …

The Dec 2007 issue of Pragati is out. Click on the image below for a pdf copy of the magazine.

I have a piece on why India should invest in solar power R&D (which is posted here on this blog.) Quick look at the content below the fold.

I am often asked by people if they can re-publish my blog posts. Most of what you read on this blog is original in the sense that I write the stuff and therefore by common convention, automatically the copyright to the material belongs to me. I have the freedom to assign rights to my work to others of course. There is an extremely flexible mechanism which has been developed for this purpose and I think it is worthwhile for us to become familiar with it — or if you already …

Today I am blogging at “Why Democracy?” and have just published a post on Democracy in India.
The idea behind the Why Democracy? project appears to me to be to ask what democracy actually means and if it works as advertised, and if not, what are the deficiencies in the real places where it exists, etc. Go check it out.

Here’s the lastest issue of Pragati. Go get it by clicking on the image below.

Contents
PERSPECTIVE: Soft power, hard reality, Channel !ndia, The Indian corporate century, Climate change & international security
FILTER: On India-US relations; India’s consumer market; The Doha round and free trade in services; Productivity miracle; and Climate change and the Indian farmer
IN DEPTH: Leveraging Remittances
ROUNDUP: Microfinance: Charting new territory; Globalisation: Readying for the next round
BOOKS: In extenso: Six great revolutions; Review: PLU engaged in WMD

Get your copy fresh off the press here.
Contents :
Editorial – A leap of faith
Perspectives – on Pakistan at the crossroads, and on the abuse of ’social justice’
Roundup – on Bangladesh’s disappearing democracy, flying tigers, a report on clean energy and the missing debate on property rights and institutional autonomy
Agenda – unshackling education
Do read and share!

I am pleased to announce the arrival of a new publication titled “Indian National Interest Review — Pragati” (which in Hindi means “progress”). I reproduce here in full the superbly crafted editorial of the first issue.

If you have been unable to access blogspot today (as I have been), then here is a work around. Use Anonymouse.org.
This public service announcement has been made possible by a grant from the Freedom Foundation (which hopes to have an office in India in a few centuries.)

Dear friends,
As you know one of the biggest problems today is that Indian journalists are not always proud of their own culture and roots and as result tend to have a very negative outlook on India, which in turn influences western correspondents posted in India. It is therefore very important that we train a new generation of Indian journalists. It is for this purpose that we have started a new school of journalism in Bangalore called the Sri Sri …

The name of this blog is Deeshaa where there are two e’s and two a’s. The reason I point it out is that I notice that many people make the mistake of thinking it is “Deesha” and they end up either not finding this blog or not being able to reach me on email. The name ‘Deesha’ was already taken and therefore we spell deesha as Deeshaa.
This is a dummy post. This post will have the words Deesha Deeshaa Atanu Dey RISC Rajesh Jain Vinod Khosla Rural Development Population …