Dr James Reese, an economics professor at the University of South Carolina Upstate, is the producer of Radio Economics: An Economics Podcast – Telephone Interviews with Economists Worldwide. Here you will be able to listen to podcasts of some excellent interviews. There are so many doctors interviewed there that you would think that you were in a hospital. Seriously though, you should go there and as a side benefit you will learn all about podcasting and next thing you know you would have your own podcast ready to go.
Groucho Marx claimed that he would never be a member of a club that would have him for a member. I could take a similar perverse stance and say that I would never agree to be interviewed by anyone whose standards are so low as to interview me. But I am not Groucho and Dr Reese has interviewed honest to goodness great economists. So with a great deal of trepidation, I point you to an interview of yours truly on Radio Economics.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 
Hello Atanu,
Nice podcast. Always good to hear a person in ..urrmm person 🙂 However, many questions frm Dr. James sounded like 1-liner leading questions (call-center, what is the inflation, where is the economy headed) answers of which can be found in any India primer or Wikipedia, why even the stereotypical media reports! Two economists talking, I expected a bit more.
That minor let-down aside, some points to add to your podcast.
a) Ref:Education policy. I just recollected having watched this excellent PBS documentary titled “Hole in the Wall”. Excerpt:
Dr. Mitra heads research and development at NIIT, a leading computer software and training company in New Delhi. Just outside his office is a wall that separates his air-conditioned 21st-century office from a slum. Mitra decided to place a high-speed computer in the wall, connect it to the Internet, and watch who, if anyone, might use it. To his delight, curious children were immediately attracted to the strange new machine. “When they said, ‘Can we touch it?'” Mitra recalls, “I said, ‘It’s on your side of the wall.’ The rules say whatever is on their side, they can touch, so they touched it.”
Within minutes, children figured out how to point and click. By the end of the day they were browsing. “Given access and opportunity,” observes O’Connor, “the children quickly taught themselves the rudiments of computer literacy.”
You must absolutely watch this documentary. It really brings tears of joy, and even pain, to see so much can be achieved by a handful of resources. Ofcourse, if you get the time, you might as well meet Dr. Mitra. Having said that, I still doubt if ICT can truly replace the role of teachers. Augment? yes. Totally replace? I think not.
b) That figure about 70% of India living in villages. I’ve heard this figure ever since my Std I textbooks. But, nothing I see from anecdotal evidence of my brief travels in Maharashtra (Bbay/Pune & villages) and parts of Karnataka, TN, Kerala — ofcourse I don’t have statistics compiled to back this — supports this. Let’s just take the case of my native in Konkan. For each family in the village, there are five in Bombay. Even within village, for each family which grows mangoes, jackfruits or some other greens, there are five right there in the village, owning bakeries, restaurants, tailoring shops, groceries etc.(basically non-agri goods/service). Many cases, manoges is just the baap-dada ka traditioanl biz(continuity sake), and goods/services are the main income generators. Infact, one of the biggest wholesale chemists and transportation business house in Maharashtra is from my native. All this, when my native has been accorded a municipality status quite recently. So it’s not even a big village relatively. (Or is it?) And last time I checked, the younger generation(OMG, that makes me sounds like belonging to Rajendra Kumar era!) is continuing to migrate to Bombay and other foreign cities, rather than the reverse exodus. Basically what I am asking is: Is my observation(or my village) the rare exception which proves the rule? Are there concrete numbers(census?) which still state the 70-30 divide for today, or is this some kind of a statistical baggage we are carrying from past? However I did hear that you made a distinction between 70-30 staying in rural/urban versus GDP contribution which was like 50-50. My hunch is, it’s more like 50-50 population distribution and 70-30 GDP contribution. Ofcourse, I admit, I am on an injured limb here. So any corrections appreciated.
c) Re: India/China pushing up the oil prices. Well, I read in an old AAA article(sorry, no link) annual gasoline consumption of California state alone far exceeds any other country’s consumption. And even to a layman who has lived in US, say for a week, it is plain obvious that countries like India are not even on the comparison radar. Just pick any one Interstate of US, and you can bet fuel consumed on it will far exceed many Indian states combined. Already, during the Labour day weekend, gas touched as high as $3.99 a gallon and media was split whether to report NewOrleans or report high gas prices. (They did a bad job of both) In my view, we are close to seeing hybrids and other alternative energy vehicles starting to get tax-benefits. Because the major factor against wide acceptance of hybrids is their upfront cost (eg: new Corolla=$14K vs Prius=$21K+). Or if Bush Inc. has its way, the other sol’n could be Operation-Spread-Demock’racy in iRan, Venezuela, .
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Atanu,
It was a pleasure listening to the podcast. You should do this more often. I would even advocate am mp3 link that accompanies your blogpost, so I can listen to the mp3 rather than read thru literature…I have about a dozen economic courses on tape, and listen to them regularly, while I have never bothered to read thru textbooks..just a preference.
That said, imo you came off as a bit tired.. No enthusiasm in the replies, very professorial…x is true & y is true & z is also true & so on….I mean, take a stand & it gets more interesting, as opposed to playing all sides of the equation.
It looks like Khosla has put this thin-client junk in your head…you should really chuck it out:) I say this as a former Sun Micro employee. This whole thin-client mess is much more trouble than it is really worth. These are days of $100 PCs, and we’re still talking about thin clients ? Anycase, using computing in education ensures neither good computing nor good education. Putting a PC in a wall & seeing what poor kids will do with it ensures great drama for the poor lefty PBS souls who will then shed tears of joy & donate a few hundred dollars to keep PBS up & running, but really does nothing to address the educational requirements of those kids. I for one am not impressed with this sort of feel-good drama. It comes off in bad taste…like giving cameras to the kids of redlight district workers in sonagachi & then commenting on their image composition skills, safely ignoring the real issue at hand.
I also feel you have a very unique opportunity at hand that was not being exploited in the podcast ie. you are a development economist in India, meeting & working with rural & urbal populace, why not tell us a few anectodes….real-life folk & their experiences & how it influenced your thinking…as opposed to some generic data that we read about everyday on Rediff & Economic Times. You say salaries are rising rapidly for those working in BPOs due to scarcity of folks with these skills. Ok, that’s common knowledge. What I’d like to know is, what is the actual salary (ballpark) for some arbit nitin pandey, how much was he making a year ago, how does this change his life, has he moved into a better house from his chawl, or is he spending the extra dough on consumables, or is he buying a better mobile phone, or on a hyundai,….I mean personify it a little bit instead of just giving us the dry statistic “salaries are going up”.
Economics is dry enuf as it is 🙂
Hope you’ll do more of these podcasts in the future.
Thanks,
Krishnan
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Sir Krishnan,
May I ask your honourable self, why would you jump to associate “tears of joy” with being left, naye “poor lefty PBS souls”? I am quite new to PBS and NPR. I don’t know about where they stand with their political ideologies – however I did catch parts of one more of their documentaries on KLRU about old churches in Texas. Does that make them sound a bit right for your comfort now? And the other day, I saw a docu on Apallachian mountains and their country music. Now, that’s a perfect center, innit? (Pray, enlighten me where does Animan Planet fit in this line? So next time, I am aware of my biases). I admit, I am a documentary buff. I’ve spent hours and hours watching NGC/Discovery back in India. That is also the reason why I got hooked and saw yr ONN docu too(good one by the way). So just because, there are a few episodes, which you feel are left or right, I am not going to shy away from putting my eyeballs and money where my mouth(err keyboard) is, if and when the time comes. As if crying is the sole preserve of left. And crying with joy? Tauba-tauba!! Who does that in today’s world anyway? Anybody who expresses as such must be a hypocritical, pseduo-secularist, bleedy heart, poor commie soul. Any more labels, you got? I appreciate you dragging in this labeling, which is so relevant to this discussion.
However, I agree with you that HiW proj, doesn’t do anything in terms of concrete education for the kids. I think even Dr.Mitra acknowledges it in his conclusion (I don’t quite remember if he says it in so many words). To me the path that experiment takes is more interesting than the final result. Ofcourse one can’t built a solid educational foundation on such experiments. I must be naive if I were to derive that conclusion from it. That study just highlights an interesting self-learning pattern in kids. I saw it only as such – a Hole(of Hope) in the Wall (of Illiteracy).
Also, I agreed in my conclusion in (a), that ICT by itself is not going to fix our educational system.
Regards.
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Suhail,
As a filmmaker, I’m a little bit over-informed about PBS than I’d care to be 🙂
PBS is definitely left of center, & though I don’t mind it because Faux News & other rightwing guys balance out the turf, PBS docus invariably lead me to ….what’s the word here….cringe.
There is some word of PBS moving definitely to the right, though.
Too much of this weepy pit-the-commonman-against-corporate metaphor.
Obesity a problem in USA – Why not do a PBS docu asking “poor black moms in Harlem” why they are
“forced to eat 29 cent McDonald hamburgers” as opposed to “$5 garden salad” ?
Clueless teens in USA – what about PBS docu showing us decreasing funds for public schools as opposed to more for missiles ?
& so on.
One of my friends got her indie accepted by PBS – here’s the plot – redlight district in Times Square gives a young 25 year old girl a nice living for about 5 years. Then Guliani becomes mayor, Times Square is Disneyfied & parcelled off to AOLs & various corporates, no more hookers, no more sleaze, so this young lady becomes a homeless person living out of trashcans in Central Park.
Absolutely true story, filmed over a decade. Yes, I admit I cried too when I watched it.
But what exactly is the point ? It still eludes me.
It is easy to make such heartbreaking tear-jerking stuff as opposed to highlighting the real issue.
For eg. just show some poor hog farmer here in my neighborhood in the midwest, unable to make ends meet because oil prices are upwards of $3. Then cut to GWB playing golf in artificial golfcourt in saudi arabia desert….I promise you this will end up on PBS someday 🙂
I have about a 100 docus on tape & I could go on & on about their biases….but what the hell. They all deserve to be seen, & I do love watching them.
BTW, since you are a docu fan – PLEASE watch Sound & Fury
I was so outraged by that docu…so I bought a copy & watch it whenever I want to feel angry with the world 🙂
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