Author: Atanu Dey

I am teaching during this Summer term at UC Berkeley starting Monday 20th June. Summer courses are hard, both for the teacher and the students since a regular course of 17 weeks is squeezed into 8 weeks. I was foolish enough to agree to teach not one but two courses. That’s a stupid thing to do but in my case it’s par for the course. Still, teaching is always fun and instructive.
Continue reading “It’s all Karma, neh?”

People deserve the government they get. That’s generally true, but in the particular case where the government is democratically elected, as H L Mencken observed, “the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” But why just restrict just deserts to governments alone — the easy extension is the press. People deserve the press they get, and exhibit number 1 is the Indian press. The press and the government go hand in hand. That’s true regardless of whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship. The much vaunted Indian free press is not really free. It is not free the sense of “free beer”, it is not free in the sense of “open source” and it is not free in the sense of “not ruled over or dictated to.” Bad government or bad press: which came first?
Continue reading “The Press as a Perfectly Loathsome Pimp”

The Chicago jury’s verdict on Tahawwur Rana, accomplice of the Islamic terrorist David Headley, is provoking comment from the Indian establishment. The charge is that the US should have punished Rana for his role in the Pakistani terrorist attack of Nov 2008 on Mumbai. This is more than a little puzzling. The Indian establishment has not punished the one and only of the surviving Islamic terrorists, Ajmal Kasab. If the Indians don’t have the balls to hang Kasab, whose guilt and involvement in the actual crime is beyond doubt, I don’t really see why some jury in Chicago should be required to hang someone who was merely charged with aiding in the crime and the America prosecutors have not been able to convince the jury of his guilt? Why does the Indian establishment demand the US do what it does not do itself? Those who are tut-tutting the Chicago verdict should take a good hard look in the mirror. The Indian Establishment is forever expecting the US to do its dirty job. It demands the US declare Pakistan a terrorist state but never has the guts to do so itself.

I am pleased to note that my book, “Transforming India” is available. You will have to be the judge of the content. But I hope you will not judge the book by its cover or the quality of the print run. Due to a major snafu, the book comes up short in the quality of the production department. It is a costly mistake and I am partly responsible for not paying attention to that part of the job. Mea culpa. For now, I hope you do grab a copy and read it. (I will soon provide links on how to order it.) (See where to get it below.) With some luck, the second printing of the book will be fine. Thank you and keep in touch.

UPDATE: If you have bought a copy of the book (or ordered it and is in the mail), please let me know. A second printing of the book, with better production values, is in the works and should be ready in 10 days or so. The publisher would be happy to send you a copy of that absolutely free. Thanks and my apologies for the trouble.

You can order the book from the publisher New Horizon Media in Chennai. They will ship it to you within 24 hours.

This is a follow up to an Oct 2010 post, “The US and its Deadly Faustian Bargain” which needs revisiting because of new information. I urge you to read that post to get a sense of the insanity that is going around. What the new information does is just add more evidence to confirm my hypothesis that the US is the auctioneer in the dollar auction formulation of the conflict between India and Pakistan.
Continue reading “The US and its Deadly Faustian Bargain — Part 2”

Baba Ramdev is a popular Hindu leader. He is widely respected and celebrated for his teachings on yoga shastra. He is a tireless teacher to millions of people. He has rendered incomparable service to his followers in India, and — with the power of the internet — around the world. No one can take away the significance of his achievements in bringing understanding and empowerment to his followers in their private and social lives.

No one except Baba Ramdev himself, that is.

I think that the greatest enemy that Baba Ramdev faces is himself, as sometimes happens with people with extraordinary talent. They are victims of their own successes, and the knife sticking out of their backs is often one that they themselves hand to their attackers.
Continue reading “Baba Ramdev is a Very Great Man”

Presenting a short playlist of randomly selected songs for your weekend listening. Do let me know if you like it. Since a few people have written to me asking me what I thought of Baba Ramdev’s fast, I will write about it in my next post sometime tomorrow. Have a good weekend. Bye.

http://8tracks.com/mixes/322023/player_v3

The subtitle of Siddhartha Deb’s article, Feast and Famine, in the Boston Review reads, “India Is Growing, But Indians Are Still Starving.” The subtitle is too short. It should have added, “If India had not been growing, a couple of hundred million additional Indians would be starving.” I make this point because the article gives the impression that somehow India’s growth has something to do with the 800 million Indians who have to survive on less than Rs 20 a day.
Continue reading “The Starving 800 million in India”

Winston Churchill’s pithy observation that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter” is unfortunately too accurate to be dismissed lightly. We are often acutely reminded of that by the results of elections, in developed as well as in developing countries. It is a marvel that the myth of the enlightened voter persists against all evidence to the contrary.
Continue reading “Democracy, Elections and Voting — Part 3”