Author: Atanu Dey

My friend sent me a link to a Vir Sanghvi column in an email with the subject line “Vir Sanghvi is a brain-dead prick.” Surely, I said, my friend exaggerates. Not brain-dead, I thought. The fact that the fellow is a major TV and newspaper journalist, I supposed that he knows how to write and talk, and therefore could not be brain-dead. But then I made a mistake. I read his column, “Setting the record straight.”
Continue reading “Vir Sanghvi is not a Brain-dead prick”

The most American of holidays — Thanksgiving — is also my favorite among the holidays of the Western tradition. Let’s forget for a moment when and why this tradition started, and just use this holiday to remember that we all have something to be thankful to the universe for.
Continue reading “Happy Thanksgiving”

[Previously in the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.]

“Oh! what a tangled web we weave; When we first practice to deceive,” lamented Sir Walter Scott. I suppose the web of deceit becomes less tangled with practice. Politicians and their handlers — I am talking about the likes of Niira Radia, Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt — have over the decades gained such sophistication and finesse that they weave elegant webs of deception worthy of stunned admiration. Gone are the days when a few million dollars quietly taken from the public till was sufficient cause for massive public outrage. Now the sheer awfulness of the crime has transcended human comprehension.
Continue reading “The King of All Telecom Scams — Part 6”

“The CBI on Monday told the Supreme Court (SC) that it has in its possession 5,851 call recordings, many of them 30-40 minutes long, of corporate lobbyist Nira Radia with various people,” says DNA. I propose that these recordings be published on the web immediately. Why?
Continue reading “Release the CBI tapes to the Public Domain”

I got to know of a seminar today at UC Berkeley. “Bioengineering Advances for Economically Disadvantaged Societies” by Prof Boris Rubinsky. The title of the talk bugs me no end. In what way is “economically disadvantaged” an improvement on the plain English word “poor”?
Continue reading “Being PC to the Point of Idiocy”

[Previously in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.]

There’s a saying in Hindi. “Raja vyapari toh praja bhikari.” If the ruler involves himself in business, the citizens are reduced to begging. Good old fashioned down to earth practical wisdom. Astonishing isn’t it that a people whose ancestors include Kautilya are reduced to such a sorry state that they allow the government to mess around in business and they don’t even understand that to be the cause of their immiserization. It’s something of a mystery. Well, not really. There are plausible explanations of how this came to be. For now, let’s look at the telecom scam and the press has been reporting on it. If you know the details already, there’s nothing new for you in this post.
Continue reading “The King of All Telecom Scams — Part 5”

[Previously in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.]

To the rather distinguished list of superlatives about India — the largest democracy, etc. — we can add “India is the largest banana republic in the world.” The Wikipedia notes that “the purpose of a banana republic is commercial profit by collusion between the State and favoured monopolies, whereby the profits derived from private exploitation of public lands is private property, and the debts incurred are public responsibility.” Generalize “public lands” in there to mean “public resources” and you have a pretty good description of what we have going on in India.
Continue reading “The King of All Telecom Scams — Part 4”