Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

Imagining Indian Cities

Nandan Nilekani on his Imagining India blog makes an excellent case why Indian cities need to have local control rather than being controlled by state or central government agencies. Continue reading “Imagining Indian Cities”

Sandeep’s “India’s Most Loathsome 2008” is live

In keeping with what he did last year, this year too Sandeep has compiled a list of 16 India’s Most Loathsome People. The prime minister makes it next to the top spot; Sonia Gandhi wins the coveted top of the list. I disagree. I think that the top of the list, like the Time’s Person of the Year, must be “YOU — the average Indian.” My comment on Sandeep’s blog:
Continue reading “Sandeep’s “India’s Most Loathsome 2008” is live”

Links for Dec 3rd, 2008: After the Smoke Has Cleared

Hi from Philadelphia, PA.

“Blasphemous bras, heretical heels, yoga and me,” a funny opinion piece by Julia Suryakusuma for The Jakarta Post (Dec. 3, 2008) on a not-funny subject:

Yesterday morning I woke up early as usual and got ready for my early morning meditational yoga. It’s something I’ve been doing since 1981, clearing my mind and reinvigorating myself for the day ahead. It’s like getting your cell phone recharged, as simple as that.

But then I remembered reading that the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) is thinking of issuing a fatwa declaring yoga haram (forbidden), inspired by the Malaysian National Fatwa Council which has declared yoga haram because it “goes against the teachings of Islam”. Well, Malaysia is our sister country and they’ve done us the honor of imitating so many Indonesian things — batik, songs, language, even food! It’s understandable we should reciprocate.

To distract us from all the doom and gloom, check out Twinkle, twinkle little star (Desi style). This is funny only if you are a desi.; furriners will not get the joke. (Thanks to Prakash Advani for the link.)

But now back to the terror attack on Mumbai. WSJ published a very well written piece on Dec 1st which concisely reports the sequence of events as they were known then.

Pieced together from interviews with dozens of witnesses and officials, this account of the three days of the battle for Mumbai shows just how a small but ruthless group of skilled militants, attacking multiple targets in quick succession, managed to bring one of the world’s largest cities to its knees. The human toll — currently at 174 fatalities, including nine terrorists — was exacerbated by the Indian authorities’ lack of preparedness for such a major attack. But the chain of events also points to just how vulnerable any major city can be to this type of urban warfare.

It is worth reading, and reading soon before it disappears behind a subscription wall.

Here are pictures from The Big Picture on “Mumbai after the smoke has cleared.”

Tragedy and Farce — Part 2

{Continued from part 1.}

In the ultimate analysis, ideas matter. Ideas are what distinguishes humans from all known forms of terrestial living beings. The differences one observes in the development of various societies ultimately boil down to the set of ideas that a society developes, borrows, adopts, adapts, and uses. Ideas as embodied in the institutions and mores of society ultimately dictate how prosperous it is. A set of ideas that persist and pervade the collective consciousness of a society can be called an ideology. After controlling for all other factors such as natural endowments and accidents of history, the state of development and prospects of growth of a society (and therefore its economy) are fundamentally and inextricably tied to the dominant ideology of that society.
Continue reading “Tragedy and Farce — Part 2”

Tragedy and Farce — Part 1

Cyclic Tragedy and Farce

Perhaps we need to update Marx’s idea of history that it “repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” to suit the history of terrorism in India where each cyclic repetition consists of a brutal tragedy immediately followed by a hopeless farce.

The script is tiresomely familiar. Islamic terrorists attack and kill by the scores, if not hundreds, in acts of mindless mayhem and destruction. Even as the short tragedy is unfolding, the farce begins with the prime minister and other government officials declaring that they will punish the perpetrators. That gives way to so-called “secular intellectuals” quickly justifying the horror by pointing out that we need to understand the conditions that motivated the Islamic terrorists to go on a killing-spree of infidels – namely, poverty and discrimination against the followers of the celebrated Religion of Peace.
Continue reading “Tragedy and Farce — Part 1”

Basic incompetence

Expressing his frustration, Rajan Parrikar wrote saying that Indians appear to be experts in losing. . .

…on every front. For three days as the Mumbai terrorist drama unfolded on American TV screens, there was not a SINGLE official Indian representative offering the Indian perspective. The Pakistani ambassador, on the other hand, went on several channels proclaiming Pakistan’s innocence and telling Americans how his nation was an innocent victim instead!

Then there was Ms Zain Verjee, the CNN International anchor and a muslim, who did not let a single opportunity go without telling Americans how disaffected the Indian muslim youth are in India and how opportunities for India’s muslims are slim. Nobody talks about India’s Hindu poor (600+ million) and their travails. I guess Hindus don’t count since we are “secular.”

Where in the world was the Indian ambassador to the United States hiding? Doesn’t he know anything about public relations in the middle of an event of so singular a dimension and extent?

The only Indian presence of any significance came in the form of that charlatan Deepak Chopra. His first order of business was to drop his pants and crap on India. Are Indians truly programmed to be losers or what?

I don’t know if I will characterize all Indians as losers but the guy who heads the government is certainly one. He is, besides, a medical wonder — who appears to function normally despite the lack of a brain and a spine.

An Inflection Point?

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai may mark an inflection point in the war against India by Islamic forces. Over centuries of terror — and tens of millions of innocent victims — India has been reduced to dhimmi status. Whether or not India has been finally pushed to wall is the question. Will the collective grow a spine or will it continue to just total up the lives lost while meekingly submitting to Islam’s avowed goal of claiming India as dar ul Islam? Is there some hope that India will finally turn the corner and defend itself instead of cowering in the corner?

The signs are not hopeful. The Prime Minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, as usual made his empty threats of going after the terrorists — like he always does following each attack. But then he backpedals furiously with an eye on his vote bank. If the Indian voters don’t kick out the UPA in the next elections, I think that they deserve every bit of the continued rain of terror they suffer.

It is all karma, neh?

Employment, Employability and Education

{Follow up to part 1 and part 2.}

I think that anyone who is not horrified at the terrible state of Indian education is not paying attention to what’s going on in India. One person whom I met recently clearly gets it. Manish Sabharwal was one of the speakers that impressed me at the TiE-ISB Connect ’08 a couple of weeks ago at the ISB in Hyderabad. He started TeamLease in 2002, India’s leading staffing company.

TeamLease Services is India’s leading staffing company and provides a range of Temporary and Permanent manpower solutions to over 1000 clients.

The Temporary staffing group establishes a co-employment relationship with clients and takes responsibility for all compliance, HR and administrative of employees on assignment. The Permanent staffing group undertakes turnkey and recruitment mandates for permanent fulfilment. We view ourselves as a liquidity provider that enables better matching of demand and supply in labour markets.

I consider the function of a company like TeamLease to be what I call an intervention in the second best world. A state of the world without any distortions is a first best world. In the case of the labor market in India, distortions are introduced by the government in terms of labor laws that retard employment. This is a second best world of employment and employability. To improve the functioning of the labor markets then requires additional effort. As Manish points out, his business is “illegal.” A significant portion of his time goes into trying to influence public policy.
Continue reading “Employment, Employability and Education”