Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

Indian Minister Announces Reward for Murder

I am not surprised. Indian Minister Offers Bounty reports the website Arab News.

NEW DELHI, 19 February 2006 — A minister in India’s Uttar Pradesh state government has offered a reward of $11.5 million to anyone who would kill any of the cartoonists who drew the images of the Prophet Muhammad …

Muhammad Yaqoob Qureshi, minister of state for Haj and Minorities Welfare in the Uttar Pradesh government, told a rally in Meerut, 65 km east of New Delhi, after Friday prayers that he would give “the avenger” 510 million rupees ($11.5 million) and his weight in gold.

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The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

The prime directive that the Buddha gave to humanity was as simple as it was wise: First do no harm; then try to do good. Easy enough to state but it is astonishingly hard to follow for the average human being. Granted that the average human has occasional flashes of genius, but those are rare and therefore shine brightly against a backdrop of all-pervasive darkness of the general stupidity of humanity at large. No one, present company included, is quite exempt from moments of supreme stupidity and random acts of senselessness. Stupidity is as much part of our human condition as our much vaunted rationality. Which is why it is so difficult to follow the Buddha’s directive: we are just not smart enough.
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India’s Picture-perfect Bureaucracy — Part 2

Wonders will never cease. Just yesterday I commented on the fact that THEY have decided to do away with discriminatory pricing for foreign nationals in India. Now I am happy to report that another of the millions of asinine rules has finally been reversed. For background, read my previous post on India’s picture-perfect bureaucracy from more than a year ago. It is about India’s anti-photography fetish. You just cannot take pictures of practically any place in India. There will be a battered sign which will forbid photography.

Last week on my flight to Hyderabad, the flight attendant announced that now it is no longer criminal to point your camera on Indian terrain and shoot. Bravo! What took these morons who make dumb policies so long to realize that a picture taken by an average person is not going to jeopardize national security?

Indian Secularism

It is a tradition, hoary and venerated, of dividing the people of India along myriad dimensions depending on the motives of those doing the dividing. Taking a cue from the British, past masters of the “Divide and Rule” strategy, the Congress party — Neo-colonialists — greedily embraced the D&R for the same purpose. With a vengeance, they classified and tagged people into various castes and creeds.
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Ripping-off Foreign Tourists — Part 2

So it would appear that wisdom is slowly dawning on the idiots that make policy in India. Last week I read that the powers that be have finally come to realize that it is not a good idea to rip off foreign tourists by charging foreigners more for services compared to Indian nationals. (When this discriminatory pricing scheme will be dismantled is of course anybody’s guess given the glacial pace of change in matters bureaucratic.)
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Rajiv Malhotra’s “U-Turn Theory”

Nearly five years ago in April 2001, TIME magazine did a feature titled The Power of Yoga.

A path to enlightenment that winds back 5,000 years in its native India, yoga has suddenly become so hot, so cool, so very this minute. It’s the exercise cum meditation for the new millennium, one that doesn’t so much pump you up as bliss you out.

The article feels like an “infomercial” on yoga but is worth a quick glance. (While you are there, don’t miss the brief photo essay on some yoga postures.)
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Off to Singapore

As it happens, I am off to Singapore for a few days. Blogging, therefore, will be suspended. Yeah, yeah, I know that I am not the most prolific of bloggers and stopping for extended periods of time is par for the course. Yet, courtesy demands that I alert you about this hiatus.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

PS: If you want to visit the archives, may I suggest this one on the privatization of public sector units and the followup posts on “Wrong-headed policies condemn millions to misery,” and the “Government’s Anti-Midas Touch“.

The Freedom to be Offended — Part 3

“CAESAR: Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.”
–George Bernard Shaw in “Caesar and Cleopatra”

I titled my two previous pieces exploring the freedom of expression as “The Freedom to be Offended” deliberately. Everyone is free to take offense, which is the flip side of the individual right to free speech. If the speech of one has to be restricted because someone else is offended, then taken to its logical conclusion we would arrive at the absurd position where no one will have the right to express anything.
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Hyderabad

Just for the record, I will be traveling to Hyderabad for the next couple of days and will not have the opportunity to write and respond to the comments on my recent posts.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

The Freedom to be Offended — Part 2

In a comment on my previous post, Nath declares that the “tough part is choosing where exactly to draw the line between legal and illegal.”

It is tough only if that line is arbitrarily drawn according to the whims and fancies of mobs. In most societies, it is drawn after due consideration and enshrined in some institution often called the constitution.
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