This place is far too quiet. Time to stir it up a bit. So let’s have a bit of a debate. The proposition before the house is:
The Indian voter is corrupt.
That article is from around the time of the general elections of 2004. I discovered a bunch of posts in the archives which are relevant. Here they are:
April 2004, Democracy in India
May 2004, Cargo Cult and Democracy
Nov 2004, India, the World’s Largest Kleptocracy
Dec 2004, On Being Ruled by Toads
Someone remarked that writing is three percent inspiration and 97 percent not getting distracted by stuff on the world wide web. I can relate to that. Every time I try to get something done, I go wandering all over what I call the cyberhypersphere. This is not really a thinly-veiled attempt at explaining away why I have not been writing stuff on this blog.
Continue reading “What is your dangerous idea?”
[Continued from Part 3.]
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe, said Abe Lincoln. Astonishing how much profoundly practical wisdom is packaged into that simple declaration. Time spent in sharpening the tool is time well-spent; so is time spent in thinking through a problem and thoroughly understanding the problem before rushing off to solve it. And in most cases, since there is almost nothing new under the sun, there are already known solutions to many problem. So the most efficient method to solve a problem is to first seek the solution that someone may have figured out already.
Continue reading “Lee Kuan Yew on India — Part 4”
Well, the year is new. And so are the resolutions. I will write more regularly on my blog is the only resolution I made this year.
Happy New Year.
The greatest technological advancement of the modern world, after sliced bread and the personal computer, has to be the cell phone. It is the one device that makes possible the notion of the global village, it inter-connects billions through wireless, satellite, fiber-optic, and microwave networks spanning the globe. Perhaps the only thing that the poor fisherman in the Kerala coast and the rich stock analyst in the New York Stock Exchange have in common is the cell phone. Continue reading “Information: Pure and Actionable”
Among cynics, HL Mencken (1880-1956) holds pride of place in my opinion. In his judgment, democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. In India—are you really surprised—the monkeys running the government never cease to astonish. I thought that when it came to the insane depravity of the Indian politician, I had seen it all. But I was sadly mistaken.
Continue reading “Monkeys Running the Circus”
[Continued from Part 2.]
The recent performance of India’s private sector has underlined an important economics lesson, that competitive markets work where too often the command and control system founders. Within your arm’s reach is a device which is a miracle of modern technology—the cell phone. It took the government telecom monopoly 45 years—from 1951 to 1996—to install around 14 million land lines. Between 1996 and 2000, with the liberalization of the telecom sector, India’s installed capacity doubled to around 30 million lines. In the next five years, India’s telephone companies added another 90 million lines (of which 70 million were cell phone lines.)
Continue reading “Lee Kuan Yew on India – Part 3”
Reading Lee Kuan Yew’s lecture is edifying at various levels. As an observer, he is incomparable. But he did not merely observe; he hinted at solutions and did so without being rude. You know the Hindi saying, samajhdar ko eshara kafi hota hai (to the intelligent, a mere gesture suffices). Unfortunately, his talk to the Congress and other assorted disciples of Nehru must have been as useful as a bicycle to a fish. Nothing that LKY prescribed for India is surprising or counter-intuitive. Yet it is good to hear it from one who has not only talked the talk but actually walked the walk. Continue reading “Lee Kuan Yew on India – Part 2”
Lee Kuan Yew was invited to deliver the 37th Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture on 21st Nov 2005 in New Delhi. He called it “India in an Asian Renaissance.” I am an unabashed admirer of Lee Kuan Yew and I should also add that I am a very severe critic of Jawaharlal Nehru. So I decided to read Yew’s lecture and also read between the lines and make a few comments
Continue reading “Lee Kuan Yew on India”
The Oxfam America site asks In a World of Abundance, Why Hunger? (July 8, 2002)
Poverty and hunger are the world’s greatest challenges
- 1.2 billion people–one out of five–live on less than $1 a day.
- More than 800 million people are hungry, including 31 million in the United States.
- Every day, 24,000 people die from hunger and other preventable causes. One billion people do not have adequate shelter, and 2.4 billion people do not have access to proper sanitation. More than 1 billion people in developing countries lack access to safe water.
- Yet enough food is produced in the world to feed everyone.
- Overpopulation is not the main cause of hunger. In Japan, a densely populated country with 125 million people, hunger is rare compared to other countries. Many larger countries with fewer people, like Peru and Sudan, have much higher rates of hunger.
- The problem is inequality in access to education, resources, and power.
I have a slightly different take on the question of poverty and hunger. I think that ultimately, without the active participation of the world’s poor, poverty cannot be sustained. I believe that we have been looking for the solution to poverty everywhere else except at the source of poverty. The source of poverty is the poor. The poor sustain poverty.
I am not absolving anyone of blame by locating the source of sustained poverty among the poor. On the contrary, the non-poor also actively participate in helping the poor sustain poverty. But in the ultimate analysis, the poor have the power to kill poverty. How to awaken them to that realization is the challenge that those who wish to see poverty eradicated face.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 