Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

A Sunny Pleasure Dome with Caves of Ice

At the risk of being branded a Luddite, I maintain that the world wide web is the single most distracting thing ever invented by humans. The internet is immensely useful for practical matters of course but aside from its utilitarian functions, it is also capable of providing a device for pure play. It can be, in the hands of an appropriately interested and educated human, a virtually (sic) inexhaustible source of joy, the intellectual equivalent of Kubla Khan’s “miracle of rare device, a sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice.” Continue reading “A Sunny Pleasure Dome with Caves of Ice”

Radio Economics: A Podcast of Economists

Among the contemporary economists I greatly admire, Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Sachs appear at the top. Much of what I know of international trade, I learnt from Krugman and Obstfeld’s book on the subject. I admire Sachs for the work he is doing in focusing attention on the problems of underdeveloped parts of the world. So it is a definitely edifying experience to hear Krugman and Sachs on Radio Economics, a podcast site produced by Dr. James Reese, an economics professor at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Continue reading “Radio Economics: A Podcast of Economists”

Discussion: Indian Voters are Corrupt

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

What is your dangerous idea?

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?”

Lee Kuan Yew on India — Part 4

[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”

Information: Pure and Actionable

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”

Monkeys Running the Circus

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”

Lee Kuan Yew on India – Part 3

[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”

Lee Kuan Yew on India – Part 2

{Continued from Part 1}

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”