Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

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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The Freedom to be Offended

“If a nation or an individual values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too.”
– W. Somerset Maugham

The story is pretty simple. A Danish newspaper, Jylland-Posten, published in September 2005 a dozen cartoons depicting Muhammad after a writer complained that nobody dared illustrate a book he was writing on Muhammad. The newspaper pointed out “that the drawings illustrated an article on the self-censorship which rules large parts of the Western world. Our right to say, write, photograph and draw what we want to within the framework of the law exists and must endure – unconditionally!”
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Something fishy in Denmark

Denmark in Troubled Waters.

I am waiting to read reports of people rioting in India any day now. A bunch of innocents will get killed. An already poor India will slide epsilon-degree closer to chaos.

The Indian Economy Blog

For a multi-faceted view of matters related to the Indian economy, I recommend the aptly named Indian Economy Blog. It is a group blog and the contributors are well-known and well worth reading. I am listed as a regular contributor but I am afraid that I have not contributed much regularly. I intend to rectify that error shortly.

IEB is brought to you by:
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Back on the Road to Bondage

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.

Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813), Scottish jurist and historian, professor of Universal History at Edinburgh University.

An NRI MP from Andhra Pradesh

Along the lines of my earlier post on new political parties, here is another item from the news related to Indian politics regarding an NRI member of the Indian parliament from the Toronto Star. (Hat tip: Reuben Abraham.)

The man, Madhu Yaskhi, moonlights as an MP for the Congress Party and his day job is being an immigration lawyer in Manhattan.
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