Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

The Spurious Pain of Rural Area Development

The story goes that a man goes to a Chinese acupuncturist for treating his headache. The doctor examines the man thoroughly and then starts to stick needles into the patient’s forearm. “Doctor,” the patient complains, “I have a headache. Why are you concentrating on my arm?” The doctor smiles and says, “See arm, see head. See! they are connected!”

Simple story but has a great deal of wisdom. The body is a unity and when one bit hurts, it is a signal that there is something wrong with the system. The pain may be localized but that does not necessarily mean that the cause of the pain is in the same location. In fact, it may even be that treating the pain will merely mask the symptom and not address the deeper cause. Superficial treatments could make things a lot worse because resources may be misdirected and precious time would be lost. In any sufficiently complex system, a holistic approach is a must for diagnosing and treatment of problems.

A personal anecdote. A friend’s wife who was in her late 20’s suddenly started having severe backache. They spent several months going to doctors who concentrated on the muscular-skeletal system and various chiropractors treated her. But unfortunately the back-pain was in fact just a symptom of kidney cancer. By the time they diagnosed that, it was rather too late.

An economy, much like the human body, is a complex system with various interconnected bits and dependencies, both internal and external. A holistic approach to the diagnosis and treatment of underdevelopment of economies is absolutely essential. Any competent development economist realizes the above of course. The catch is that to operationalize that insight is a non-trivial task. Furthermore, while the basic diagnosis and the treatment can be articulated by economists, the implementation (at least in a major part) involves politics, culture, and other such areas that are even more messy than economics.

The point to remember is that the problem we are addressing is not simple and simplistic solutions, however politically feasible, may be inadequate. One of the greatest dangers is posed by an incomplete understanding of the real problem. I call it the “Spurious Pain” problem. The so-called “Digital Divide” is one such. Among the more brain-damaged solutions to that spurious pain: PCs in every village. (I have written about this elsewhere in this blog.) Another example: farmers cannot pay for electricity. Solution to that spurious pain: free electricity for farmers.

The matter with spurious pain solutions is that instead of solving the problem, it actually accentuates the causes of the problem and one is faced with a bigger problem down the road than the one that one started off with.

Now on to the larger matter at hand. India’s development engages a lot of attention. India’s development is predicated—correctly, in my considered opinion—on rural development because around 70 percent of Indians live in rural areas. The first impulse, therefore, is to conclude that for India to develop, rural areas must be developed. For the moment, let us set aside the issue as to what exactly do we mean by “development.” Let us assume that meaning of “development” is common knowledge, knowing full well that it needs to be rigorously defined if we are serious about solving the problem of development.

The question I would like to explore here is this: Is rural development the same as development of rural areas, or is it development of the people who live in rural areas? My contention first is that the two are not the same. The solution to rural underdevelopment (and consequently to the development of the entire economy) would depend on that distinction. Second, I contend that, under certain conditions which exist in India, development of the rural areas may not be feasible at all. I argue that we should be addressing ourselves to the development of rural people, and not rural areas. In fact, I submit that it is the misplaced emphasis on the development of rural areas which is posing an impediment to India’s economic growth.
{Continued here.}

The IndiBloggies 2004

The IndiBloggies 2004 voting is under way. Some well-meaning person nominated this blog in the category Best Indiblog. I kid you not. So if you are one of the half a dozen readers of these ramblings, and if you have nothing better to do, do hop on over there and vote for some of the excellent blogs listed. Vote early and vote often, as they say. I would have surely won the award if I had Bush’s team of Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney and gang to fix the votes for me. But then I don’t and so I won’t. Pity really. It would have loooked good on my resume. Not that it would have made much of a difference to my resume. It is so pathetic that only a couple of Nobel Prizes would give it sufficient credibility for me to get a decent job. But as the man replied when he was asked by the judge why he mugged his own grandmother for a dollar, and he replied, “Your honor, every buck helps”, I too say, my resume needs all the help it can get.

Learning How to Think, to Fast, and to Wait

When Kamala, the courtesan in Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha asked the young brahmin ascetic what skills he had, he replied that he has learnt “how to think, how to wait, and how to fast.” To my mind, that is a complete education. Being able to fast is the ability to live on a limited amount. Freedom is inversely proportional to the external resources one needs to survive. One is free only to the extent that one does not depend on resources external to oneself. Continue reading “Learning How to Think, to Fast, and to Wait”

Where it is folly to be wise …


Calvin: It’s true, Hobbes. Ignorance is bliss.


Once you know things, you start seeing problems everywhere…

And once you see problems, you feel like you ought to try to fix them…

And fixing problems always seems to require personal change…

And change means doing things that aren’t fun! I say phooey to that!

But if you are willfully stupid, you don’t know any better, so you
can keep doing whatever you like!


The secret of happiness is short-term, stupid self-interest!


Hobbes: We’re heading for that cliff!


Calvin: I don’t want to know about it.


[They go over a cliff and land in a heap at the bottom.]


Hobbes: I’m not sure I can stand so much bliss.


Calvin: Careful! We don’t want to learn anything from this.

from the incomparable comic strip
Calvin and Hobbes

Forever Trembling on the Brink (Of Numbers)

The extent of the damage and loss of life due to the tsunami has now become clear. Soumen Chakrabarti emailed me and wrote:

You recently wrote:

That is why I claim that natural disasters like the recent tsunami cannot hold a candle to the destructive power of humans.

I did a little arithmetic that adds support to your statement from unexpected quarters. This sounds very insensitive but is not really so. Each and every person destroyed by the tsunami is irreplaceable. I was trying to comprehend the enormity of the destruction through comparative numbers, when I was struck by a yet more stupendous scale that boggled the mind.
Continue reading “Forever Trembling on the Brink (Of Numbers)”

Our Commitment to Immaturity, Mendacity and Profound Gullibility

I admire John Kenneth Galbraith for the clarity of his thinking and the quality of his prose. The greatest compliment I have ever received was when Irma Adelman told me that I reminded her of John Kenneth because like him I was an old world liberal.

Here, for the record, is a quote from JKG’s book Economics, Peace and Laughter:

In a well-to-do community we cannot be much concerned over what people are persuaded to buy. The marginal utility of money is low; were it otherwise, people would not be open to persuasion. The more serious conflict is with truth and aesthetics. There is little that can be said about most economic goods. A toothbrush does little but clean teeth. Alcohol is important mostly for making people more or less drunk. An automobile can take one reliably to a destination and back, and its further features are of small consequence as compared with the traffic encountered. There being so little to be said, much must be invented. Social distinction must be associated with a house or a swimming pool, sexual fulfillment with a particular shape of automobile, social acceptance with a hair oil or mouthwash, improved health with a hand lotion or, at best, a purgative. We live surrounded by a systematic appeal to a dream world which all mature, scientific reality would reject. We, quite literally, advertise our commitment to immaturity, mendacity and profound gullibility. It is the hallmark of the culture. And it is justified as being economically indispensable.

Re-inventing Education — Part 3 (From Teaching-centric to Learning-centric Education)

Our present education system is teacher-centric. It is easy to understand why it is so if you consider that it has historically been very expensive to gain and transmit knowledge. Information — the foundation upon which knowledge rests –was in limited supply. A teacher, together with a limited set of books, was the knowledge base which anchored the education process. The teacher was the active agent, communicating information to the students, the passive receptors of information. Learning by rote was the method most favored because the information was largely disjointed and the student was not really quite sure what the motivation behind knowing all those disparate facts was. Continue reading “Re-inventing Education — Part 3 (From Teaching-centric to Learning-centric Education)”

An Entirely Avoidable Great Tragedy

I am outraged. Yes, I not so much saddened as I am outraged.

It is a great tragedy. So many lives needlessly wasted. So many children dead, so many more with little hope of a decent human existence. Millions homeless without proper water, food, healthcare and education. Entirely preventable because we have the technology and the resources to avoid all this suffering and death. In the end it comes down to human frailty–greed, short-sightedness, ignorance, the lust for power.

And then there was an incident on Sunday when an earthquake unleashed a tsunami in the Indian Ocean and killed about 50 thousand, give or take 10 thousand. It is getting a lot of press and appeals for help on the internet are beginning to rival the pedelers of Viagra in the volume of email and the urgency of their appeal.
Continue reading “An Entirely Avoidable Great Tragedy”

Hopelessly Disorganized Immensely Selfish Mobs?

What do we want in India? If foreigners want these things, we want them twenty times more. Because…in spite of our boasted ancestry of sages, compared to many other races, I must tell you that we are weak, very weak. First of all is our physical weakness. That physical weakness is the cause of at least one-third of our miseries. We are lazy, we cannot work; we cannot combine, we do not love each other; we are intensely selfish, not three of us can come together without hating each other, without being jealous of each other. That is the state in which we are — hopelessly disorganized mobs, immensely selfish, fighting each other for centuries as to whether a certain mark is to be put on our forehead this way or that way, writing volumes and volumes upon such momentous questions as to whether the look of a man spoils my food or not! This we have been doing for the past few centuries. We cannot expect anything high from a race whose whole brain energy has been occupied in such wonderfully beautiful problems and researches!

And are we not ashamed of ourselves? Ay, sometimes we are; but though we think these things frivolous, we cannot give them up. We speak of many things parrot-like, but never do them; speaking and not doing has become a habit with us. What is the cause of that? Physical weakness. This sort of weak brain is not able to do anything; we must strengthen it.

First of all, our young men must be strong… You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the mighty genius and the mighty strength of Krishna better with a little strong blood in you. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet, and you feel yourselves as men.

I am deliberately leaving the quote above anonymous. Who is this guy who speaks of Indians being weaklings, physically and mentally? This passage was pointed out to me by a visiting friend. (The book is in my library and like scores of others sitting there, I have all sorts of good intentions about reading them but never seem to find the time.)

Gratuitous fault-finding is silly. Looking unflinchingly at reality, on the other hand, is absolutely required if you want to have any hope of solving the problem. This I believe is the first mistake that we make in India. The Mera Bharat Mahan attitude will ensure continued poverty and irrelevancy.

We are an underdeveloped poverty-ridden over-populated nation of over a billion people. Does anyone ever ask the question: Why is India the way it is? No. If we cannot ask this question because the answers may be unpleasant, I don’t see much hope for India. If we do not ask this question and answer it honestly, we may continue to blunder as we have done at least since independence 57 years ago under the flawed policies of the Nehruvian socialism and cargo-cult democracy.

When was the last time you ever heard of a conference where serious people with lots of knowledge and understanding got together to examine that question? Here is a suggestion for the movers and shakers of the great nation of India: commission a series of lectures by accomplished sociologists, economists, historians, philosophers, etc, which will examine the causes of India’s failures and what can be done to fix them. That lecture series can form a good counterpoint to the over-optimistic, rose-colored glasses-wearing, rocket-weilding India-superpower shouting, pyramid-power cult-worshipping, internet-surfing digital village hyping craziness so much in vogue.

PS: So who do you think is the author of the opening extended quote? Fabulous prizes for the correct answer. Please don’t cheat by using google.

Choosing between WCs and PCs

Conferences can be terribly boring affairs. But for real tedium, you cannot beat a conference on ICT and development. So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I ended up in Bhopal a few days ago to attend one. All I had to look forward to was an endless series of talks on how ICT will totally transform everything and finally deliver the holy grail of development to the billions who are pathetically underdeveloped.
Continue reading “Choosing between WCs and PCs”