If you have been following this blog for a bit, you would have noticed that I lay quite a bit of stress on the population problem which I believe underlies much of India’s present problems and I argue that unless that problem is addressed, India may never be able to become a developed nation.
Continue reading “The Art of Living”
Author: Atanu Dey
Economist.
The Cupidity of the Indian Government
Yesterday’s post about the government’s anti-Midas touch concluded with the question of what explains the sordid performance of practically anything undertaken by the government. I believe that the answer has to do with what is called the objective function of the government.
Loosely defined, an objective function embodies the goal of an economic agent and which the economic agent attempts to optimize in some sense. So for a commercial enterprise, the objective function could be to maximize market share, or it could be to maximize profits. For a consumer, it could be to maximize utility. For a government, it could be to maximize social welfare, or to minimize unemployment, etc. The objective function for a central bank could be to keep inflation below a specified value while maintaining adequate liquidity in the money markets, etc.
Continue reading “The Cupidity of the Indian Government”
The Government’s Anti-Midas Touch
Continuing on where I left off the last time time, let’s once again quote Mr Bardhan:
In a state like Delhi, for instance, can any private power distributor without an established work force be able to carry out electrification?
The answer to that is of course no. No distributor, private or public, can carry out electrification without an established workforce. But if that question was intended to demonstrate that only the government can have an established workforce, that is patently false. One doesn’t quite know where to begin in trying to point out how ridiculous that contention is. It is empirically false, not just theoretically false.
Continue reading “The Government’s Anti-Midas Touch”
Wrong-headed policies condemn millions to misery
Continuing from where I left off the last time, I quote again Mr A B Bardhan:
I am against privatisation of the state electricity boards. I simply do not understand the merits of the decision of setting up state regulatory commissioners even as private distributors increase costs repeatedly. In a state like Delhi, for instance, can any private power distributor without an established work force be able to carry out electrification?
I am not sure what it is about Delhi that makes it so unique in the whole universe with regards to the generation and distribution of electric power. From what Mr Bardhan says one can only conjecture that there is something astonishingly unique about Delhi that it is not subject to the usual laws of the known universe. In the rest of the universe, the generation and distribution of electrical power can be, and has been, handled quite competently by the private sector. Perhaps it is the bit about “private distributors increase costs repeatedly”.
Continue reading “Wrong-headed policies condemn millions to misery”
The Privatization of Public Sector Units
The June 2nd Business Standard carried an opinion by Mr A B Bardhan, Secretary of the Communist Party of India, on the question “Should the disinvestment ministry be scrapped?” He said,
Even Lord Keynes would not have approved of disinvestment! Even he believed that there are some areas the government should not step out of. … Disinvestment means privatizing profits and nationalizing losses…. Profit making public sector units should not be privatized for two main reasons. First, because they are major contributors for taxes, and, second, they pay huge dividends. … Selling profit-making PSUs, like Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, is akin to selling jewels to buy groceries. … I am against privatization of the state electricity boards. I simply do not understand the merits of the decision of setting up state regulatory commissioners even as private distributors increase costs repeatedly. In a state like Delhi, for instance, can any private power distributor without an established work force be able to carry out electrification? …
For the record, I have to make a disclosure first. Mr. Bardhan is a respected elder to me. So when I differ with him vehemently, I do so with the utmost respect and regard for him. With due respect, I think what he says is nonsense and nonsense of the most pernicious kind. The entire piece in the Business Standard is a study in how wrong-headed thinking carried on over an entire life-time can warp the judgment of a well-meaning and idealistic person. I don’t doubt for a moment his total commitment to the lot of workers. I am confident of his sincerity for the well-being of labor. But good intentions are far from sufficient in making things better. Let me save you from drowning, said the monkey to the fish, as he put it up on a tree.
Continue reading “The Privatization of Public Sector Units”
The lighter side of outsourcing
Some time ago, I had posted a blog entry on the logic of outsourcing which quoted Russell Roberts of BusinessWeek Online. All very serious and good. I recently came across Dave Barry’s take on outsourcing and he does not disappoint.
A Dummy Post to help out search engines__
The name of this blog is Deeshaa where there are two e’s and two a’s. The reason I point it out is that I notice that many people make the mistake of thinking it is “Deesha” and they end up either not finding this blog or not being able to reach me on email. The name ‘Deesha’ was already taken and therefore we spell deesha as Deeshaa.
This is a dummy post. This post will have the words Deesha Deeshaa Atanu Dey RISC Rajesh Jain Vinod Khosla Rural Development Population Planted Trees Suhit Anantula Vivek Padmanabhan Reuben Abraham Economics India Infrastructure Services Commons Policy Telecommunications Information Technology Communications ICT and other such words to help searchers get to this site.
All things must pass
Civilizations, like everything under the sun, have a life-cycle. They arise, they persist for a while, and then they inevitable decline and fall. Happened all the time in the past, and there is no reason to believe that it will cease to happen in the future — we are all Bayesians, after all. Continue reading “All things must pass”
Upper and Lower Mumbai: A Tale of Two Cities
Mumbai is a fascinating place. It is place where the rich and the poor live cheek to jowl, where the so-called first world, the second world and the third world co-exist in the same geographical space. In a manner, it is a microcosm which reflects the global economic condition. Continue reading “Upper and Lower Mumbai: A Tale of Two Cities”
Palliatives Considered Dangerous
Recently the Indian Postal Services have started offering a service which can be characterized as “mediated email services.” You write out a message on a piece of paper and bring it to a post office and they will transmit the information to an email address after any required translation. On the return route, they will print out an email and a postman will deliver it to the addressee who does not have direct access to email.
I subscribe to an email list where matters relating to India’s progress down the information highway is discussed. One member, Mr. S.N.Rao, wrote in response to the postal department’s scheme. I find Rao’s comments very pertinent and with his permission I quote him for the record.
I can see that this is a very useful thing to have and that it benefits large numbers of poor people who cannot afford to own computers or learn how to operate them or speak/write English.
That brings me to the frighteningly palliative nature of this kind of solution. It attempts to provide a workaround – causing the real problems to be ignored along the way. I hope I am not the only one to see the striking parallels between this solution and the “good old days” solution to illiteracy where the postman often read out incoming letters to his customers and scribed outgoing mail on their behalf!
The basic problems that need to be solved are
a. Computers and technology are still bewildering and sometimes threatening in their cost and complexity of use. The platform that is used to develop and test software is basically the same as the platform that is used as a home PC…with all the attendant disadvantages of a user interface geared for essentially production/office environments.
There are some products that make sending email simpler by providing a dedicated email station that does nothing else – but that again is a point solution. There is a sorely felt need for a home platform. Sending email/voice/photos via the internet should be at least as easy as turning on the TV and switching between Z-TV and CNN (if not as easy as switching on a light).
b. Local language support is nearly non-existent despite large cumbersome frameworks and customisation options being built into operating systems. As a result it is almost imperative that the user be comfortably familiar with English. Oh! wait – that’s only true for India and a few other countries – in Japan, the computers, UI, keyboards are all in Japanese (I think you might be even able to select between two different scripts – kanji and the more common mix of katagana and hiragana). Now wouldn’t it be nice for the old man in Alleppy if we had a computer with an interface and markings entirely in, for example – Malayalam?
Band-aids, palliatives, patches, workarounds — are dangerous when they mask underlying problems. They work in the short-run and appear to solve the problem but in the long-run, they indirectly contribute to the persistence of the problem. They often address symptoms rather than causes. I am not advocating the abandonment of band-aids. My insistence is on making sure that even as we are busy putting on band-aids, we should spare some time and effort to address underlying causes.
Computers are complex beasts because of the evolutionary pathway they have traveled. Made by techies for techies. For them to be useful for the unwashed masses (such as yours truly), they have to be transformed into easy to manage domesticated animals. Some people are working on that domestication.
The availability of computers for the masses is of course increasingly becoming a necessity. But that is far from sufficient. For us to have a reasonable shot at development, we need to have a literate population. Palliatives that mask that underlying deficiency should be considered dangerous.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 