The description of this video says, “The whole world was watching for the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States: Donald J. Trump. Because we realize it’s better for us to get along, we decided to introduce our tiny country to him. In a way that will probably appeal to him the most.” Hilarious.
Now that the humor and silliness is done, it’s time to get serious. What’s on your mind?
Lee Kuan Yew was what I consider a good human being. He had not just brains and guts, he had a heart. Here’s one side of him that is funny and warm.
We have to admit that India’s education system gets an F grade. India does not feature in any of the world rankings of universities. Sure there is a lot of hype about the IITs but aside from the delusions of the seriously uninformed, the IITs don’t add up to a hill of beans. I have been writing about IITs on this blog for a over a decade. Here’s one — IITs are not what they are cracked up to be, which is likely to stick in the craw of many IITians.
If India’s education system, including higher education, is so poor then how is it that it is one of the fastest growing large economy?
Continue reading “Why does India grow so fast if its education system is so poor?”
Victor Davis Hanson, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford University, wrote a long piece for the Winter 2017 issue of City Journal magazine titled “Trump and the American Divide.” I find reading a well-written, thoughtful long piece in a magazine more interesting and informative than a few dozen breathlessly written newspapers short pieces. Good long pieces take time to write and are usually written a reasonable interval after the event(s), which allows both the writer and the reader a wider perspective. Continue reading “Hanson’s essay on “Trump and the American Divide””
“A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings. To stress this point is the task of economics as it is the task of biology and chemistry to teach that potassium cyanide is not a nutriment but a deadly poison.”
Source: Human Action. Ludwig von Mises. Yale University Press. 1949, 1998, 2010
Pondering the fact of death, I am reminded that impermanence is a central feature of the world we live in. The phenomenal world — of things and events — is called maya in the dharmic traditions (namely Jain, Hindu, Buddhist & Sikh.)
The world is maya. Many people simply translate it as “ the world is an illusion” but that is incorrect. The world is real. Maya does not mean that the world is unreal or that it is an illusion. It means something like this: the world as we perceive it is not what the world actually is. We cannot directly perceive the reality that is at the foundation of what exists. That reality is given a word — Brahman. Most of us cannot comprehend the Brahman because we are limited beings. Continue reading “Maya, Moksha, Nama and Rupa”
I am a Hindu.In what sense am I a Hindu? Does what I read, write, wear and consume make me a Hindu? I think, read and write in English, I wear Western style clothing, I live in a Western country, etc. Even then I am a Hindu at the core of my being.
What defines me as a Hindu is my core belief system. How I comprehend the world is what determines whether I am a Hindu or not. The important distinction here is between “material beliefs” and “cosmological beliefs.” Continue reading “Material and Cosmological Beliefs”
The idea of “empowering” people was all the rage a few years ago. The answer to all of India’s woes, it seems, lay in empowering people, whatever that meant. I thought it was basically stupid. Why? Because people who are not free in any meaningful sense of the word cannot be empowered. Here’s what I wrote back in October 2005 on what is an “Ownership Society.” Brief excerpt follows: Continue reading “The Ownership Society — Revisited”
The word nepotism and the name Narendra Modi do not belong in the same sentence. Just read this piece The Other Modis (Dec 29, 2017 2016) in the IndiaToday magazine.
While the story is very interesting and it does show up as a shining exception to the pervasive nepotism of politicians, I am not too touched by the neglect of one’s family. Family and friends matter because they are our support and our inspiration. Certainly, nepotism is bad but not caring deeply about one’s flesh and blood is not a virtue.
Continue reading “Nepotism and Modi”
Money is important. The real economy cannot function without a stable and predictable currency. Money serves as a numéraire, which the wiki defines as “a basic standard by which value is computed . . . the numéraire is one of the functions of money, to serve as a unit of account: to provide a common benchmark relative to which the worth of various goods and services are measured.”
These days, nearly all money is fiat money issued by the central bank of an economy which is controlled (indirectly perhaps) by the government. The quantity, and therefore the “price” of money (which is the interest rate), is controlled by the central bank. Continue reading “Ask Me Anything — The Demonetization Edition”
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 