In the February 2010 issue of Pragati I argue why India needs new livable, sustainable and well-managed cities. The text of the article appears below, for the record.
Continue reading “The Urbanization Imperative”
Category: My writing elsewhere
Pragati Aug 2009: To be Free
The August 2009 issue of Pragati is out. I have a contribution in there. My perspective is that the Indian government must stop subsidizing Muslims who go on haj, and the more general case that the government must stop meddling in private religious affairs of the citizens. The text of my article is below the fold, for the record.
Continue reading “Pragati Aug 2009: To be Free”
Pragati April 2009: Ideas for the honeymoon
This month’s Pragati is about “What the new government should do in its first 100 days.” I have a piece in there about the structural changes required in education. What else is new, you’d ask. Below the fold are the editorial comments for the issue. Please read and distribute.
Continue reading “Pragati April 2009: Ideas for the honeymoon”
On the US Financial Crisis
Richard Feynman has claimed that “it is safe to say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics.” He was serious about it because of the complexity of the subject and the counter-intuitive consequences of the theory. Sometime I think that the global financial system is also beyond comprehension. But that is not quite true. Unlike quantum mechanics, the financial system is an artifact, albeit a very complex one. Also, it is possible to understand something and yet be unable to fully control it all the time. Once in a while, it can crash. When–not if–it does crash, you figure out what broke, fix it so that it does not break again, and get on with life. It will break again later due to a different bug but it will never be entirely bug free.
As I am an economist, I am supposed to understand the financial system. Luckily, I am not that sort of economist and so I don’t feel the slightest embarrassment admitting that I don’t have much of a clue. But sometimes I think that perhaps not too many people — even those whose business it is — have a clue either. Some suspect that even the chairman of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, too is not fully clued in. Go figure.
Anyway, I wrote a piece on the meltdown of the US financial system for MailToday. Why? Because everyone and his brother is writing one. So why not I? It will be in the papers tomorrow. But you, dear reader, get to read it today!
Continue reading “On the US Financial Crisis”
On the proposed spectrum auction for 3G services
Today’s Mint has an opinion piece by yours truly which they titled “India needs a good 3G order.” I confess that I don’t know what that title means. Whatever that means, here is the full text of the piece below the fold.
Continue reading “On the proposed spectrum auction for 3G services”
Profiting from Education
My contribution to the August issue of Pragati. I am reproducing the piece here below the fold, for the record. Regulars to this blog pretty much know my position on what needs to be done on education. Still you may find something of use.
Continue reading “Profiting from Education”
Pragati Aug 2008: Should India Send Troops to Afghanistan
Urbanization and Development of India
The following is an article by me that appeared in ISB’s in-house magazine insight June 2008 issue.
There is a definite positive relationship between the size of the habitation and the productivity of the population.”
The full article is below.
Continue reading “Urbanization and Development of India”
India’s Energy Challenge
I have a piece in today’s livemint.com on India’s Energy Challenge. The money quote is this:
The advanced industrialized economies were lucky to have had their development fuelled by cheap fossil energy. Today’s developing economies have a much tougher challenge. It was a very short window of opportunity which opened just about 150 years ago and is likely to close in the next 40 years, by when the known reserves will be depleted at current levels of consumption.
All told, 200 years is a very brief interlude considering thousands of years of human civilization and hopefully hundreds of thousands of years yet to come. At some time in the distant future, they will look back and remark that the age of fossil fuel was a short inflection point, a point at which humanity passed through the bottleneck of dependency on oil from the ground. Before that point, humanity’s primary source of energy was the sun, and so it will be after that point.
The full article is below the fold. Continue reading “India’s Energy Challenge”
Big Change on a Tiny Screen
Big Change on a Tiny Screen is the title the editors of Indian Express chose for my column on the mobile phone I did for them today.
The greatest technological advancement of the modern world, after the personal computer, has to be the cell phone. The power that it gives its approximately three billion users around the world arises from its participatory nature. Consider the recent protests against the Chinese repression of Tibetans. The use of mobile phones to send pictures of the protests in Lhasa and elsewhere and regular updates of rapidly unfolding stories is power that is hard to contain.
Nothing new for the regulars of this blog. So don’t even bother.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 