Category: About

Mumbai, Delhi, Patna

If you have been wondering whatever happened to yours truly, wonder no more. The last few days I have been in Mumbai, attending the Sun Technovate ’07 — “INDIA — the Next Big Idea.” Got a chance to see Scott McNealy, chairman and co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Scott and three others students at Stanford University, including our very own Vinod Khosla, started Sun. (SUN — Stanford University Network!)
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Lee Kuan Yew

I came across this site lee-kuan-yew.com which appears to be a portal with information on Lee Kuan Yew, his speeches and his writings. I am pretty pleased that right up there is a link to one of my favorite series of posts on this blog: Lee Kuan Yew on India. Read it but be warned that it is a bit long and it is not a pretty picture. But then, when it comes to what I write about, it ain’t pretty anyway.

Information Overload

One of my favorite obsessions is information. Naturally so considering that I am an economist, and markets and information are inseparable. Information is the lubricant that keeps the huge big machinery of the market humming. Which is of course why information and communications technology (ICT) is so critical today as the modern world is a huge marketplace where stuff gets exchanged. Globalization (which I define as the integration of markets on a global scale) and the explosion of ICT are conjoined twins.
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India Cannot Afford Villages

“Can India Afford its Villages?” is the title of an opinion piece in today’s livemint.com (a joint HT and WSJ newspaper). The subtext says, “The answer to the problems of our rural economy paradoxically lies in urban development.” If you have been reading this blog for a bit, you would immediately suspect that I wrote that piece. Partly so. I co-authored the piece with Reuben Abraham.

Comment Policy

Comments on this blog are not moderated. But abusive comments are out of bounds as they are not part of civilized discourse. I regret that I will, in the extreme case, ban anyone from commenting if he or she repeatedly demonstrates that he or she is incapable of disagreeing without being disagreeable.

Wireless Broadband in Singapore

Singapore gets it. I am at the Funan Center, a shopping center, for lunch. Besides lunch, I also get to check mail on the wireless broadband provided gratis by the city. I flipped open my laptop, connected to wireless@sg and here I am blogging away.

The availability of public goods increases the utility of private goods. It is also true that one has to sometimes compensate for the lack of public goods by a greater investment in private goods. Places like Singapore are to some extent rich because the efficiency of private goods is high because public goods are efficiently and optimally provided.

This place is good.

Hi from Singapore

Hi from Singaore, one of my favorite cities. I am writing this from the Overseas Family School (OFS) during a break in my meeting with David Perry, the man who founded OFS.

Ah, yes, the weather. The regular afternoon downpour occurred on schedule around 3:30 PM. It rained cats and dogs. David says that these days they have monsoons round the year. Climate change is definitely evident in Singapore. We did not get into whether it is anthropogenic climate change or not.

What I like about Singapore is that the city is neat and clean. Some say that it is sterile. Maybe so. But I would take sterile over disease any day of the week. Of course, fertile trumps sterile. I am convinced that there is a way to get to fertile from sterile. I think that the transition from disease to fertile has to go through the sterile phase. Cleaning up is not a very attractive job but at some point one has to do it.

Laters.

Visiting Singapore

I am going to be in Singapore next week for a few days on work. Arrive Singapore Monday 9th early morning and leave on the evening of 12th.

I have given instructions to the monkeys with typewriters in the basement to carry on with their random typing as always. Sufficient bananas and peanuts has also been stocked. So I don’t think there will be any disruption in the output of this blog. You may have noticed that of late, the output of the monkeys has gone up. That is because better management techniques have been instituted in the basement. Think more frequent whipping.