Category: About

The Indian mission to Mars is a Waste

Countries, as much as individuals, have to allocate limited resources rationally. Even those tasks that have net benefits have to be considered in relation to the net benefits of other tasks that could instead have been done — the simple idea of opportunity costs explored in the previous post, “The Importance of Prioritizing and Sequenceing.” In the following I argue why India’s mission to Mars is a waste of valuable resources.
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The importance of Prioritizing and Sequencing

Our successes and failures are a consequence of the choices we make, individually and collectively. Consistently good choices made over extended periods of time lead to success, barring any unfortunate and unanticipated circumstances. I explored that idea in a recent column at Niti Central. Here it is, for the record.
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Making India Clean

This is a follow up to my previous post (“A Tale of Trash“). This was published on Niti Central Oct 22nd.

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A Tale of Trash

One of the most enduring impressions that visitors to India carry away with them is that Indian cities are littered with trash. This is really unfortunate since trash is something that each of us can do something about and the problem is not as intractable as the big ticket problems that require collective action such as roads, power and public transportation. I recently wrote a piece for NitiCentral.com which I reproduce below, for the record.
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Hello from the Big Apple

Last evening I came to visit my dear friends, Urvashi and Anuj Tiku. Today I woke up in the city that doesn’t sleep and found that I’m king of the hill, top of the heap. Those little town blues melted away, and I made a brand new start of it in ol’ New York . . .

I am looking forward to a dinner with another friend, Mitra Kalita, later today. Now let’s listen to Frank Sinatra sing the 1980 hit song, “New York, New York.”

Celebrating 2,000,000 Visits to this Blog!!

The sitemeter counter on this blog (see right hand side column) is creeping up to the 2 million number. Right now at 8:15 PM IST it is this:
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The Unbearable Collective Stupidity of the Masses

It’s all karma, neh?

I usually use that line as a sign off to some of my posts. But this time I lead with it because — well, let me come to that. Karma is a Sanskrit word whose meaning is difficult to convey precisely but the two (of the many) important facets of the word are salient in this context. First is karma as action, and the second the consequence of action. This bears repetition: the same word refers to action as well as the consequences of action. This is by no means accidental.
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The Internet as the Great Truth-seeking Machine

rashomon Rashomon

After I watched the movie Argo, I had a one of those Rashomon moments, a realization that there is more to the story than was related to you. You may recall Rashomon (1950) introduced the master movie director Akira Kurosawa to the wider world. Set in medieval Japan, it is the story of the rape of a woman and subsequent mutually inconsistent accounts told about the incident by various eye-witnesses. According to Kurosawa, there are no particular truths, no definitive version of what actually happened at a particular time and place. What is recalled and later told depends on the observer and the particular vantage point.
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The Case Against Government Compensation of Crime Victims

Money does grow on trees. Quite a bit of it is printed on stuff that is grown — wood cellulose & cotton. But money is not wealth. It is easy to confuse money with wealth but they are not the same. Governments create fiat money but that does not mean that governments create wealth. People through their effort create wealth. The government merely takes some of that wealth and uses it for various purposes, only some of which are defensible and some are not.

Today I read that the Bengal government is going to spend Rs 500 crores to compensate the victims of a chit-fund scam. The chit-fund scam is a crime but I believe it is also criminal to use public money to compensate the victims of fraud. I have argued against the use of public funds even in cases involving victims of accidents and crimes such as rape. I wrote the following for Quartz (March 13th, 2013).
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