Category: Development

Inclusive Growth Discussion

Where is India today? How did it get here? Where should India be going? And how should it get there? These are the big questions that I try to grapple with. And that is how I began my presentation.

Indian School of Business ISB at night [source]

Recently I was on a panel discussion titled “Business Strategies for Inclusive Economic Growth” held during the semi-final round of the Global Social Venture Competition at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad on the 9th and 10th of March. The panel–moderated by my friend Dr Reuben Abraham–included Mr Varun Sahni of Acumen Fund, Mr K Krishan of Malavalli Power Plant Pvt Ltd, and Arjun Uppal of the IFMR Trust.
Continue reading “Inclusive Growth Discussion”

India, the Lamb State

Don’t know much about history. Thanks to the government control of education, we are not told inconvenient truths. Fortunately, in this day of free information flow, one is slowly getting wise. I think it is just a matter of time before Indians figure out the truth. I find it bitter irony that India’s national motto is “Satyameva Jayate” — Truth Alone Prevails — and the powers that be do all they can to delay the victory of truth.

Continue reading “India, the Lamb State”

Governance Cafe Baghdadi Style

Cafe Baghdadi is a little hole in the wall restaurant in Colaba, Mumbai, just around the corner from Regal Theatre and next to the famous street restaurant Bade Miya. Baghdadi’s fried chicken would beat KFC’s chicken any day of the week, by the way. That chicken is good. What tickles me at Baghdadi is a sign which lists a set of rules for its patrons. The list is long and fairly detailed. It says, for instance, that “Customers are not allowed to argue with the waiters,” and that “Alcohol is forbidden.” The list tells you in no uncertain terms what you, the customer, are allowed to do, how you are to behave, and so on. Basically it puts you in your place and tells you who is the boss.
Continue reading “Governance Cafe Baghdadi Style”

Minds Without Fear

The Atlantic Monthly recently published a list of The Top 100 most influential Americans. Arguably, many on that list would also make it into a list called “The Top 100 Most Influential People” as well. Indeed, the modern world is defined and shaped by many on that Atlantic Monthly list. It is remarkable how much the world of today (both good and bad) owes to those who were, and are, Americans. In every broad area of human endeavor—science, technology, politics, economics, law, medicine, education, literature, architecture—Americans have made seminal contributions.
Continue reading “Minds Without Fear”

Zen and the Art of Development

I was asked recently to ask a quotable question. My facetious response was that I only ask quotable questions. But I did consider the request seriously for a bit, and among the numerous questions that I wish people would ask themselves, I selected one that I think is particularly worthy in the context of development and economic growth. The question is this—and you may quote me freely—is there any instance of a technological development that was specifically created for the poor? The same question in the policy arena would translate into: is there any instance of a policy which was ostensibly pro-poor which actually helped the poor?
Continue reading “Zen and the Art of Development”

Liberalize the Indian Education Sector

This is a true story. The faculty member involved emailed me yesterday. Scene: an IIT professor interviewing a potential candidate for PhD in a technical subject.
Continue reading “Liberalize the Indian Education Sector”

Gordon Dryden on India

New Zealand author Dr. Gordon Dryden, who showed me around his home-country last year (mentioned before here and here), breezed into India last month, and a week later flew out “head filled with a haze of contraditions”:

Air travel: Horrified at the Air India trip from Hong Kong to New Delhi (“Do they really have to spend several minutes, first up, showing what not to push bottles down the toilet? Have they not heard of the power of negative suggestions? Possibly my worst flight since the Soviet Aeroflot slog from Moscow to Tokyo in 1970.”) But thrilled at the Jet Airways flight from Delhi to Pune (“Great airline; beaut service.”)
Continue reading “Gordon Dryden on India”

Ideas on the Road to Development

Last Thursday I hitched a ride from Pune to Mumbai in a friend’s car. Don’t be dismayed; this is not one of those personal blog posts “What I had for breakfast last week Thursday” types.

We set off bright and early in Nitin’s Mahindra Scorpio, a largish SUV-type car. The car is alright on a well-paved road but you get bounced around like crazy on badly paved pot-holed roads, especially if you elected to ride in the back seat like I did. For nearly 200 kms, we bounced along with only minor stretches of adequately-paved level road. Around half of the journey was on what is called the Pune-Mumbai “expressway.” You can maintain speeds of up to 120 kmph on that stretch, except for those bits that wind through the mountainous Western Ghats around Lonavla.
Continue reading “Ideas on the Road to Development”

Thundering Airlines

The mother of all thunderstorms is roaring outside the window as I write this from Kolkata. I got here last night from Pune after a brief stop-over in Mumbai.

The sky was ominously dark this morning and now it is pouring so hard that visibility is reduced to less than 100 feet. The thunder and lightening is almost continuous. There is something deep inside which rejoices in beholding the awesome power of nature. There must be something atavistic in this reaction, a genetically programmed response to life-giving rain.
Continue reading “Thundering Airlines”

Mind the Gap

wwww

I do believe that the world wide web is one of the greatest instruments ever for comprehending the world. What makes it so powerful? The tens of thousands of wonderful things you can find there. It should be called wwww — wonderful world wide web.

Visualizing Data

Wandering around the wwww, I came across Ola Rosling’s presentation at Google on March 7, 2006. It is a Google video and the presentation is nearly 70 minutes long. Although the entire presentation is worth watching, in a few minutes you get a pretty good idea of what it is all about. Then you could move on to the Gapminder.org site.

“Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development. This is done in collaboration with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations.”

When you get there, first thing to do is to check out the Human Development Trend 2005 presentation. Ola Rosling’s video uses this presentation. You can download the presentation. There is a truckload of interesting stuff on that page. For example, I downloaded the “World Education Chart 2003” It is fascinating to play the shockwave flash presentation and see the data dynamically presented.

For the last couple of hours I have been learning from that site and I am sure that you will not find it a waste of your time.

Don’t miss this Google tool for Gapminder. Guaranteed to fascinate.

[Hat tip: Jaya Kumar for the Gapminder link.]