Greetings from San Jose, CA. I am back and ready to get cracking. I have not been writing much of late (how’s that for an understatement) but the little grey cells have been busy. My colleague Rajesh Jain asked me to write an opinion piece on the Wharton India Economic Forum fiasco and I said, “I don’t have anything to add but if you say so, I will drag my lazy knuckles across the keyboard.” So I went over to twitter and wrote a few tweets (follow me @atanudey) about how I felt about Modi being un-invited. Then I wrote a piece that I sent to NitiCentral. They published it. I am pleased to report that the twitterati liked what I wrote. So alright, you should go read my opinion piece — Modi Kicked the Hornet’s Nest — at NitiCentral.com. I append the piece below the fold here, for the record.
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Category: People
Narendrabhai Modi — What’s Next
Narendrabhai Modi won for the third consecutive time the Gujarat State assembly elections. Like in the earnings report of a corporation that analysts expect to be the outcome, the market already incorporates into its calculations the results and therefore it does not alter the stock prices, the outcome of the Gujarat elections don’t throw up any surprises. When there are no surprises, there’s little of interest. But what’s going to happen next is an interesting question because there will be surprises.
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Hello Dolly
Yesterday at noon while driving to Mountain View to have lunch with a friend, I caught Dolly Parton on the radio. She was in conversation with Neal Conan, the host of Talk of the Nation on NPR (National Public Radio.) TotN is usually a delight to listen to but yesterday’s bit with Dolly was special. One gets the warm and fuzzies just listening to her talk. There’s something heartwarmingly genuine about her.
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“The immoral use of force is the source of man’s political problems.”
{This piece was published at NitiCentral.com last week.}
Ron Paul is retiring after serving in the US Congress for 23 years over a 36 year period. There’s a striking line in his farewell speech he gave on Nov 14th to the US Congress. “The immoral use of force is the source of man’s political problems.” It strikes me as the crux of practically all of humanity’s problems, not just political problems. All the manifest problems that we collectively face involve the immoral use of force or coercion. Look and you will find what lies beneath any problem is clearly an instance of someone or some organization using force to take what is not given freely.
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Spreading the Message about Maino aka Sonia Gandhi
Spotted on the (information) highway. For those of you who don’t read Hindi, it reads (not a literal translation) “Sonia Gandhi, you are a disgrace & a shame.” Someone inform Diggy Raja. 
Happy Gandhi Jayanti
Shri Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as the “mahatma,” was born on this day October 2nd in 1869. Popular opinion associates Gandhi with non-violence. I differ. I believe that poverty engenders more violence against innocent humans than any other single cause or condition. Perhaps he genuinely was against violence but what Gandhi achieved resulted in unimaginable violence.
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Word: Pat Condell to Rioting Muslims
Pat Condell is a special kind of commentator — the kind that have the cojones to speak truth to evil. Here’s Condell on how sick we’ve all become of the Perpetually Offended Ones. (Video below the fold.)
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May Shri Modi Live Long and Prosper
An impartial observer, a Vulcan perhaps with some contextual background information on India, would surely note one striking fact about the Indian political scene from what gets generally reported in the main stream media. That fact is the near universal fear and loathing that one man evokes in a particular group of people. Upon closer inspection, the Vulcan will further notice that although the said group is heterogeneous in many respects, they all have one thing in common. Reflecting further on an easily observable set of other facts, the Vulcan will be forced to a conclusion which forms the subject of this brief piece.
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Learning from the web: The Sagan Series
I can never stop marveling at the wonder that the great big classroom in the skies, the WWW, is. Take a bunch of computers, link them up with high speed communications link, create standards and protocols, and let people do what they feel like doing with it — then watch as magic happens. Sure a lot of serious stuff happens on the web — from commerce to scientific research — but I think that the more interesting thing is that it allows people to play. It is the world’s biggest playground.
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Keith Hudson: On a smarter keyboard
This is a guest post by my friend Keith Hudson. It is not really related to India’s economic development. Below the fold is a simple idea that Apple or any other computer hardware manufacturer may find useful. This post is to help put the idea in the public domain, for the record.
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Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 