Category: Random Draws

Used to be that once upon a time, India had leaders who had a backbone and could shoulder responsibility without buckling. Thus have I heard that one man, Lal Bahadur Shastri, resigned as the railways minister following a train accident in which scores of people died.
Continue reading “The Louder She Talked of Her Honor, the Faster We Counted Our Spoons”

Folklore says that things come in threes. Prof John McCarthy, Stanford University, passed away on the 24th of this month. Before that, we said goodbye to Dennis Ritchie. He was found dead on Oct 12th. Steve Jobs died on Oct 5th. It’s been not a very good month for people related to computers and computer science.
Continue reading “Goodbye, John McCarthy”

I suppose I owe my readers (all three of them) an apology for not posting to this blog. But all that is going to change, as of this very moment. Once you know what I am up to, you will understand the reason for my uncharacteristic lack of communications. I have been wandering around the country.
Continue reading “Development and Governance”

I am certain that Monty Python, the guys who can parody anything under the sun, would be totally incapable of parodying the recent ad by the Pakistani government. Onion News Network will find it impossible to ridicule the attempt at fixing Pakistan’s image. You cannot ridicule the ridiculous, parody a parody. Pakistan’s ad in the Wall Street Journal is a self-parody. One marvels at the people who came up with the idea. They must be the most humorless bunch of retards in the world. But first, here is the ad in question, for the record.
Continue reading “Diggy Singh is an RSS Mole”

As some of you may have noticed, I have been away. That is why this blog has been dormant. Oh I have not been physically absent. I was only mentally away, taking a break to learn some economics. I was teaching a couple of courses for the Summer term at UC Berkeley. I am sure that teaching is the most rigorous and effective way to learn something. It is impossible to teach the fundamentals without coming away with a renewed appreciation and understanding of what really matters. What did I re-learn this time around? Lots of very interesting stuff, but one thing stands out.
Continue reading “The Three-ring Anti-corruption Circus in in Town”

“What do you think of Indian independence?” Continue reading “Happy Independence Day, India”

This is the weekend edition — a round up of things that have caught my eye over the week. As it happens, there appears to be a theme: how the powerful have fallen. Three tales about three entities — two people and one firm — tell about their descent from rarefied heights to close to the mean sea level. They are about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Rajat Gupta, and Infosys.
Continue reading “Weekend Edition: They Fell From Grace”

I have been usually busy of late. I am teaching two courses this Summer at UC Berkeley. They are upper-level undergraduate courses. One is “Econ 171 Economic Development” and the other is “Econ 121 Industrial Organization.” Both very interesting and fascinating but take up a lot of time. I stand and deliver 8 lectures a week! That’s 12 hours of talking!! Even I get tired by the afternoon of Thursday and for once, I have started looking forward to weekends. Anyway, I have not had much time to do any serious work. So here’s a post hauled from the archives which I liked reading. It is from Nov 2007. Let’s see how “Quo Vadis, Pakistan” has held up.

Today is the anniversary of “The Emergency“. Mrs Indira Gandhi, daughter of Mr Jawaharlal Nehru, became India’s dictator, and Indians once again became political slaves — a mere 28 years after India’s political independence from Britain. It appears Indians don’t really mind slavery much.
Continue reading “June 25, 1975 — The Day Mrs G showed her true colors”