Category: Random Draws

Telecommunications and Rural India

India’s telecommunications infrastructure story is remarkable in many respects. It used to be a public sector monopoly not too long ago. Waiting time was measured in years and the service was as poor as the price was high. Things changed rapidly after the sector was liberalized and the private sector was allowed to provide telephone services. As there was practically no wire-line phone system to speak of in the early 90s — around 20 million phone lines for a population close to a billion — the legacy burden was entirely missing. Cellular technology effectively allowed India to leapfrog the older twisted wire landline system. Vigorous competition brought prices that are among the cheapest in the world.
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Keith Hudson’s Lesson on the Present Crisis

I am privileged to be on Keith Hudson’s mailing list. He is an English polymath, a Renaissance Man in the strictest sense of the term. With his permission I am quoting from one of his musings on the present financial crisis. He quickly hones in on the systemic trouble at the base of the problem: that those who are in charge are incapable of comprehending the system, and the lag between the institutions of yesterday and today’s technical and scientifically advanced world.

Here, for the record, is an excerpt from Keith’s recent observations.
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The Financial Crisis According to The Long Johns

[This is a repost of a January 2008 post. Even if you have seen the video before, I am sure that you will appreciate it even more now since it rings so true.}

The other day, a BBC producer from London called me up and asked me if I would care to comment on the recent big sell-off in the Indian stock markets. I confessed that I am not fully qualified to do so but added that in all honesty that my guess would be as good as any one else’s. Still I declined. The best we can do is pull out Keynes’s “animal spirits,” which unfortunately is not amenable to rigorous scientific or economic analysis. The essential story of the stock market is well told in this cartoon.

That pretty much sums up how the stock market swings between fear and greed, the abrupt change from panic to irrational exuberance. And here are The Long Johns (John Bird and John Fortune) on turbulence in the financial markets. As one of the Johns so astutely observes, “You have to remember two things about the markets. One is, they are made up of very sharp and sophisticated people. These are the greatest brains in the world. The second thing you have to remember is that financial markets — to use the common word — are driven by sentiment.” I won’t spoil the fun for you. Just watch the video and fall off the chair laughing.

That’s why I don’t mess around in the stock market. 🙂

The Powerful Nutcase of Iran

Mr Ahmadinejad is a nut-case. Unfortunately, he is also very powerful and his nuttiness can harm a lot of people, not just Iranians. He’ll come to a sticky end, undoubtedly, but he will also lead a lot of his compatriots to misery and doom.

This is the only economy in the world – indeed possibly in world history – in which you can borrow money from the bank and then receive a higher rate of interest by depositing it in the same bank.

Mr Ahmadinejad, who says he is proud of his ignorance of economics, also seems to believe the laws of supply and demand do not apply to the Islamic republic. [BBC]

Iran has the largest combined natural gas and oil reserves in the world, and is the third largest exporter of oil. One would have expected Iran to be a wonderfully developed economy. But it isn’t. It is well recognized that natural resource wealth, if mismanaged, can be a curse rather than a boon. Add theocracy to oil and you have the makings of a powerful bomb — a suicide bomb.

Two broad generalizations. First, economic development requires good policies, not just a wealth of natural resources. That implies good leadership. Good leadership depends on a dynamic, forward-looking, and scientific culture. Second, mixing religion with affairs of state is a bad idea.

India has yet to learn those two lessons. Its economic policies continue to be socialistic — meaning, it is static, regressive, and harmful. This is understandable as the policy makers are neither smart nor good. Most disastrously, the Congress led UPA government is mixing theology with state policy. It sits in judgment and privileges one religion over another.

I look at Iran and just hope that India does not go that way.

Pictures from India

Here’s a collection of scenes from India at The Big Picture from bostom.com. (Thanks to Raja Sekhar for the link.)

There are 34 pictures in all there. I chose to include a small version of a picture of Durga idols being made because today is Maha-Ashtami — the 8th day of Durga Puja. In two days, it will be Vijaya Dashmi — the day on which we celebrate the victory of Mother Durga over evil.

Related Post: The Big Picture collection of pictures of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Why Pakistan is Useful Just the Way it is

The Acorn says that now is the time to drop trade barriers with Pakistan.

Pakistan’s economy is in a tailspin. Since the second last thing that the international community wants in Pakistan is an economic meltdown, Friends of Pakistan are coming together to provide emergency foreign aid.

The “Friends of Pakistan are “Britain, France, Germany, the United States, China, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Turkey, Australia and Italy plus the United Nations and the European Union.” Among these are nations — US, China, the Arab states, France, Britain — that give aid to Pakistan. The military component of the aid is what Pakistan uses to initiate and fight bloody wars with India. India, a desperately poor country, cannot afford these costly wars but it has to fight them because the Friends of Pakistan want that India bleeds. Pakistan is the instrument.
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Not your average Nigerian email scam

Steve, a friend in San Diego, forwarded me this email. It’s doing the rounds and sooner or later you are bound to read it. So you may as well read it here.
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We must free the Kashmiris

The op-ed “India can’t afford to fall victim to psywar” in the New Indian Express of Sept 19th did not make much sense to me. I find the entire piece confusing. Perhaps I am simple-minded and cannot navigate through contradictions, or perhaps because it is an “op-ed by committee,” signed by 20 prominent people.

It begins:

SOME stray voices in the media have been questioning, with surprising nonchalance and lack of depth, the wisdom and expediency of retaining Kashmir as a part of India. This matters not because such voices reflect any growing view in our country but because they play into the hands of enemies of the nation. Their suggestions embolden subversive forces both within and outside the country, and encourage our adversaries to entertain the hope that with a little more effort, Kashmir will secede from India.

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Oh noes, the internets are down!!

For the last few days, internet service has been terrible at my end and I could not get online. Tata Indicom VSNL at its best. And when I tried to call in to their customer service, I realized how utterly miserable that company is. Not only do you get put on hold, but while on hold they have the most astonishingly irritating music that they play at an ear-shattering volume, and interrupt it every few seconds to announce, “Tata Indicom, the best way to connect to the Internet”, “We know your time is valuable and appreciate the time you have taken to call us”, “Please continue to hold as our customer service executives will be with you shortly”, and other such inane bullshit.

Tata Indicom is a pathetic, worthless, vile corporation run by a gang of stupid cretins whose head honcho must be a lobotomized comatose moron if this is the best that it can do.