Category: Random Draws

Fragments – 2

The Missing Middle

“Often in Indian you can find a very fancy Rs 12,000 a night hotel room, and you can find a flea-ridden Rs 700 a night hotel room. Why can’t you find a good clean comfortable Rs 2,000 a night room? What is with this missing middle?”

“Hey, same as in food. I can go and get high-priced medicore food at a fancy restaurant at a fancy hotel and get low-priced low-quality food at a hole in the wall. But it is hard to find a reasonably priced restaurant serving reasonably appetizing food. Again, the missing middle.”

“How about eduation? High priced and fancy, or almost free and totally worthless. How about decent education at reasonable prices?”

Why the excluded middle?

Rajiv Malhotra’s “U-Turn Theory”

Nearly five years ago in April 2001, TIME magazine did a feature titled The Power of Yoga.

A path to enlightenment that winds back 5,000 years in its native India, yoga has suddenly become so hot, so cool, so very this minute. It’s the exercise cum meditation for the new millennium, one that doesn’t so much pump you up as bliss you out.

The article feels like an “infomercial” on yoga but is worth a quick glance. (While you are there, don’t miss the brief photo essay on some yoga postures.)
Continue reading “Rajiv Malhotra’s “U-Turn Theory””

The Indian Economy Blog

For a multi-faceted view of matters related to the Indian economy, I recommend the aptly named Indian Economy Blog. It is a group blog and the contributors are well-known and well worth reading. I am listed as a regular contributor but I am afraid that I have not contributed much regularly. I intend to rectify that error shortly.

IEB is brought to you by:
Continue reading “The Indian Economy Blog”

The Lights to Navigate By

In a comment to the post on political parties launched by entrepreneurs, “Seven Times Six” wrote:

I don’t think renunciation and self-sacrifice is necessary for a nation to prosper. What is required is the exact opposite — a strong avarice and ambition to promote one’s well-being.
Continue reading “The Lights to Navigate By”

The New Startups: Political Parties

Seems like the geeks are diversifying from being entrepreneurs in high tech to being entrepreneurs in politics. They are forming political parties. Aditya Pancholi alerted me to “PARITRANA, the Political party for the Bharat of 21st century” started by a group of very young professionals who share the common background of having gone to IITs. Continue reading “The New Startups: Political Parties”

Discussion: Indian Voters are Corrupt

This place is far too quiet. Time to stir it up a bit. So let’s have a bit of a debate. The proposition before the house is:
The Indian voter is corrupt.

That article is from around the time of the general elections of 2004. I discovered a bunch of posts in the archives which are relevant. Here they are:

April 2004, Democracy in India
May 2004, Cargo Cult and Democracy
Nov 2004, India, the World’s Largest Kleptocracy
Dec 2004, On Being Ruled by Toads

What is your dangerous idea?

Someone remarked that writing is three percent inspiration and 97 percent not getting distracted by stuff on the world wide web. I can relate to that. Every time I try to get something done, I go wandering all over what I call the cyberhypersphere. This is not really a thinly-veiled attempt at explaining away why I have not been writing stuff on this blog.
Continue reading “What is your dangerous idea?”