“Religion is not for the weak” – Swami Vivekananda

An article on Swami Vivekananda in the Wall Street Journal of 30th March titled, “What Did J.D. Salinger, Leo Tolstoy, and Sarah Bernhardt Have in Common?” makes for delightful reading. What they had in common was their devotion to Swami Vivekananda, the man who introduced Vedanta and yoga to America. I did not know that. But anyway, it’s the sort of positive article about a Hindu monk that would give conniptions to the leftist “secular intellectuals” in India. But the Wall Street Journal does not suffer from the knee-jerk negative reflex of the main stream English language media in India; the latter would recoil with horror at the mere thought of publishing a laudatory piece about a proud Hindu. Wouldn’t that be tantamount to endorsing — horror of horrors — Hindutva?
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Specialization – Part 2

Andrew Carnegie wrote his own epitaph which read, “Here Lies a Man Who Knew How to Enlist in His Service Better Men Than Himself.” He was a captain of American industry and his wealth is “estimated at anywhere from US$75 billion to US$297.8 billion adjusted for the late 2000s.” [Reference.] Clearly the man was no slouch when it came to creating wealth and his epitaph reveals an essential truth about the world — that specialization matters.
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Specialization

A world-class sumo wrestler cannot possibly be even an average runner, leave alone being a world-class sprinter. The general principle is that there are endeavors where excelling in one necessarily makes it impossible to excel in others. You can be a successful politician in India, or you can be a visionary. But in India, you cannot expect a visionary to be a successful politician any more than you would expect a sumo wrestler to be a sprinter.
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Happy April Fools’ Day

My apologies to the visitors of this blog for the total lack of activity. I’ve been busy and distracted. I am guessing that this too shall pass. In the meanwhile, I offer this video of funny British animal voice overs from the BBC.
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Earthquake in Mexico

The USGS reports (details) that the earthquake was 7.6 in Oaxaca region of Mexico. I was in a meeting at the Instituto Thomas Jefferson in Mexico City.
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Hello from Mexico City

A quick update to say I arrived am in Mexico City. I just checked into the hotel — Hotel Maria Barbara. The flight was fine (~4 hours) but the rest of it was bad. At SFO, the lines at the United check-in took about an hour and a half. Then security took another half hour. Upon arrival at Mexico, the immigration took another half hour. But anyhow, I am looking forward to a wonderful week here. More later.

Kanchan Gupta: Dynasty above Democracy

Democracy, like the other great invention of mankind, is a great organizing principle underlying modern societies. But both have quite strict preconditions to be met before they deliver the goods. Economists understand that markets fail under specific circumstances and have figured out mechanisms to guard against those. Similarly, I believe that the implementation of the abstract idea of democracy depends on the specifics of the situation. In India’s case, the outcome is what I call a cargo cult democracy (see my post “Cargo Cult Democracy” May 2004). Kanchan Gupta’s article, “Dynasty above Democracy“, illustrates one particularly ugly feature of Indian democracy — the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and its baleful effect on India. Experts below, for the record.
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