Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw

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”

Two excellent pieces in the popular press that are worth reading and understanding. One is from LiveMint.com titled “Return to Rent-seeking.” It does not have a byline — perhaps because it does not say nice things about Dr Manmohan Singh.
Continue reading “Rent-seeking”

Kanchan Gupta rocks. His piece, “The Sterile Debate over Free Speech” is a keeper. Go read it all. An excerpt below the fold.
Continue reading “Kanchan Gupta: “The Sterile Debate over Free Speech””

I am teaching during this Summer term at UC Berkeley starting Monday 20th June. Summer courses are hard, both for the teacher and the students since a regular course of 17 weeks is squeezed into 8 weeks. I was foolish enough to agree to teach not one but two courses. That’s a stupid thing to do but in my case it’s par for the course. Still, teaching is always fun and instructive.
Continue reading “It’s all Karma, neh?”

People deserve the government they get. That’s generally true, but in the particular case where the government is democratically elected, as H L Mencken observed, “the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” But why just restrict just deserts to governments alone — the easy extension is the press. People deserve the press they get, and exhibit number 1 is the Indian press. The press and the government go hand in hand. That’s true regardless of whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship. The much vaunted Indian free press is not really free. It is not free the sense of “free beer”, it is not free in the sense of “open source” and it is not free in the sense of “not ruled over or dictated to.” Bad government or bad press: which came first?
Continue reading “The Press as a Perfectly Loathsome Pimp”

The Chicago jury’s verdict on Tahawwur Rana, accomplice of the Islamic terrorist David Headley, is provoking comment from the Indian establishment. The charge is that the US should have punished Rana for his role in the Pakistani terrorist attack of Nov 2008 on Mumbai. This is more than a little puzzling. The Indian establishment has not punished the one and only of the surviving Islamic terrorists, Ajmal Kasab. If the Indians don’t have the balls to hang Kasab, whose guilt and involvement in the actual crime is beyond doubt, I don’t really see why some jury in Chicago should be required to hang someone who was merely charged with aiding in the crime and the America prosecutors have not been able to convince the jury of his guilt? Why does the Indian establishment demand the US do what it does not do itself? Those who are tut-tutting the Chicago verdict should take a good hard look in the mirror. The Indian Establishment is forever expecting the US to do its dirty job. It demands the US declare Pakistan a terrorist state but never has the guts to do so itself.