Friends of BJP

The Friends of BJP is a recently formed organization with which my colleague Rajesh Jain is closely associated. On his blog today, Rajesh explained that

“The goal is to galvanise the youth and professionals to engage with the political process to bring about transformational change in India.”

The Friends of BJP is a subset of the educated civil society that is BJP-leaning, and willing to be vocal about it. We are not part of the BJP. We also do not agree with everything the BJP says or does. It is our belief that at this point of time the BJP is the better alternative. It is not a selection between black and white, but opting for the one with the lighter shades of grey.

The subtitle of the Friends of BJP blog says, “Because India Deserves Better.” Is that true? Most will agree that India’s governance has left much to be desired. But merely desiring something does not make one deserving of it. I desire lots of things but I sure am not deserving of them. There’s much hard work between desiring and deserving.
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The Indian Number System

Here’s a whimsical look at how the world got the numbering system — the Indian numerals — it has today.


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The Economics of Urbanization

“The Economics of Urbanization” is the title of a course that I plan to teach at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, starting next week. I am looking forward to being at the ISB for the next five weeks.

The course is an exploration of the idea (related to the theme on cities and urbanization explored on this blog) that economic growth and urbanization are bidirectionally linked. I hope to argue the case for urbanization of India based on simple economics.
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Who agree with Darwinian evolution

Here’s a graph from the Pew Research Center which shows the percentage of people of various religious backgrounds (living in the US) who agree that evolution is the best explanation for the origin of human life on earth.

evolution_belief_graph
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Vodafone Blocks MyToday

MyToday is a set of opt-in SMS services from our company, Netcore. MyToday has around 3.8 million subscribers. Since you cannot receive the SMSs from MyToday without first sending an SMS to MyToday requesting the service, you cannot get spammed. Stopping the service is as simple as sending a “Stop” SMS to the same service.

Vodafone, one of the bigger mobile operators, has blocked the MyToday SMS alerts since today morning, as this Business Standard news item reports. I suppose the MyToday free SMS services is hurting Vodafone’s paid services. My blocking MyToday’s services, Vodafone is doing what any profit-maximizing firm does — kill competition.

See Rajesh Jain’s post on this matter for more on this.

My analysis is however in the larger context of competitive markets and their welfare implications.
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LK Advani’s speech to the FICCI

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea,” advised Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Does makes sense, doesn’t it? Motivating the task is the real job of the leader, not messing around with petty details.
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Strangling Freedom of Speech and Expression

The UK is on the fast track to becoming a closed society in its hurry to emulate Saudi Arabia. Last week, it denied entry to Geert Wilders of the Netherlands. “Dutch populist politician and controversial anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders has been refused entry to the United Kingdom despite being invited to visit by a member of the House of Lords, the British parliament’s upper chamber. . . Geert Wilders, perhaps best known outside the Netherlands for having made the video Fitna, in which the religion Islam and its holy book the Koran are attacked as providing a basis for terrorist attacks and for the undermining of western democracy and values, had been invited to London for a showing of this film to members of the British parliament.”

Thankfully, Fitna is available on the web and this idiotic attempt to shoot the messenger will only make the message more compelling.
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Innovation and Entrepreneurship in India

US Innovates

It is fairly widely acknowledged that there is a very strong connection between the US’s economic success and the entrepreneurial character of its people which generates innovations. It can be plausibly argued that economic success and entrepreneur-driven innovations are bi-directionally causally linked: each gives a boost to the other in ever widening upward spirals of mutually reinforcing, positive feedback. It is perhaps difficult figure out which came first: the economic success or the entrepreneurial character of the people.
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Darwin and The Daily Show

Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show ranks among my most favorite shows. It’s intelligent and funny, and does not shrink from calling a spade a commonly used gardening equipment with a wooden handle and a metal working surface. Here’s one hilarious segment on evolution.

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http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:124491

You will find a collection of evolution related segments here.

In honor of Charles Darwin turning 200 years young today (you don’t look a day over 139, Chuck!), I’ve assembled some of the finest evolution-related clips from The Daily Show’s history. I have to say though, I have some misgivings about this, because I don’t believe I descended from some damn monkeys. No, I believe we all descended from space-pandas, like it says in The Bible.

Lincoln and Darwin: Who was the more important?

If you have 15 minutes to spare today, you have to read this Malcolm Jones article, “Who was more important: Lincoln or Darwin,” in the Newsweek issue of July 2008. (Let’s also take a moment to reflect on our great fortune that we live in an age when it is possible for us to have access to so much great stuff to read without having to visit a physical library.) I quote a few bits from that article for the record but I entreat you to find the time to read the whole thing.
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