The OLPC in India

I spent the last evening in the American Center near Churchgate, Mumbai, at a presentation on the launch of the “one laptop per child” — OLPC — in India. The event was hosted by a bunch of institutions: Asia Society, Digital Bridge Foundation (created by the Reliance ADA Group), MIT Alumni Association of India, and Consulate General of the US.

I had received an email saying that Prof Negroponte would like to meet with me after the presentation. Negroponte, as most people know, is the founder and chairman of the OLPC project and a co-founder of the MIT Media Lab. The announcement said, “Professor Nicholas Negroponte will discuss the MIT-Media Labs developed XO-laptop which is widely seen as revolutionizing primary education around the world…”
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Paging Dr “BT” Singh

“Paging Dr Singh, paging Dr Singh. Dr Singh, please pick up the house telephone. Mr M J Akbar has an urgent message to deliver regarding the health of the Mango Man.”

Sorry, Dr Singh is busy driving a taxi.

What the hell is that supposed to mean, “driving a taxi”?

You know, busy doing other things. And besides he is not that type of doctor, the type you call in hospitals.

So what exactly is he doing. I demand to know. I don’t know why he should be driving a taxi.

Perhaps I should use a Hindi expression. “Sir-ji roti bel rahen hai“

This is bloody ridiculous. Why is Dr “BT” Singh roti-bailing? Is he in the kitchen?

No. He’s in the kitchen cabinet. It’s an Eye-tay-leean kitchen. He is the “commie” chef. The chef is Eye-tay-leean. So now you know that paging Dr “BT” Singh is pointless. Mango Man should go fug himself. After all, it was Mango Man who ordered the Eye-tay-leean dish. Now he has to eat it.
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Profiting from Education

My contribution to the August issue of Pragati. I am reproducing the piece here below the fold, for the record. Regulars to this blog pretty much know my position on what needs to be done on education. Still you may find something of use.
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Pragati Aug 2008: Should India Send Troops to Afghanistan

Issue 17 - Aug 2008
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Solar energy is advancing

Solar energy, whether you like it or not, will be the future. As I have said before, the age of fossil fuels was a very short interlude in the history of humanity. Nuclear–fission now and perhaps in a few decades fusion–will have a significant share but for the long haul it will be solar.
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Of Freedom, Markets, and the Future of India

Markets Work, Incentives Matter

The two broadest generalizations one arrives at from a study of economics are that markets work and that incentives matter. People respond to incentives because that is at the core of what it means to be rational. To the extent that humans are rational, their behavior is predictably in the direction that existing incentives point to. Trade between humans is rational because both parties in any voluntary trade benefit. The abstract mechanism which enables trade is called the market. Markets work in the sense that they maximize the gains from trade among an arbitrary number of entities. There are other methods of enforcing trade among people, such as the command and control mechanism often employed by communist governments. But they are at a distinct disadvantage relative to the market because the latter is based on the premise that rational actors respond to incentives.
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The Fabulous $10 Indian Government Laptop

“Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper,” wrote Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Solow in 1966 about Milton Friedman, another Nobel laureate economist, the father of monetarism. 🙂

Everything reminds me of India’s failed education system — and by extension — the stupidity of the government policymakers, bureaucrats and politicians included. Unlike Bob Solow, however, I cannot keep it out of my posts.
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The PickensPlan

You’ve got to hand it to the Americans — they think big. Thinking big is the first step to doing big things. There too they are no slouches. Both in terms of good and bad, they do think and do big things. The modern world you and I inhabit (and it is important to remember that not everybody lives in the modern world — a couple of billion of our contemporaries live in a world that is decidedly primitive) has been shaped by Americans to an extent that is hard to overstate. Love it or hate it, you cannot ignore the US.
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Earthquake in Pune

This morning around 12:40 AM, I am sure there was an earthquake around Pune — the building shook for about 10 seconds. Having lived for decades in the San Francisco Bay area, on and around dozens of faults (San Andreas, Hayward, etc) and having been through dozens of quakes, including one of the biggest (the Loma Prieta in 1989), a little shake like that does not evoke much of a reaction. It is all ho-hum stuff.

I could find no reference to any earthquake in the news on the web. Perhaps some local Pune paper would. But did find an item in the BBC: Quake rocks Southern California. Good. Magnitude 5.4. What time? Not reported. Or even which date? Nope. The BBC report neglects to mention such minor details. Very disappointing bit of reporting. I wrote to the BBC. Let’s see if they fix it.