- Ludwig Von Mises-Bureaucracy
- Ayn Rand-The Virtue Of Selfishness
- Ken Schoolland -The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey
- P. Chidambaram -A View from the Outside: Why Good Economics Works for Everyone
- Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner-Freakonomics
- APJ Abdul Kalam- Wings of Fire
- Mainak Dhar-The Funda of Mix-ology what bartending teaches that IIM doesn’t
- Thomas Sowell-Applied Economics
- Dale Carnegie-How To Win Friends And Influence People
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Books which I read in 2008
Keynes solution unlikely to do so
These are good questions actually but bad time to ask for action.
T. C. A. SRINIVASA-RAGHAVAN writes “After all, why should a taxpayer be made to pay for the mistakes of some bad decisions by directors? Even if there was a genuine error of judgment about the likely business environment, why should the cost of helping them out fall on the taxpayer when he or she was not sharing the benefits when the times were good?
True, a person could have become a shareholder, but that would have meant exercising a choice, which is right. But now taxpayers are not being allowed to do so. Whether they like it or not, their money is being given away to small groups of persons, some of whom may well have avoided or evaded taxes and, thus, become richer than those who paid their taxes”.
Except the above questions all other questions the author asked in the article was clear in the public debate.
College is for learning how to think
VV writes in the BS about “Elementary DNA of James Watson”
What is interesting to me is the “College is for learning how to think”
“From Childhood:
Accept only advice that comes from experience, not revelation.
Hypocrisy in search of social acceptance erodes your self-respect.
College is for learning how to think.
Knowing “why” (an idea) is more important than learning “what” (a fact.)
New ideas usually need new facts.
Seek out bright as opposed to popular friends.
Keep Your Intellectual curiosity much broader than your thesis objective.
Extend yourself intellectually through courses that initially frighten you.
Avoid Boring People.
Science is highly social.
Leave a research field before it bores you.
Never be the brightest person in the room.
Work with a teammate who is your intellectual equal.
Always have someone to save you.
Bring your research into your lectures.
Challenge your students’ abilities to move beyond facts.
Academic institutions do not easily change themselves.
Travel makes your science stronger.
Exaggerations do not void basic truths.
Controversial recommendations require political backing.
Challenge rage through intermediaries”.
Nonsense stimulus
Every time depression invent new stimulus which have no clear indication to combat demand deepening path.
Madan Sabnavis disproves the stimulus theses.
- “Let us go back to the rudimentary text book where output is the sum of C(onsumption), I(nvestment), G(overnment), E(xports) and I(mports). This holds for any sector. The table shows that consumption growth does not have a strong relationship with industrial growth — which means that we need more of the other factors to help in growth. Government expenditure also does not impact industry in the same year — this means that all the fiscal stimulus packages would really take time to work out as the impact is indirect. Trade however is significant.
-
- Therefore, the primary factors are really investment and foreign trade growth. Further, the growth in capital issues, foreign investment and the Sensex are not associated with industrial growth. This means that the rate of change in these variables is not correlated with the industrial growth rate.
- Given this picture, how can we relate the present circumstances with the industrial scenario? On the supply side, we have witnessed growth in bank credit rising and imports, which means that industrial growth has taken place up to October. Sentiments are low as gauged by FII, FDI and capital market indicators. There is a shoulder shrug as far as investment is concerned as we do not have clear indications — bank credit partly reflects growth but lower capital issues could negate this performance. The government stimulus package does not appear to have the strength to change things, nor would private consumption. As exports growth is not too impressive, the demand stimulus would not be there. The imports route will work provided the demand is there, as imports only talk of the supply side”.
I asked my Punjabi friends who is Bhimsen Sachar? they said he is Rajendra Sachar otherwise I do not know, was their answer
Chacha Manmohan Singh have quoted the following lines while delivering Bhimsen Sachar Memorial Lecture, December 2008.
“The unity of India was of paramount concern as expressed by the great architect of our Constitution - Dr. Ambedkar, when he said:
"Though the country and the people may be divided into different states for convenience of administration, the country is one integral whole, its people a single people living under a single imperium derived from a single source... The Drafting Committee thought it was better to make [this] clear at the outset rather than leave it to speculation...."
In his submissions to the States Re-organisation Commission Dr Ambedkar spoke at length about the tortuous journey the “
“
Dr Ambedkar then went on to lament:
“God seems to have laid a heavy curse on
"Sectarianism, bigotry and its horrible descendant, fanaticism have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often with human blood, destroyed civilizations and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now".
Macroeconomics counterfeit medicines has risen to record proportions
Richard A. Epstein writes in Forbes that the “Fancy high-IQ projects only offer an intellectual feast to regulators for which ordinary citizens pay. The libertarian offers this overarching resolution: Regulators should go for the low-hanging fruit.”
Public school is anathema
“I find myself wondering how this can be, how an entire discussion of such a delicate matter can be confined so utterly to one dogmatic response. On this matter I call to mind another great conservative thinker, and in doing so find that I, too, am standing “athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it” writes Kain.
Further he writes “Adam Smith was the first to argue in favor of school vouchers, a cause taken up later by Milton Friedman, and many of Friedman’s students and successors. …………Smith and Friedman argued that the public school system should follow the rules of the free market, and that the best way to do this would be to put the public schools in direct competition with their private counterparts. Conservative theorists today argue that taxpayers who choose not to send their children to public school ought to receive a tax subsidy, or voucher, to help pay for the private school of their choice. The voucher would be paid to the school of the taxpayer’s choice, rather than directly into the public school system”.
Instilled in him
RAM JETHMALANI writes in the Outlook “When Thomas Paine was jailed and tried for treason for his pamphlet Rights of Man, the great advocate Thomas Erskine was briefed to defend him. Erskine, at that time, was the attorney-general for the Prince of Wales. Though he was allowed private practice, he was warned that if he accepted Paine's brief, he would be dismissed from office. Undeterred, Erskine accepted the brief and was deprived of office. His immortal words, which the editor of Howell's State Trials printed in capitals, stand out as a shining light:
"From the moment that any advocate can be permitted to say that he will or will not stand between the Crown and the subject arraigned in the Court where he daily sits to practice, from that moment the liberties of England are at an end. If the advocate refuses to defend from what he may think of the charge or of the defence, he assumes the character of the Judge; nay he assumes it before the hour of judgement; and in proportion to his rank and reputation puts the heavy influence of perhaps a mistaken opinion into the scale against the accused in whose favour the benevolent principle of English law makes all assumptions, and which commands the very Judge to be his Counsel." ”
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
of free markets
The Mint has published a serious of article by different people about The Year I find less interesting to read those articles except Ramesh Ramanation’s “of free markets versus financial markets”. But I believe that if Sauvik would have written a piece on The Year could be loveable with his immense skill to interpret the events in such a way. But still there is room to bite:
- “Free markets are about entrepreneurs, people who start off invariably as small business owners who hire from the ground up, maybe two, three or 10 people, and then grow from there. Most often, these entrepreneurs will never get to use the sophisticated tools of the financial markets, other than the typical loan from the neighbourhood bank. But that’s all they need, because they aren’t looking for more than their own appetite for risk, creativity and hard work to help them move up in life, and for government to get out of the way, set fair and transparent rules of functioning, enforce them correctly, reduce red tape and provide the necessary social infrastructure. The true engines of an economy are these entrepreneurs—big and small, but mostly small. Financial markets are about one aspect of facilitating this—and not the end-all of a free market system. They play a role, a critical role, but they are not the centre of the universe. In fact, 2008 showed that an overemphasis on financial markets, an over-monetization of economic activity can have devastating consequences.
- As we stumble into 2009, wallowing in our incoherence, doubts are beginning to emerge: Was it so bad to have a socialist mixed economy model, where the government was a benevolent dispenser of licences and all else? Is the market-based economy all that it’s made out to be? Could it really be possible that the communists—God forbid!—actually had it right, that we need to keep markets on a tight leash; that slow and steady is a much better path than see-saw uncertainty; that the Hindu rate of growth isn’t a bad thing after all?”
Unending Keynesian phase
Meghnad Desai writes in the FE few observations on current financial crisis with murmuring the Keynes theory.
- “Previous booms were confined to the developed world, the Golden quarter century of Keynesianism, for example….
- with long memories or at least a smattering of knowledge of Marx, Hayek or Keynes or even Charles Kindleberger and Hyman Minsky would know that capitalism has cycles of irregular length. Every boom breeds bad investments, over expansion of credit, over spending by consumers, acquisition of increasingly risky and dubious assets.
- If it does not work then we need a new economics. So far the boom has been a product of the sweetwater economics of
Protectionist impulse
Deepak Lal writes in the BS “the possibility of the Great Moderation followed by the Great Crash being followed by another Great Inflation, the Great Crash could still turn into another Great Depression if the world slips into protectionism.”
Free trade is a powerful dynamo
Abhijit Das says that “….implementation of free trade agreement negotiations with some of these countries could provide
The education woes
Gurkirpal Singh Sidhu writes some woes on higher education in Haryana and
- “the number of seats offered by 456 colleges in Haryana and 176 in
- ….in
- AICTE rolled back its norms fixed for nursing colleges. This led to the Indian Nursing Council, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, relaxing the norms for running nursing colleges. Land requirement for running the institute has been reduced. The retiring age of faculty members has been raised to 70 years. What justification can ageing faculty provide for bringing in new ideas with his/her knowledge acquired about four decades back”
- Technical education is in dire straits, as is reflected from the fact that around 16,000 students out of 23,000, spread across semesters of 66 engineering colleges of
Monday, December 29, 2008
Hey give me the propriety
By refereeing Mythili Bhusnurmat article Sauvik writes convincingly “Under the Rule of Law simple general rules should hold sway. That is, the paper note is a property title. It is to be redeemed on demand. Period. Once this is The Law, let private bankers adjust and play the game by these good rules. And let the mass of the people, wretched and poor, cheated so long by these counterfeiters, understand The Law as it pertains to Money. After all, what governs a society is opinion – especially opinion on The Law.”
In is no away
While writing the top news that went with spotlight Rajrishi Singhal quote:
“What a good year for the roses Many blooms still linger there. The lawn could stand another mowin’ Funny, I don’t even care As you turn to walk away As the door behind you closes The only thing I have to say Was what a good year for the roses .
— Good Year For The Roses/Elvis Costello (also performed by Counting Crows)”
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Outlier economists
Joseph Stiglitz says in The Hindu “the crisis was predictable, and predicted. But unfortunately, mainstream economists, politicians, and policymakers ignored the warnings. We have much to learn from these failures, as well as those of the economy itself.”
For your information I was told that about 200 students from JNU were attended his recent lecture on the Tenth D. T. Lakdawala Memorial Lecture delivered on
Funny Old World
In a book review Professor VEDAGIRI SHANMUGASUNDARAM writes: “Funny
Monday, December 22, 2008
Ghastly pink Drs Sen and Singh description
T. C. A. Srinivasa-Raghavan writes about Chacha Manmohan Singh and Amartya Sen “the two men share a quality that is absolutely central to their success but which, at the same time, makes it hard to form anything but a very blurred image of them and which makes them all things to all men”.
Whether printing money hay is myth?
Kaushik Das writes in the Mint “what most people fail to realize is that it is in these unusual times that the governmental non-interference in the economy’s recovery process is called for even more than at any other time.
Taking a contrarian position, in the form of more government interference through providing fiscal stimulus packages, will unfortunately push the global economy into a massive depression, the very outcome that these policies are expected to prevent”.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Chacha economists Manmohan Singh and Amartya Sen dynasty
India need Hayekian
S. S. Tarapore has an article on “Hayekian approach: Lasting relevance for
Quite interesting article but along Indian economists made mess of teaching and research in economics including F A Hayek ideas which is totally invisible. It is worthwhile to note the following lines.
“Despite the fact that that Keynes’ General Theory was written over 70 years ago, we in
The absence of familiarity with the Hayekian approach is particularly unfortunate as it has great relevance to current macroeconomic policies in countries like
Hayek was a multifaceted scholar, with monumental contributions in the fields of law, liberty and ethics. The young Hayek had made a lasting contribution to macroeconomic thought through his fundamental work on ‘Prices and Production (1929)’; this monumental work was difficult to follow, though it was published in English, as it was Germanic in thought and, therefore, not easily understood in Anglo-Saxon circles.
John Hicks had postulated that it is desirable to creep along the ceiling of growth and to actively use monetary policy to ensure that the limit to growth is not exceeded. Neither the Hayekian approach nor Hicks’ recommendation is palatable to Indian policymakers and, hence, these theories have been totally banished from having any influence on Indian policymaking.
Hicks, in his Critical Essays in Monetary Theory (1967), has an insightful Chapter on “The Hayek Story”. While the Keynesian approach was appropriate for the 1930s, the Hayekian approach could be relevant at other times, particularly in developing countries. In the heat and dust of the Third and Fourth Indian Five Year Plans, no economist in
The author has failed to point out several other important works done by F A Hayek.
Must have thought
The following text was published in the Business Line.
Excerpts from Imagining
“The 1980s was a period that marked the rise of software firms in
Additionally, since
We also witnessed how much people favoured working in the Indian public sector at the time. Soon after Infosys moved to
It took one more crisis to change our small steps towards reform in the 1980s into a single leap to the other side.
A flurry of activity
In the 1970s and 1980s, nearly every Indian middle-class home had a cupboard made of wood or steel, with multiple locks and several small drawers. The favoured brand was Godrej Storwel, with its hard-to-pick lock. Most Indian families kept their savings and jewellery here. People avoided putting money in stocks because of the ‘wealth tax’ on such investments. When the ‘wealth tax’ was eliminated, money came out of these cupboards and into
The businesses that emerged at the top of the heap after this struggle were different from the ones before—half of the top ten companies in market capitalization in 1991 had disappeared from the list by the decade’s end. Some of the most prominent entrepreneurs who emerged post-1980, such as Sunil Mittal and Dhirubhai Ambani, had built their firms from scratch, and were a breed far apart from the closed circle, family entrepreneurs of the 1960s and 1970s.
Leading the way
It is also interesting how the Indian government has begun to leverage the strength of India’s IT industry in its foreign relations with other countries, as IT companies have established offices and made acquisitions across the world. In the
Excerpted with permission from Penguin Books India”
Big Government means high social costs
M.N. Sabharwal and Manish Sabharwal quote “As Nandan Nilekani says in his exceptional book Imagining
I do not 'get' Joseph Stiglitz
Some of the comments posted in response to above post are worthwhile:
Ben says Krugman is an idiot when it comes to economics.
Marteen says I could not finish Stiglitz’s book, Globalization and its Discontents. After about a quarter through it I just had to put it down because it was like singing, “100 bottles of beer.” After get to 95 bottles of beer, it ceases to be enjoyable. It seemed that Stiglitz just went over the same theme again and again.
Green says Unfortunatly Stiglitz has blurred the line between the social sciences- this is most definatly a mistake.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
What is good in India’s Education Bill 2008
What is good in the “recently introduced the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2008”. It may the following says M R Madhavan
- ..parents should send their children to a school of their choice; competition would lead to quality; if required, the poorer sections of the society can be financed through school vouchers.
- …63 per cent of the children in urban areas and 20 per cent in rural areas are enrolled with private schools.
- ..the Bill requires each government and aided school to form a school management committee comprising local elected representatives, parents and teachers. This committee shall monitor the working of the school and the utilisation of grants given to the school. Evidence from Karnataka and several countries in
Class is like gathering sand with a sieve
When I see or meet a group of likeminded economists, policymaker and researcher I utterly deem every time what the Mint Columnist Ramesh Ramanathan says “I can honestly state that mobilizing the middle class is like gathering sand with a sieve”.
All kind of people make the world so need the freedom to trade
Pranab Bardhan says “it is often claimed, both in the media and academia, that it was global integration which brought down the extreme poverty that had afflicted
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Kids in school are not learning? Not a problem. Just promote them on to the next grade anyway
Thomas Sowell says “Unfortunately for all the good people who had in good faith gone into all the various lines of work revolving around horses, there was no compassionate government to step in with a bailout or a stimulus package”.
Central banks are villains in most countries
Walter E. Williams says “my recommendation for reducing some of that power is to repeal legal tender laws and eliminate all taxes on gold, silver and platinum transactions. That way there would be money substitutes and the government money monopoly would be reduced and hence the ability to tax -- some people would say steal from -- us through inflation”.
Need one depression at least once in five years
A Commentary by Matthew Lynn in the Bloomberg says that “during the 1930s, new industries such as consumer electronics and plastics were created. In the turbulent mid- 1970s, the personal-computer industry was born, as companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. were founded.
The economy didn’t look much good then, either, with soaring oil prices, rampant inflation and tumbling stock markets. That didn’t stop a young Bill Gates or Steve Jobs from setting up new businesses. No doubt there are now plenty of young entrepreneurs with bright ideas and loads of determination ready to build the corporate giants of the 2020s and 2030s.
As Tom Nicholas, an associate professor at
Poor India gift rich University!
It is not surprise, at least to me, if
If he wanted to gift and name as “Amartya Sen Fellows” he should gift from his own packets. By no mean it should be gifted from tax payer’s money.
It may be biggest folly of
(Thanks to Jayakamal for via mail)
This should change
Politicians walk and talk but failed to prove genuine public interest in policy making.
The President Loksatta Party Mr Jayaprakash Narayan writes in today’s ET:
- “There is recognition that politics shapes our future. But there is also a sense of resignation that nothing much can be expected from current politics.
- We need several Gorbachevs in each major party to rejuvenate our political system from within.
- ..politics shapes the world we live in, and the future of our children. We need to be engaged.
- Naoroji, Tilak, Gokhale, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Azad, Chittaranjan Das, Bose, Rajaji, Prakasam, Sarojini Naidu — all these represented the best and brightest in our society. They all entered politics, enriched our lives, and shaped our destiny. Today such people are deterred from public life. Pedigree, ill-gotten wealth, caste and criminality are the passports for political recruitment”.
Anti-incumbent sentiment
Several analysts lamented the “Anti-incumbency” sentiments during the recently held five state elections.
Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar tries to prove his theses on “Anti-incumbency and terror still matter” in today’s ET.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Kerala Model- highest suicide rate, unemployment etc
Shirin Shirin writes rather stupidly that “the Kerala model as a path to development? The answer may lie in when Kerala chose to follow this path. The 1960s and 1970s were before structural adjustment programs and free-market principles dominated the discourse of development economics. Kerala borrowed heavily - and still borrows - to finance its social investments. While other countries have made similar investments, IMF-backed austerity measures have rolled back those investments before they could bear fruit. Now that the age of Milton Friedman appears to be nearing its end, the world would do well to give Kerala another look.
Only free market economics loath can say “the age of Milton Friedman appears to be nearing its end”
However, “a study by two economists claims that a significant number of jobs are being created in the state by the private sector and by local entrepreneurs”.
I mean essentially it is by the private sector that has created more jobs.
The cases of suicide are highest in Kerala-2004 and 2006.
Why economists love myths?
Arvind Panagariya writes in the Indian Express “in the aftermath of the May 2008 bomb explosions in my own hometown, Jaipur, both Hindus and Muslims lined up at hospitals to donate blood for surviving victims. In a similar vein, following the recent Mumbai attacks, the government has been unable to find a single Muslim group willing to accept the bodies of nine Pakistani terrorists for burial in its graveyard. Those who raise the spectre of retaliatory actions following terrorist attacks confuse them with communal riots. While communal riots by definition divide Hindus and Muslims, terrorist attacks usually bring them together”.
India needs Deng Xiaoping not Barack Obama
HUGO RESTALL writes in the WSJ “The drawbacks of the Communist Party's monopoly on power are becoming more evident, as vested interests protect their control of the economy by holding back development of the banking system and stock market.
The coming year is expected to be critical, both economically and politically”.
And
John Forbes Nash on gold standard
According to this news report economist Nash said “financial crises would be less likely to occur if there was some international monetary standard, such as the gold standard or competition among worldwide currencies, to curb inflation and prevent the rise of mortgage abuses. He expressed some skepticism about a government bailout as a solution.”
“Nash said that various interest groups that subscribe to Keynesian, or short-term, economic theories have sold the public on the notion that inflation is acceptable or that “bad money is better than good money.” Such a notion, he said, led to the dangerous proliferation of bad mortgage loans—loans made on the gamble that house values would continue to rise and eventually turn a profit”.
Thanks to Jayakamal also!
Which we tend to hear about warming or cooling?
Bjørn Lomborg writes in the ET “implementing the Kyoto Protocol at a cost of $180 billion annually would keep two million people from going hungry only by the end of the century. Yet by spending just $10 billion annually, the United Nations estimates that we could help 229 million hungry people today. Every time spending on climate policies saves one person from hunger in a hundred years, the same amount could have saved 5,000 people now. Arguably, this should be among Obama’s top priorities”.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Corporate Delimitation Commission's
A Bangalore-based IT entrepreneur writes in the TOI “the spontaneous outpourings in our cities over the terror tragedy have shown, there is change in the air. As
We cannot keep our cities the centres of our economic growth, innovation and places where we can dissolve our caste and our past weakened and marginal in our politics. This imbalance has led to the decline we can see in every Indian city, the apathy made concrete in our crumbling roads, massive encroachments, and our chaotic, unplanned growth. Without local governments that answer directly to its civic citizens, urban
The Surjit S Bhalla effect!
What an effect after all. If Mr Bhalla calls himself as a “liberal” in
He writes in the BS “if the policy hawks want to note, are as follows: For the eight months of this fiscal year (April-Nov), inflation is running at an annual rate of 5.9 percent; seasonally adjusted, 3.9 percent; since June, minus 3.3 percent. What is needed: immediate removal of all the cesses, surtaxes, and gratuitous taxes in the system (including the fringe benefit tax). Reduction in the repo rate to 4 percent, reverse repo to 2 percent, CRR to 2 percent. Then watch for a month, and if need be, reduce rates further — and perhaps even reduce corporate and income tax rates”.
Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists
What kind of response one can think on recent Mumbai attacks? Arundhati Roy writes: “Nor for that matter will any other quick fix. Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%.
As tension in the region builds,
But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001,
The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre.
Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring
The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the attack was being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes were being magnified a thousandfold by TV broadcasts.
We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in
hough one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and leftwing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, allpoliticians, glorifying the police and the army and virtually asking for a police state. It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.
Dangerous, stupid television flashcards like the Police are Good Politicians are Bad/Chief Executives are Good Chief Ministers are Bad/Army is Good Government is Bad/ India is Good Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.
Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including SAR Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The supreme court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they worked for.
Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2kg of RDX and two pistols on them and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.
There are those who point out that
Friday, December 12, 2008
Re-armament
How many politicians know that? “‘when you point a finger at someone, remember three little fingers are pointing back to you” writes Mythili Bhusnurmath in ET.
The pate democracy peril
Senior journalist Mr Prem Shankar Jha writes in the ET that “he rural poor were sending their children not to the state schools but were paying Rs 50 to Rs 150 as fees to send them to private schools which taught (or claimed to teach) English! ”
Courage in venturing outside economics
Breeding politics of politicians but people have no deliberate choice out of socialist minds
It may be interesting to read these lines of great visionary Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, on (August 14, 1947, in the Constituent Assembly) Indian “While
But politicians use all the Nobel ideas to brutalize the free society.
Never satisfied
Nithyananda says in ET “Your life is a journey between birth and death. You have no idea why you were born. You have no idea when you will die. Your life is a bridge between these two unknown points. This is because you play with several pseudo identities, you have never asked yourself the question, who am I or what am I doing here?”
The other massive trade journey
Mr Aiyar’s recent paper published in CATO institute says (excerpt published in BS) “
‘We choose butter rather than guns’ what economist can do?
Economist Bibek Debroy writes “Does an economy produce butter or guns? The UPA government’s choice was clear. It opted for butter rather than guns…”. Yet once again it seems that people are ready to choose “butter rather than guns” evidence from the recently held five state election of which three states voted for congress.
However, let us note the terrorism trade “ndia may not be the country worst-affected by terrorist acts, but it has had its fair share in 2008 and December isn’t over yet. If one leaves out acts attributed to Maoists, there was Jaipur in May (63 dead, 213 injured), Bangalore (2 dead, 20 injured) and Ahmedabad in July (49 dead, 160 injured), Delhi in September (30 dead, 90 injured and 3 dead, 23 injured in a second incident), Gujarat and Maharashtra in September (8 dead, 30 injured), Agartala in October (4 dead, 100 injured), Guwahati in October (5 injured and 84 dead, 470 injured in a second incident), Srinagar in October (4 injured) and Mumbai in November (160 dead, 327 injured). There is a Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS), with a broader definition of terrorism. Between
But thanks to my friend Jayakamal who sent this article to me and don’t forget to read this excellent one by Economist Thomas Sowell who says “They didn't strike again here, even though they have struck in
Monday, December 8, 2008
Change the Men and Ideas First?
I hate to read when people writes like this one by “Speaking of the global financial crisis, Sonia Gandhi recently applauded Indira Gandhi's bank nationalisation of 1969, saying that it had given
It does not make sense if he says “I don't blame Nehru for adopting the wrong economic model as socialism was the wisdom of his age; I blame Indira for not reversing course as sensible countries in East and
If he don’t blame the Nehru folly ‘socialism’ who can blame then? There is no such thing as it is better to have lesser evil than the actual evil or the lesser evil is not revived the old evil.
It is once again that Mr Das mind losses the liberal idea.
Problem indeterminate: Freud, Marx and Darwin!
The ET column Jaideep Mishra some time attempt to shade the ideas and philosophy of economics with new muse, yet the present economic situation which push his mind to look back several years.
Here are some from the recent article.
- The human, anthropogenic sciences have also had a similar transformation. A hundred years ago, a trio of big ideas — those of Freud, Marx and Darwin — held sway in the intellectual landscape. The ideas were no doubt intellectually seductive, proffering to theorise on the big ‘why’ of it all — of why we are as we are and not otherwise. Hence the essay to make sense of the here and now — Freud at the level of individuals, Marx that for whole societies and
- Embedded in the thoughts, certainly in those of Freud and Marx, was the ‘promise of prediction’. The reasoning went that if this is how we traversed thus far, then that must be the way ahead; and if that is the way to go, then this surely is where we ought to be going anyway.
- There may well be a case for clear-cut financial innovation norms for orderly markets, but the seemingly loss of predictability in economics is the hallmark of all complex systems.
- The fact of the matter is that the role of prediction in economics involves a fundamental tension.
Noted the Point
When anybody says it is the economy, stupid I feel totally helpless to even to me. Because the economy is consist of individuals you and me, its not so?
But Rama Bijapurkar writes in the ET “It is not the economy, stupid” . Who cares where the sensex is, when we have senselessness all around us. Who cares what kind of an economy we will be, if we are a battered nation, run by inept politicians or those obsessed with dynastic succession and / or vote bank politics?”
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