Reflections

Aravind Panagriya and Jagdish Bhagwati have been painted by media (the non presstitute kind, which are fervent Modibhakts) as opposed to the last UPA government and its doings. It was with curiosity then that I took up their well-known book “Why growth matters” . In most editorial and oped columns, the book has been depicted as ferociously opposed to the UPA economic policies and it has been claimed that the book has shown how the UPA government had derailed economic growth. However when I read the book, which was published in 2013, and presumably written in 2012 , judging by the tables published, I was bewildered. Nowhere did I find any denunciation of the UPA policies. To the contrary, all their calculations have shown that the UPA government did quite well in most of the economic parameters that they calculated. Let us take for instance the question of poverty reduction. The opposition ( read the BJP) at that time made a huge hue and cry about the poverty figures and claimed t...

Pokhara , where we lived and worked for 4 happy years The Nepal blockade is unbelievable. Contrary to all international laws, India is blockading a small landlocked country in an attempt to bring it to its knees . One would understand if the Hindutwits who run the Indian government thought that they were striking a blow against Islam.( as those idiots who are abusing people like Dr Bhargava think). Nepal is even more Hindu than India. The country has always been the only one in the world that lets us visit and work there with no questions asked. Some of us have had the privilege of doing so and many of us remember those times as the happiest and most relaxed times we have ever spent among some of the most friendly people on earth. It is time to speak out about this. It is totally unacceptable that India should treat Nepal in this manner. No matter what the provocation, this MUST STOP. I am reproducing an article written by Kunda Dixit in Nepal Times which may give a flavour of...

Travelling abroad, particularly to the developed world is a real pain in the neck. While Malaysians and Singaporeans and South Africans and Brazilians sail through most immigration departments with no need for a visa for at least short visits, no country appears ready to let us enter their soil without a visa.     Our peripatetic Prime Minister has made it possible for many visitors to come to India without a visa (or has he? The e visa is a visa, it requires all the procedures and documentation, and you just get it stamped in the airport that is all). There was brouhaha about Canada having now allowed Indians to get a visa on arrival. This is not true. What they have done is allowed us to do all the paperwork and come with a document which allows the visa to be stamped at the entrance port, the hassles remain the same. If you google visa free entry for Indians you will find that around 54 countries allow visa free entry or allow you to get a visa on arrival. Th...

Baba as a young man  What can you say about an 86- year old man who died? That he was a good husband and father, he loved his grandchildren, he lived a long life and now his allotted span has ended. My father died last night. They say that you never really become adult until your father passes away. In that case I am finally an adult at this ripe old age. It is clichéd to say that an era has ended, but that is exactly what has happened. He was the last surviving member of his generation of a family that boasted 10 siblings. He belonged to a time when fathers were firm, stern and heard. His idea of parenting was a model had probably passed its sell by  the time he became a father, but nobody told him. We, my sister and I, loved him, but were scared of him almost in equal measure during the days that we were growing up. But as I grew to adult life, I could see him more a person, a man who had his faults and his strengths, who did good most of the time, but sometimes di...

Why is the Indian polity so corrupt? Forget the fools who talk about oriental values which do not include honesty and all that sort of patronizing nonsense that the West has told us over the years. What we do follow are the values of the early modern and medieval periods where corruption was not looked down upon. In medieval times as well in early modern times, it was considered normal to “look after” your family and friends, call it a feudal value if you like. The West was as corrupt as say, India is today. The corruption of the East India Company is legendary, as was the corruption among officials of the Colonial government. The celebration of honesty is quite new, it arose in the early days of the twentieth century. Before that and even after that, England itself witnessed political and commercial corruption of a very high order and today, the banking system, is, even today, by any standards as corrupt as hell. However, the West has moved on, they have embraced modern values whi...

The ubiquity of smartphones and the cheap data plans in India have spawned a new phenomenon; that of whatsapp groups. In today’s connected world one can scarcely find somebody who is not a member of one or more such groups. Let me confess: I am a member of several groups. Some groups are those belonging to my students in each posting: these groups are useful as we can disseminate information regarding classes and any changes immediately and it acts a good chain of communication between all the members of the teaching group. A second type of group are the special interest groups; one such is the group that I belong to which comprises our batch at the medical college I attended. There are several others that I belong to, or belonged to, though I must admit that a family group that I used to belong to seems to have expelled me. I think it is because I kept objecting to mindless posts. I spent some time analyzing behavior of those who are parts of the group and I present my fin...

All of us who belong to the non entrepreneur groups ( we Bengalis are prominent among them ) look upon the Gujaratis, more specifically Patels as the epitome of all that is the business spirit of a community that has by all accounts taken charge of entrepreneurship In India. They are the ultimate risk takers, hard workers, ready to nose around for profits everywhere and have a proud record of successful business not just in this country but all over the world. It is well known that half of all motels in the USA are Patel owned. See here.  Wellspun City, Gujarat  Which is why a recent report in Economic Times which reported a militant movement that has suddenly taken wing in Gujarat shocked me to the gills. The Patels, we are told, want reservations as members of the Other Backward Classes ( OBC)  group. They want what? Reservations in Government jobs? That too in Gujarat, the shining Gujarat that has broken all bounds of growth in the past 15 years? The Gujara...