Sunday, December 6, 2009

Something about Indian economy

There is huge learning resource by PBS here in this weblink. PBS is sharing with us the interview, profiles, essay and debates of great economists, leaders and entrepreneurs of recent 100 years. Commanding Heights. Few of them are 3,4 years old but are worth reading Interviews :Dr. Manmohan Singh , P. Chidambaram and NarayanMurthy.

Featuring India's Honourable Minister of Human Resource Development Shri Kapil Sibal on MIT.


This video is part of the B&K Securities MIT India Forum with featured speaker: Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Indian Planning Commission.


Crash Lecture on Indian Economy 1947- 2010:

Post 1947, Institutional capacities were created. The social institutions and the legal framework for a market economy were put in place. A system of higher education was developed. Entrepreneurial talents and managerial capabilities were fostered. Science and technology was accorded a priority. The capital goods sector was established. Much of this did not exist in colonial India. They all were started from the scratch with weightage given to huge public sector investment.

Then reform is several sectors were stopped completely. The social sector,i.e. Healthcare and primary education was given very low priority in developmental growth. Our independent India was against anything foreign. Its march to self dependency hindered free flow of information and capital flow in the development of nation. But protective economy was the need of those moment. There was need to move ahead and Dr. Manmohan singh predicted it long back in his days at England. Now its time to swing back to socialist reign to capitalsitic nature.

Indian Bureaucracy:

We've all heard, "It's not what you know, it's who you know.

British invented bureaucracy for India, the Indians perfected it. They built a perfect system of such complexity that nobody could penetrate it,nobody could defeat it. It is immensely elaborate and best brain of India working it. Today, RTI is slowly uncovering the hidden veils and making it more transparent. Still accountability part is far from the dream. The Right to Information Act can be regarded as an aberration in view of the government's longstanding penchant for secrecy, which is a colonial-era legacy. IT sector and bollywood succeed because government did not make it as a national priority. It was just investment of smart people in these respective fields. BCCI working very well unlike other sports bodies. Private Sector has mobilized the youths and enable them to be risk taking.

Bureaucracy liked things to be frozen. That showed their power. Hence, you will find government offices to be always either ruled by the books or moulded in favour of corrupt and powerful. As the social, economic or political events become dynamic, the wheel of power shifts to other person. Hence, the static rule of bureaucracy disappear.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

LC Corner

An adapted post about Limbdi Corner @IT BHU written by Pablo (Source) :-

If you are coming to IT for the first 1 time and you venture along the hostel 1 road, at a certain intersection one is bound to notice a mass congregated in front of a small squarish building. And because that intersection leads to the girls hostel is not the chief reason why people tend to gather at that point. It's because that small squarish building is ITBHU's answer to any ridiculously overpriced fast food chain. That structure is Limbdi Corner, the chief hang-out spot for any ITian who cares to leave the confines of the hostel rooms and take a breath of fresh air. Located at one corner of the Rajputana football field, and surrounded by trees that drape their leaves providing a rather picturesque shade, it provides the perfect break while coming back from classes during the evening, and sometimes proves to be a better alternative than spending time in the classes, there are many who start from their hostels firmly determined to attend classes, but many decide to stay back and spend quality time at LC. There are always two kettles of tea boiling over the coal fire, a small one for ispeshul chai and a large kettle for regular chai. And the short and broad glasses getting filled, emptied, cleaned and filled again. Then of course there are the trademark servings of samosas and kachoris served in leaves with their own taste that is quite unique with LC.

The ultimate rendezvous point for any ITian, a random selection of text messages from cellphones is bound to reveal messages like 'I am at LC, where are you?' or 'Come ASAP to LC' or 'LC @ 5 PM' or words to the same effect. For us LC is the place to meet, mostly due to the sweet allure of the tea at LC.

There is this shade right across the road of LC, which perhaps was earlier used as a bus stop or for some similar purpose, however it is now the designated domain of LC squatters who use their lung power for shouting out orders of tea and for the ubiquitous laughter. It is quite a coveted for whatever group of four or more who wish to sit around and while away their time at LC. LC is the place where over steaming glasses of tea and endless servings of samosa and kachoris friends are made, relationships cemented, people meet, students revel in the present, alumni's rejoice the past and freshers stop worrying about the future. LC is the place where hearts meet, whole events are decided and convened, impromptu meetings take place, a hundred songs get written, a thousand theatrics are performed, where a few hearts get broken. A lot happens over tea, at LC.

#Photo is taken from google image.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Friends: Stand By Me

What legacy I will leave after my death. That question bother me. I can give power, wealth and ego but not my friends. I am feeling that I will die in few years. Just an intuition. I want to express my feeling about my friends in cinematic way as a last note from the film 'Stand by Me'.

Stand By Me is a story of how one event can unexpectedly change lives. It seems to be a story about friends and how important they are, but this possible theme is clearly dispelled in a line from the narration spoken at the end of the film :–

`As time went on, we saw less and less of Teddy and Vern, until eventually they became just two more faces in the halls. It happens sometimes, friends come in and out of your life like busboys at a restaurant.'

Instead, this time less film is about learning from a life changing experience and actually making changes or modifying your life in some way because of it. I am blessed with really good friends who accepted me as I was and cared for me. This post is dedicated to all of mine friends especially intimate ones : Vishu, Sanju, VVS, Chaudhary, Golu, AGP, chammo, kunal, hathi, chandan, and bond. This song is for my friends whom I will never let down:-

Creativity -Search for meaning

People who achieve great success in any discipline - science, business, education, the arts, etc. are always creative. It makes sense to define the creative part of any intellectual endeavor as 'looking for patterns and relationships or trying to create them. I think it does suggest that the definition of "idea" as "a new combination of existing elements" is indeed true. The first is conscious, periodic and primarily externally motivated. The second is unconscious, ongoing and primarily internally motivated.

Truly creative people create not because they want to, but because they have to. They are in a constant state of wondering why, asking what if, and looking for meaning. When meaning isn't apparent, they have to find a way to create it. Creators are meaning makers. They’re in an ongoing (and perhaps neurotic) pursuit of existential stasis.

The search for meaning is inherently emotionally and psychologically volatile. That may be why creative masters as an archetype are moody, insecure and depressed. In fact, as Eric Maisel points out in his intriguing book "The Van Gogh Blues," it's a cliché that creativity and depression go hand-in-hand. But clichés are the children of truth. Maisel writes: "... creators are not necessarily afflicted with some biological disease or psychological disorder that causes them to experience depression at the alarming rates we see. They experience depression simply because they are caught up in a struggle to make life seem meaningful to them. People for whom meaning is no problem are less likely to experience depression. But for creators, losses of meaning and doubts about life's meaningfulness are persistent problems - even the root causes of their depression... Creators have trouble maintaining meaning. Creating is one of the ways they endeavor to maintain meaning. In the act of creation, they lay a veneer of meaning over meaninglessness and sometimes produce work that helps others maintain meaning. ... Not creating is depressing because [creators are] not making meaning when [they are] not creating."

Thanks to Nimmy for providing weblink. Click here for Source of the article.

Thought of the day: Be yourself, be natural. It is far easier than pretending to be someone else.

What does social democracy mean?

It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many.

The constitution drafted under the chairmanship of Dr. Ambedkar allows equality, liberity, fraternity and justice to every Indian citizen but the law enforcing agencies are in the hands of the elite class. Some part of the Indian bureaucracy and English speaking media is possibly made up of RNIs (Resident Non-Indians), whose children and future, they have ’secured’ in the West – much like the indifferent westener. And this may be the one quality, that possibly is the one thing, that the RNIs and foreigners share – indifference to the fate of the country.