Quick notes: Poison pill, populism...
- Telegraph editorial on the white lady's brinkmanship: The political philosophy of Sonia Gandhi was revealed in her startling statement that if there was no money available for the food security bill, the money would have to be found. She did not bother to suggest where the money was to be found. This defies even the simple common sense of the housewife who knows how to cut her coat according to the cloth that is available. It would be easy to cite Ms Gandhi’s statement as evidence of her utter irresponsibility. Thus she pushed through the food security bill without any guarantees about the delivery mechanism, because she is convinced that it will make her popular.
- White lady's poison pill for Bharat: Make no mistake, the two populist legislations of the past week, the crippling of the rupee and stagnation of infrastructure and industry in the past decade are the equivalent of an economic Hiroshima. Remember how difficult it was to rebuild a broken Japan after World War II? That’s the task that awaits India's next PM.
- For real innovation, thank the state: The Internet, GPS, touch-screen displays, and even the voice-activated smartphone assistant Siri all received state cash. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency bankrolled the Internet, and the CIA and the military funded GPS. Even the algorithm behind Google benefited from U.S. National Science Foundation funding. So, although the US is sold to us as the model example of
progress through private enterprise, innovation there has benefited from a very interventionist state.
- NE excels on women's safety: In Darjeeling, police stations across the district will tell you that in the last decade they have come across only a couple of cases (of sexual crime). That, too, in one an outsider was involved. A cop I spoke to for this article remembered just a single case of “eve teasing” – in 1981. The Khasis of Meghalaya also score very high on gender parity. So do the Nagas, Mizos, Sikkimese and generally the people of the North-East.
No comments:
Post a Comment