Gaddeswarup's blog

Manto's prayer

2012-01-28T20:01:00.005+11:00

“Dear God, Compassionate and Merciful, Master of the Universe, we who are steeped in sin, kneel in supplication before Your throne and beseech You to recall from this world Saadat Hasan Manto, son of Ghulam Hasan Manto, who was a man of great piety. Take him away, O Lord, for he runs off from fragrance, chasing filth. He hates the bright sun, preferring dark labyrinths. He has nothing but contempt for modesty but is fascinated by the naked and the shameless. He hates what is sweet, but will give his life to sample what is bitter. He does not so much as look at housewives but is entranced by the company of whores. He will not go near running waters, but loves to wade through slush. Where others weep, he laughs; where they laugh, he weeps. Evil-blackened faces he loves to wash with tender care to highlight their features. He never thinks about You, preferring to follow Satan everywhere, the same fallen angel who once disobeyed You”.
from the excellent article Ludhiana Personality :: Saadat Hasan Manto . I first came across Manto in Daisy Rockwell's posts Particularities of Partition II and The Reluctant Feudalist. His sories of Bollywood stars Stars from Another Sky too seems to be draing some attention.

Three of my favourite Telugu film songs

2012-01-27T10:04:00.008+11:00

which I remembered on the Republic Day. The only common thread seems to be that they are written in 'more or less' spoken Telugu. From వాడుక భాషలో తెలుగు కవితావికాసము by జెజ్జాల కృష్ణ మోహన రావు :
"నాకు ఛందస్సు అంటే ఇష్టం. తాళవృత్తాలు, మాత్రాఛందస్సు నాకు ప్రియమైనవి. ఈ రంగంలో కొన్ని ఏళ్లుగా నేను పరిశోధన కూడా స్వతంత్రంగా చేస్తున్నాను. ఐనా కూడా, నా మనసు లోతులలో ఉండే కొన్ని భావాలకు ఆకృతి ఇవ్వాలనే అపేక్ష కలిగినప్పుడు, గేయ కవితనో లేక వచన కవితనో ఎన్నుకొంటాను. ముఖ్యంగా, హృదయాన్ని స్పందింపజేసే శక్తి ఈ మాధ్యమానికి ఉంది. ఈ ఇంటర్నెట్ యుగంలో మనం దైనందినం మాట్లాడే వాడుక భాషలో చాలా మంది కవితలను రాస్తున్నారు, అంతకంటే ఎక్కువగా చదువుతున్నారు. ఆన్‌లైన్ పత్రికలు, బ్లాగులు కూడా వీటికి ప్రోత్సాహం ఇస్తున్నాయి. ఈ విధంగా ఇవి సామాన్య ప్రజానీకానికి అందుబాటులో ఉన్నాయి. పాతంతా మంచీ కాదు, చెడూ కాదు. కొత్తంతా చెడూ కాదూ, మంచీ కాదు. ఒక్కొక్క దానికి ఒక్కొక్క గుణం ఉంది, ప్రభావం ఉంది. కవి యోచించి మాధ్యమాన్ని ఎన్నుకోవాలి."

Karulo shikaru kelle paala buggala (Lyrics) video కారులో షికారుకెళ్ళే..
Video Dongaramudu-chigurakulalo chilakamma
Lyricsచిగురాకులలో చిలకమ్మా
Palukaradate Chiluka
Lyrics పలుకరాదటే.....చిలుకా
Two of these are also available at http://telugu-good-lyrics.blogspot.com/

I notice a coincidence. J.K. Mohana Rao mentions 'karulo shikaru..' in his article. Both he and the lyricist Athreya are from Nellore area. The lyricist of the next two songs Sumudrala Sr, was from Pedapulivarru. I was born in a village two miles from there and studied in Pedapulivarru-Guttavaripalem school for an year. The only time I saw Ghantasala was also in Pedapulivarru, the village of his wife, I think.

Changes in micro finance activity in India

2012-01-25T14:34:00.004+11:00

In response to the new regulations briefly outlibed in The RBI will now directly regulate microfinance sector, MFIs seem to be shifting their focus to better income groups. Some of the possible changes are outlined by M Rajshekhar & John Samuel Raja in ET special: New journeys, new challenges as India's microfinance promoters sail into new lending areas:

"MFIs are taking one of two approaches. Some are restructuring to exceed this 15% norm - legally - and still be eligible for priority-sector loans. Take Equitas, which has three businesses. Both its new businesses, vehicle loans and housing loans, are 100% subsidiaries of Equitas Microfinance.

Further, Equitas has acquired an NBFC, to which it will transfer all its microfinance assets. This will become the third 100% subsidiary of Equitas Microfinance, which will then be renamed Equitas Financial Services and become a holding company. Since the 15% cap will apply only to the microfinance subsidiary, all three businesses can expand without limits.

The other approach is to stay within microfinance, but tweak products and operations. As Ujjivan Microfinance, which is moving into individual loans, is doing. Managing director Samit Ghosh agrees the microfinance business is not as profitable as before, but doesn't think it makes sense to diversify.
''''''''''
IS THIS A MISSION DRIFT?

All these years, the microfinance industry promoted itself as a potent means to pull people out of poverty. But now, in its bid to survive, the industry is looking beyond the poor. Is this mission drift? Ujjivan's founder, Samit Ghosh, thinks so.
......
Says Ramesh Arunachalam, a rural finance consultant: "If they wanted to make a dent on poverty, they should have developed post-harvest loans for farmers, etc." Such loans, he says, would have enabled farmers to wait for prices to improve before they sell their produce.

Most MFIs looking to diversify say they are doing so out of duress, not because they see an opportunity. But, in doing so, they are giving up the poor plank they grew themselves and their reputations on."

From a review of David Roodman's new book on micro finance A voice of reason amid the sound and fury of the microfinance debate:
"In one sense another nail in the coffin for claims that tiny loans can end poverty, the book is also a humble manifesto for reform. While Roodman insists financial services are no likelier to "lift" people out of poverty than clean water or electricity, he argues that the thriving microfinance industry can still deliver crucial services to millions in need of better ways to manage their money."

I have not read the book but read some posts in his blog David Roodman's Microfinance Open Book Blog
. The post Finalized Brief based on Due Diligence says a brief and the draft of the book are available online.

Rereading John Harriss

2012-01-25T14:10:00.004+11:00

A few years ago, I read a couple of papers by John Harriss which seemed interesting THE GREAT TRADITION GLOBALIZES: REFLECTIONS ON TWO STUDIES OF 'THE INDUSTRIAL LEADERS' OF MADRAS and Middle Class Politics...An Exploration of Civil Society in Chennai. When I was trying to find them again, I realized that he has written much more extensively about India and plan to read some more of his work. here are some random pieces, possibly parts or beginnings of larger work, mainly chosen because they are short and I am not sure of the dates. Thinking abourt 'development' or lack of it in India, one wonders about caste, class, religion etc. The first is a quick description of literature on such topics and one instance difference in red and clay soil crop up. I do not know the title of the second; it may be a discussion about the book "Depoliticizing development: the World Bank and social capital." The third is a review of a book which I have not seen. All the three are full of neat ideas, are short and I enjoyed reading them.
Notes on Village Studies from an Anthropological Perspective.
Remarks on Social Capital.
How and Why Does Culture Matter?.

Two free courses from Udacity

2012-01-24T19:46:00.003+11:00

From Want to program a self-driving car? Stanford’s AI guru says he can teach you in seven weeks
:
"After leading Stanford’s robotic car effort to first and second place finishes in the DARPA [1] challenge, and launching the now famous Chauffeur project at Google, Sebastian Thrun broke more new ground by teaching a Stanford computer science course online to 160,000 students last fall. After his invitation for anyone, worldwide, to audit the course went viral, registrations went through the roof.

Inspired by the class’s success (248 students achieved perfect scores — none of them enrolled at Stanford), Sebastian has taken online education to the next level, starting a free online “university” named Udacity, through his startup, Know Labs. For now, Udacity only has two classes, but they are both likely to be very popular.

The first is a basic programming class, Computer Science 101, “Building a Search Engine”, which aims to teach anyone eager enough to do the work how to program a search engine in just seven weeks. I wouldn’t count on displacing Google right after finishing, but knowing Thrun, he is quite capable of imparting an amazing amount of knowledge in a short time.
The second — probably more interesting to the many of our readers who already know a lot about programming — is Computer Science 373, “Programming a Robotic Car,” which aims to teach you to do just that [2], also in seven weeks. It is likely to be a real eye-opener, and quite a lot of fun, but please don’t take your final project out on the street near my house!"
Discussion by Felix Salmon in the post Udacity and the future of online universities

A survey paper on corruption

2012-01-22T19:51:00.004+11:00

Corruption in Developing Countries by Ben Olken and Rohini Pande(a short summary in Lifting the curtain on corruption in developing countries) has the following intriguing passage:

"In some cases one can use the theory of market equilibrium, combined with data on market activity, to estimate the amount of corruption. In a pioneering study, Fisman (2001) applied this approach to estimate the value of political connections to Indonesian president Soeharto. Specifically, he obtained an estimate from a Jakarta consulting firm of how much each publicly traded firm was “connected” to Soeharto, on a scale of 0-4. He then estimated how much each firm’s price moved when Soeharto fell ill to estimate the stock market assessment of the value of those political connections. If the efficient markets hypothesis holds, then the change in stock
market value surrounding these events captures the value of the political connection to the firm. Since investment bankers in Jakarta estimated that the total market would fall by 20 percent if Soeharto died, he can calibrate these estimates to estimate the total “value” of the connections to Soeharto. On net, for the most connected firms he estimates that about 23 percent of their value was due to Soeharto’s connections.

The Fisman market approach is replicable in any case where one has data on firms’
connections to prominent politicians and when the politician experiences health shocks. For example, Fisman et al (2006) has replicated the same approach for the United States, looking at the value of connections to former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, using shocks while he was a candidate and while he was in office. In a marked contrast with the Soeharto paper, he finds zero effect of Cheney’s heart attacks on the value of Cheney-connected stocks."
P.S. 'Intriguing'? Halliburton, KBR, and Iraq war contracting: A history so far via TomDispatch

A Bhanupriya dance

2012-01-21T20:34:00.003+11:00

I seem to be coming across Telugu films after 1960 through blogs like Minai's Cinema Nritya Gharana. Here is a dance and song that I enjoyed Aakasana Aasala Harivillu ; the description of the film and several other dances, I found from the link above.

Lant Pritchett Interview

2012-01-21T11:34:00.003+11:00

Lant Pritchett talks to us about education, migration and development (via Chris Blattman)
Some earlier posts about Lant Pritchett here and here
Parts of his coming book on education available here and some of his work on India; see in particular his paper "Is India a Flailing State? Detours on the Four Lane Highway to Modernization."

My first kinige book

2012-01-20T11:51:00.003+11:00

I finally bought వేలుపిళ్లై by C. Ramachandra Rao through http://kinige.com/. I heard of C. Ramachandra Rao as a tennis player during my college days and was surprised by his excellent stories later on. A review by Jampala Chowdary here'
Kinige started about an year ago by Kiran Kumar Chava and friends. I believe Kiran and his wife gave up lucrative jobs for what seemed a risky venture and seem to be doing fine now and it seems very useful for Telugu enthusiasts living abroad. Ipad Users require Blue Fire Reader

Lots of neat ideas

2012-01-17T16:37:00.002+11:00

2012 : WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?
My own favourite Galois theory. About his last letter containg his ideas Herman Weyl said "This letter, if judged by the novelty and profundity of ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial piece of writing in the whole literature of mankind."

Econ 1 from Brad DeLong

2012-01-17T15:02:00.005+11:00

From ECON 1: SPRING 2012: PRELIMINARY OUTLINE:
"Textbook:

•Reich, Tyson, DeLong--currently being written...
Auxilliary reading books:

•Partha Dasgupta: Economics: A Very Short Introduction  
•Paul Seabright: The Company of Strangers

•Milton Friedman and Rose Director Friedman: Free to Choose"

I read the first two books but I am not sure whether my understabding of economic matters improved.

As Mike Reay says in
ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERT AUTHORITY IN AMERICAN ECONOMICS:
"....it seems as if the ‘ideas’ used to
distinguish economics from a spreadsheet program were those of what might be called the ‘core’ of modern American economics, that is, a series of insights and practical techniques centered primarily on basic microeconomics. Core skills such as instinctively considering costs as well as benefits, focusing on incentives and maximizing decisions, assuming prices respond to supply and demand, and acknowledging opportunity costs, were what most subjects mentioned when asked to identify ‘what economists know that others don’t.’

This ‘core’ has in the past sometimes been glossed as simply ‘mere undergraduate level’ theory used by lowly applied practitioners (e.g. Enthoven 1963, Allen 1977, Hamilton 1992), but this is misleading insofar as it was the academic as much as the nonacademic interviewees who identified it as central to their unique expertise. Furthermore, as a set of almost unconscious attitudes, tacit skills, and habits developed through extensive experience working as an economist, the core was not thought to be something easily picked up just by doing a BA ineconomics, let alone by running a few regressions on Microsoft Excel; I think there’s sort of a reasoning of ‘maximize this subject to that’ that has implications that are second nature to us, which aren’t necessarily understood [by others]. Now that’s not something that could beexpressed in five minutes. The idea could be expressed in five minutes, but then the doctor, for example, would have to practice it for a while before it became natural."
Delong says in John Stewart Mill vs. the European Central Bank:
"One of the dirty secrets of economics is that there is no such thing as “economic theory.” There is simply no set of bedrock principles on which one can base calculations that illuminate real-world economic outcomes. ....
Economists have none of that. The “economic principles” underpinning their theories are a fraud – not fundamental truths but mere knobs that are twiddled and tuned so that the “right” conclusions come out of the analysis.
The “right” conclusions depend on which of two types of economist you are. One type chooses, for non-economic and non-scientific reasons, a political stance and a set of political allies, and twiddles and tunes his or her assumptions until they yield conclusions that fit their stance and please their allies. The other type takes the carcass of history, throws it into the pot, turns up the heat, and boils it down, hoping that the bones will yield lessons and suggest principles to guide our civilization’s voters, bureaucrats, and politicians as they slouch toward utopia."

P.S. May be there is still hope for me. I got the answer right for the question on opportunity cost in the post
Do economists understand the concept of opportunity cost?
May be not. An older post Opportunity Cost says that 78 percent of the economists got it wrong.

Mr. Daisey visits China

2012-01-17T14:35:00.001+11:00

Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory Transcript (via Ellen Contini-Morava)

Chris Cook predicts fall in oil prices

2012-01-16T17:58:00.003+11:00

may be to the extent of $45 a barrel. I do not understand the discussion but many of the commentors seem to like his analysis though many do not agree with his prediction Chris Cook: Naked Oil:
"History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and my forecast is that the crude oil price will fall dramatically during the first half of 2012, possibly as low as $45 to $55 per barrel."

via
Housing and Oil:Dark Inventory Rules in 'The Automatic Earth'.

P.S.Why expect S&P, Moody’s, or Fitch to know it's junk when expert musicians can't tell a Stradivarius from a fiddle?

Happy Sankranti

2012-01-15T12:51:00.003+11:00

A random selection from YouTube
"SANKRANTI.mp4 "
"Vachenu Sankranti - KUCHIPUDI "
"Gobbiyalo"
"Palletooru - Vachchindoi Sankaranti - Ghantasala music "

A long post about the north Indian version in 'atul's bollywood song a day- with full lyrics':
Lo aa gayee lohree vey

Two articles on democratic politics

2012-01-14T15:46:00.003+11:00

Both from the archives of EPW, both wondering Indians following the politics of non-coperation, hartals and agitation which were useful during the independence movement. Beeteille says in his article:
"Ambedkar appealed against the politics of mobilisation in the altered conditions
created by the Constitution. He conceded that such politics may have been necessary to bring about a change of regime but that it could no longer be justified under the
new regime. What does it mean to adopt a system of constitutional democracy? "It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and
satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for economic
and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional
methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification
for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us" (ibid: 978). It is no small achievement of Indian de- mocracy that, despite the economic crises and social turbulence the country has undergone, the Constitution has remained in place for close to six decades. It has been amended many times, and there have been those who have said that it has been de- faced and defiled [Palkhivala 1974]. Yet it remains as an important signpost for the judiciary, and also the legislature. How deeply has the Constitution influenced the outlook of ordinary citizens in India? Ambedkar had hoped that our people would learn the lessons of constitutional morality in course of time. How much have they in fact learnt? Not very long ago, a prominent member of the union cabinet had said, UI know that most members of Parliament see the constitu-tion for the first time when they take an oath on it" [Guha 2007: 660]."

Unfortnately both the articles are now behind the firewall and I am enclosing the abstracts.

"In the Name of Politics" by Dipesh Chakrabarty
Abstract:
"The histories of sovereignty and democracy in India have taken a route different from the trajectory adopted by some western countries. In India, colonial sovereignty was often reduced to domination, yet ?internal wars? waged on the basis of religious, caste or even linguistic divisions, continued. Post-colonial India remains thus, a social body perpetually traversed by relations of war. As this article argues, neither colonial rule, nationalism nor even democracy in India has seen the production of a sovereignty necessary for the construction of a ?society? amenable to disciplinary power and its politics. Indian democracy thus furnishes an interesting case where the political task of creating the typically modern mix of ?sovereignty? (rights) and disciplinary domination arises not before but after the coming of universal adult franchise and a democratic polity."

Constitutional Morality by Andre Beteille
Abstract:
"The strength or weakness of constitutional morality in contemporary India has to be understood in the light of a cycle of escalating demands from the people and the callous response of successive governments to those demands. In a parliamentary democracy, the obligations of constitutional morality are expected to be equally binding on the government and the opposition. In India, the same political party treats these obligations very differently when it is in office and when it is out of it. This has contributed greatly to the popular perception of our political system as being amoral."

The second artcle I saw via Guru's post
Beteille’s condemnation and Ramachandra Guha’s hope.

Similar problems seem to be cropping up in 'advanced' democracies too. Daren Acegmolu says in his answers
FiveBooks Interviews > Daron Acemoglu on Inequality:
"Q.
Jeff Sachs was giving a talk in Manhattan the other night about his new book, The Price of Civilization. He was spitting blood that Obama was in town again, not for constructive reasons, but to attend yet another fundraiser on the Upper East Side. Inevitably, rich people are going to have more influence when every politician from the president down constantly needs money from them.
A.
They constantly need money, they like talking to them, they respect their opinion. Jeff Sachs and I have had many differences but in this case I fully agree with him.
Q.
That’s what’s interesting about Occupy Wall Street. Its supporters aren’t just crazy lefties who don’t believe in free markets, but respected economists.
A.
I’m definitely in that camp. I do believe in markets. I passionately believe in the importance of property rights and private property. I think they are absolute sine qua nons for prosperity. But I also believe that these things are very political and the politics shouldn’t be one-sided. Gore Vidal said, “The United States has only one party – the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.” If that is true, that’s a real threat to a free market and a fair society. For that reason I think Occupy Wall Street is very important. It’s a grassroots movement that tries to stand up to this tendency of our political system."

Kisine Apna Bana Ke Mujhko

2012-01-13T12:09:00.002+11:00

from Patita

Video version Kisine Apna Bana Ke Mujhko
Plain versionKisine Apna Bana Ke Mujhko

Guha on the defeat of the communists in India

2012-01-11T19:34:00.004+11:00

The artcle After the Fall is a few months old but I came across it only today. Guha makes many good points, particularly about the ideological rigidity of CPI(M), CPI (ML)...But sometimes they seemed to depend on Russisn or Chinese interpretations depending on their allegiance. Just like Guha's it is also my impression (from the its I know from coastal Andhra) that in general top communist leaders are less (financially) corrupt than the political leaders of other parties. However, I am not sure whether this is true of the middle level leadership. In the early days, the communists propogated their ideology through workshops and culural organizations like 'praja natya mandali' and communism provided a quick world view and perhaps a bit of a substitute for religion though I did not see the communists breaking off completely from religious practices. These worhshops etc more or less gone now whatever little communism there is in Andhra is inherited communism (it may be different in Telangana where 'jana natya mandali' seems to have some role). Another point that Guha does not mention is that party leadership came from the 'upper' castes. They had contacts with the less priviliged castes, but their children mostly married with in their castes and they were not able to develop leaders from the other castes. These are my impressions from coatal Andhra but I think that most of Guha's points are correct and the article, as usual with Guha, is very readale.
P.S. I have been sent these articles by A.G. Noorani containing "Extracts from interviews of India's first-generation Communist leaders throwing light on some turning points in the history of Indian communism."
Communist memories
Of Stalin, Telangana & Indian revolution
Of Quit India, Nehru & CPI split

Roy Lisker on Grothendieck

2012-01-10T17:33:00.002+11:00

Visiting Alexandre Grothendieck
I came across the name of Roy Lisker in the post
Galois Conference Videos
where there are links to Roy Lisker reports of the conference.

Manto on Bombay

2012-01-09T01:53:00.007+11:00

From Saadat Hasan Manto :
"It was a blow to have to leave Bombay, where I had lived such a busy life. Bombay had taken me in, a wandering outcast thrown out by even his family. She had told me, “You can live happily here on two paise a day or on ten thousand rupees. Or if you want, you can be the saddest person in the world at either price. Here you can do whatever you want, and no one will think you’re strange. Here no one will tell you what to do. You will have to do every difficult thing on your own, and you will have to make every important decision by yourself. I don’t care if you live on the sidewalk or in a magnificent mansion, I don’t care if you stay or go. I’ll always be here.” I was disconsolate after leaving Bombay. My good friends were there. I had gotten married there. My first child was born there, as was my second. There I had gone from earning a couple rupees a day to thousands - hundreds of thousands - and there I had spent it all. I loved it, and I still do!"
It was like that for me too. I was a villager from a farming community who somehow developed an interest in pure mathematics. I found the university courses boring and stopped attending classes, was thrown out of college twice and out of home once and finally reached Bombay in 1964. The next fiteen years, I pursued my dream in Bombay helped by brahmin and American teachers.
'Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan'

An article on C.R. Rao

2012-01-08T23:32:00.002+11:00

by Julian Champnik in Significance,Dec2011, Vol. 8 Issue 4, p175-178
C.R. Rao (behind a firewall)
The article is based on an interview last year. At the age of 91, he still remembers the slights at the homes of his brahmin friends in his school days: "I would not be allowed into Brahmin homes. Some would allow me into courtyard, or to the front steps. If I was thirsty on the way home my friends were allowed to pout water into my cupped hands outside, but not into a cup..."
This must have been in the thirties. The situation changed, at least in some places. In the fifties, I actually stayed in the house of a brahmin friend of my father. But I stayed in the verandah and had access to some outer rooms and ate in the verandah. A professor in the Indian Statisticl Institute ( where Rao had several brahmin Ph.D. students) told me last year that he still observes caste 'rules' when he visits his father in the village.

John Quiggin: "Solar rises, nuclear falls"

2012-01-07T13:44:00.002+11:00

John Quiggin's post Solar rises, nuclear falls links to his article The end of the nuclear renaissance. In the post, he says that "but that’s only half the story and probably the less interesting half. The real news of 2011 was the continued massive drop in the price of solar PV, which renders obsolete any analysis based on data before about 2010. In particular, anyone who thinks nuclear is the most promising candidate to replace fossil fuels really needs to recalibrate their views. There’s a case to be made for nuclear as a backstop option, but it’s not nearly as strong as it was even two years ago."
From the article:
"The “solar vs. nuclear” dispute had been largely symbolic for several decades. After rapid growth in the 1960s and 1970s, new installations of nuclear power came to a grinding halt. This was partly a result of safety fears created by the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Economic factors were even more significant. Far from being too cheap to meter, nuclear power turned out to be far more expensive than its main rival, coal, primarily because of unpredictable capital costs and generally high interest rates.

As a result, since 1977, when the River Bend plant in Louisiana commenced construction, not one new nuclear-power plant has been ordered and completed in the United States. The situation in most other developed countries was similar."
It is not clear to me why UPA is still pursuing 'nuclear power': New rules give some relief to nuclear suppliers.

Daren Acemoglu at FiveBooks Interviews

2012-01-07T12:48:00.002+11:00

discusses raising inequality mostly in the US (It seems "...over the last 30 years, top income shares have increased substantially in English-speaking countries and in India and China, but not in continental European countries or Japan.")
FiveBooks Interviews > Daron Acemoglu on Inequality (via 3quarksdaily).
Excerpts:
"Inequality is one of the things that has changed quite a lot in the United States and other economies over the last three decades or so. A lot of things don’t change radically, but inequality has. Understanding why that has happened and what it implies for our society is important.....The default position of economists is that inequality reflects the unequal human capital or productive capabilities of different workers. If you start with that premise – that what people earn is commensurate with their contribution to their employer, and also perhaps to society – then greater inequality tells you something about how people’s productivities have evolved over time.....My caricature of a layman’s view is that inequality is an indication of something that is failing in society. If a group of people used to earn twice as much as another group of people, and then, over 20 years, that ratio increases to four, that’s something that is concerning and might indicate a failure of social policy. My own view is a mixture of the two."
He goes on to discuss the research of Atkinson, Piketty and Saez
"Some very interesting things have been going on in the top 10%, and especially the top 1%. Atkinson, Piketty and Saez have really been pioneers in this and this article is an overview of much of their research. What the paper shows is that concurrent with the increase in the college premium and inequality between a median worker and a worker at the bottom, there has been an even sharper increase in the share of the top 10% and top 1% in national income in the US, Canada, UK and so on...
For example, they emphasise that it’s very difficult to account for these figures with the standard labour supply, labour demand explanation that Goldin and Katz emphasise. That’s not going to work, and we really have to think about things like social policies, progressive taxation and the politics of it."
Acemoglu's own views seem to be in his book with James Robinson "Why Nations Fail", which is also discussed in the interview: "The absolutist institutions created a very unequal distribution of political power and a very unequal distribution of economic gains in society and the two became synergistic – the very unequal distribution of political power locked in a very unequal distribution of economics gains. This created a vicious circle, but the conflict it engendered sometimes led to a breaking down of the institutions that this unequal distribution depended on, opening the way for more open institutions, which are one of the engines of prosperity.

The last part of the book is the converse story, which is how these inclusive institutions, which create a more equitable distribution of political power and so a more level playing field, are going to be constantly challenged. These inclusive institutions don’t guarantee that everything is going to be equally distributed but will at least prevent the most egregious and unfair distribution of resources. They also ensure a more equal distribution of political power in society. But there is no guarantee that they will last for ever. If you are able to garner a little more support, and a little more political power, the danger that you can start tweaking these institutions to your benefit is always present. There are continuous challenges to the inclusive nature of political institutions. So in this framework you can see the threat of the increased inequality in the US as a symptom of the sorts of challenges to the fairly inclusive set of institutions that the US has had for over 200 years."

There is also a discussion in Economist's View Puward Redistribution in the US.

Brief Guide to DSM

2012-01-04T10:52:00.001+11:00

DSM – 100 words
;
"DSM is an American classification system that has dominated since 1980. It is disliked by many for reducing diagnostic skills to a cold list of operational criteria, yet embraced by researchers believing that it represents the first whiff of sense in an area of primitive dogma. It has almost foundered by confusing reliability with validity but the authors seem to recognise its errors and are hoping for rebirth in its 5th revision due in May 2013. The initials do not stand for Diagnosis as a Source of Money or Diagnosis for Simple Minds but the possibility of confusion is present."
via MindHacks who has the additional remark:
"The original British plans, of course, were to have psychiatric diagnoses based on measuring the stiffness of one’s upper lip – an objective and reliable approach that was sadly neglected."

A telugu bhajan

2012-01-02T20:52:00.002+11:00

Though an agnostic tending towards atheism, many of my favourite songs are bhajans from telugu and hindi films. The follwing has been a favourite for over 60 years.
Sarvamangalanama Seetharama - Bhaktha Pothana(1942) - V.Nagayya.

Atul reminiscences his first exposure to Binaca Geetmala

2011-12-30T10:41:00.009+11:00

in 1971 Zindagi ek safar hai suhaana. I enjoyed reading this very much since my experiences of villages, towns, cities and travel are similar. My exposure to Binaca Geetmalais less vivid, nor did I know the name of the host Ameen Sayani. I think that it was in the early fifties and if I remember right, the last song would be one by K.L. Saigal. Normally we would leave then but after a while, Saigal's voice grew on me to the stage where he became my favourite singer ( after Ghantasala of course as is common with many Telugus). I left home for college in 1954 and do not remember much more of Binaca Geetmala. It may be one of those programs which contributed a bit to national integration.
P.S. Atul says "The programme where K L Saigal’s song was the last song was a daily programme called “Puraani filmon ke geet” and it was broadcast in the morning between 7-30 AM to 8 AM." See http://atulsongaday.me/2011/06/30/bhajoon-main-to-bhaav-se/ and other posts in the above blog for more informatio on “Puraani filmon ke geet”. See also Unni at Hamara forums and Geethamanian's post with links to several songs and tunes Growing Up With Magical Melodies.

Two articles on transparency

2011-12-29T08:38:00.000+11:00

The Destruction of Economic Facts by Hernando de Soto The Real Housewives of Wall Street by Matt Taibbi
(The above two via The Browser's Best of 2011 http://thebrowser.com/)

Steve Waldman has a different take:
Why is finance so complex?

Improving memory for sea snails

2011-12-28T15:29:00.003+11:00

From Science News article Staggered lessons may work better :
"Kandel and others have worked out a lot of the biochemical details of how sea snails learn and form memories. When the creatures start to learn something, two major molecular cascades kick off in nerve cells. Genes jump into action, churning out proteins that then spur other genes into action. One of these cascades happens quickly, and the other one is sluggish, but both need to deliver their products at the same time for a memory to stick.

Byrne and his team used this knowledge to make a mathematical model of how best to deliver this biochemical double-hit. The team asked the computer how to spread out five shocks over a period of several hours. Instead of evenly spacing the five at 20-minute intervals, the model suggested a completely different pattern: Give three doses 10 minutes apart, followed by a fourth dose five minutes later, wait a half hour, and then give a final dose.

“You have these irregular intervals between the treatments,” Byrne says. “That’s the very nonintuitive part of it that you couldn’t have predicted.”

When Byrne and his team tried this training protocol, it worked better than the standard 20-minutes-apart training doses. With the standard protocol, the sea snails forgot what they’d learned after five days. But on the enhanced protocol, the sea snails remembered five days later."

Discussion on India's low scores in Pisa rankings

2011-12-28T08:21:00.002+11:00

with relevant links in Tyler Cowen's post Why is India so low in the Pisa rankings?
Edward Berman pointed some of these problems in 1983 "...this emphasis on higher education has led to reduced levels of support for primary education, particularly in rural areas."

Tendulkar sizzles

2011-12-28T08:15:00.005+11:00

Tendulkar's brilliance again reflects the Don
If Tendulkar keeps batting like this who cares whether he scores another century or not? Perhaps that is too much to expect.

Kuffir interviews Ambedkar

2011-12-25T13:09:00.002+11:00

Imaginary interview What does Dr.Ambedkar say about the Bhagvat Gita? . Having struggled with Rig Veda and some other books before, I found this very reasable and quick introduction to some of the 'mimamsa' systems.

Happy holidays

2011-12-24T10:40:00.004+11:00

Freedom

An interesting Indian dance

2011-12-21T10:53:00.004+11:00

Apparently famous but I missed it until I saw it inMinai's post Choreographer/Dancer Jack Cole and "Hindu Swing":
The Creation of Woman
Video here
Bhaskar was the son of Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhury whose sculpture Triumph of labour (also here. A write up about MODERN INDIAN SCULPTURE ), I saw often on the Marina beach in Madras in my student days.
A part of Bhaskar Roy Chowdury's interestin life here.

Two books on education

2011-12-21T10:11:00.002+11:00

Just browsing through John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education which is available online. Apparently a successful teacher "In 1991, he wrote a letter announcing his retirement, titled I Quit, I Think, to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, saying that he no longer wished to "hurt kids to make a living."". Chapter 1 has three sections about "How Hindu Schooling Came To America". An excerpt:
"In 1797, [Andrew]Bell, now forty-two, published an account of what he had seen and done. Pulling no punches, he praised Hindu drill as an effective impediment to learning writing and ciphering, an efficient controlon reading development. A twenty-year-old Quaker, Joseph Lancaster, read Bell’s pamphlet, thought deeply on the method, and concluded, ironically, it would be a cheap way to awaken intellect in the lower classes, ignoring the Anglican’s observation (and Hindu experience) that it did just the opposite."

Another book which I read in parts is "Against Scooling" again by successful teacher Stanley Aronowitz reviewdin TLS Against Schooling: For an Education that Matters
. Much of the criticism seems justified but the solutions seemed vague to me.

Some science links

2011-12-21T10:08:00.000+11:00

From Lessons from Plants in Pain, or What We Talk About When We Talk to Ourselves (via Ed Yong's Sunday Links)
"It was in the early 1980s that a few scientists first began to report on trees that seemed to send each other stress signals. One was a zoologist named David Rhoades, at the time studying Red alder (Alnus rubra) and Sitka willow (Salix sitchensis) defense mechanisms at the University of Washington. Rhoades fed caterpillars leaves from trees their brethren had previously attacked. He found that they began to lose their appetites, and often died prematurely. Presumably this was because of some chemical compound the trees were able to release into their leaves as a form of rapid resistance—precisely the kind of thing he’d been looking for.

But Rhoades was surprised to discover that the very same thing happened to caterpillars fed the leaves of undamaged control trees, planted a little distance away. ......
At this point, the evidence that plants can receive, act on, and benefit from specific signals produced by their distressed coequals is pretty compelling."
The post also links to an article on J.C. Bose Lessons from Plants in Pain, or What We Talk About When We Talk to Ourselves

Carl Zimmer on McGurk Effect and related work The Brain Sewing Audio to Video, and Rubber Hands Onto People

Razib Khan discusses a paper on Promiscuity and vaginal bacterial diversity in mice.

From Science News Uncommitted newbies can foil forceful few

From Science Daily Major Step Forward Towards Drought Tolerance in Crops

On the work of some philanthropic foundations

2011-12-19T22:01:00.004+11:00

From David Warsh' review How Business Schools Got to Be the Way They Are of "The Roots, Rituals, and Rhetorics of Change: North American Business Schools after the Second World War" by Mie Augier and James G. March:
"Augier and March begin their account with a chapter on Abraham Flexner. It was Flexner’s 1910 report on medical education in the United States and Canada, Bulletin Number Four, from the Carnegie Foundation, that guided foundations’ investment in medical schools for a crucial twenty years after it appeared. The US was suffering from “a century of overproduction of cheap doctors,” Flexner wrote. Universities, not commercial establishments, should train physicians. Fundamental knowledge of science and medicine, not apprenticeships, should be the basis for their education. Professionalism, meaning peer review, should be the rule.

It worked. Within a decade of Flexner’s prescription, the number of medical schools declined dramatically; the quality of students, faculty and instruction in the remaining schools substantially improved; and science, biochemistry in particular, became pervasive in the curriculum. Not surprisingly, in the 1950s and ’60s, the Flexner Report became a model for foundations wishing to reshape the business schools.
.....
It was RAND Corp. that provided the most stimulating incubator of change in the years after World War Two. An acronym for Research And Development, RAND was a private facility originally chartered by the US Air Force to explore ways of organizing scientific and technological knowledge for military purposes. Its first Pentagon boss was Gen. Curtis LeMay. But RAND’s Southern California headquarters, across the street from the Santa Monica pier, quickly grew into a kind of universal think-tank, spinning out important work on strategic thinking, decision making, organization theory and economics of all sorts, much of which found its way into business school curricula.
....
None of it would have happened the way it did without the Ford Foundation. Chartered in 1936, the philanthropy in the 1950s supported a number of liberal causes, among them public broadcasting in the United States, nation-building in Asia and support for the social and behavioral sciences. ....And so it was that the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh – a small, unranked, and unaccredited school at a second-tier engineering institute, as the authors put it – became a poster- child of the new management education.
....
There is, after all, a distinct possibility that the attempt to improve the intellectual environment of the business schools overshot and produced something else instead. In any event, the book ends on a note of disappointment:

"As the scholars and policy makers who grew up during the Great Depression and the Second World War and launched their careers in the 1950s and 1960s were gradually removed from the scene, they were replaced by individuals who grew up in different times and were imbued with different, less academic, and more self-interest-oriented perspectives. The “golden age” was transformed to a significant extent into an era of the glorification of huge fortunes and of those who accumulated them, the anointing of greed as a social virtue, and the substitution of the lessons of experience for the lessons of analysis and research.

But, briefly, there was a Camelot.""
Reading this review, I was reminded of Edward H. Bernan's book The Ideology of Philanthropy: The influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations on American foreign policy which takes a less charitable view of the vision of these foundations. A recent discussion of the book by ichael Barker at 'Dissident Voice' The Ideology of Philanthropy says "Seen through the eyes of their elitist foundation executives, democracy only functions when it is ran by the few for the many. Education thus takes a key place in the successful promotion of elite governance both on domestic and international planes of action; and although not well known, Edward Berman, professor emeritus of the University of Louisville, has written an important book that examines just this subject. By reviewing Berman’s study The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy (State University of New York Press, 1983), this article aims to publicize his vitally important, though oft neglected, ideas on the anti-democratic nature of liberal philanthropy."

An interview with Edward Berman and an excerpt from the book with references to education in India

A Rafi song

2011-12-19T13:25:00.002+11:00

with dance by Asha Parekh Rafi - Nache Man Mora Magan - Meri Surat Teri Ankhen [1963] which I camw across (possibly) only yeasterday. Music by S.D. Burman.
And a Mannay Dey-Kishore Kumar duet from a different film Ek Chatur Nar

Mark Thoma hosts a discussion

2011-12-19T12:35:00.003+11:00

FDL Book Salon Welcomes Robert H. Frank, The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good. From the introductory remarks:
"When households engage in an arms race for positional goods, behavior that benefits individuals can be damaging to the group as a whole. Thus, the presence of positional goods gives markets a way to fail over and above the traditional sources of market failure discussed in textbooks. I do have a few questions and mild disagreements, we’ll get to those in the discussion, but the main idea in the book – understanding the relationship between individual maximizing behavior and aggregate outcomes – is essential in determining when and how governments ought to be involved in economic affairs. When individual behavior aggregates into what’s best for the community, there is no need for government to intervene. But when that’s not true – and this book adds to the list or reasons to suspect there are important cases when it’s not – there’s a role for government to play."

An earlier discussion of the book in Savage Minds Darwinian Tax Reform.

Possibly related POSITIONAL GOODS AND ECONOMICS.
The Continuing Relevance of Fred Horsch's Insights on Markets and Morality.
The Role of Public Sector in Development... by Vernon Ruttan
Bombay Plan

Lyla's take on Ramayana

2011-12-14T08:34:00.005+11:00

Via జానుతెనుగు సొగసులు , from a comment of Lyla Yerneni
Re: Some more on the raamaayaNa debate.... :

"Rama simply was looking for a missing wife. Rama did not go looking for his wife, because he is worried what other people may say on CNN, if he doesn't. He went after her because he loved her. It is as simple as that. Is it so hard to believe, :-)if not now, that once there was a man who loved his wife?:-)"

It seems that Lyla's creativity was not stilled by teachers Teachers Don’t Like Creative Students.

Lekhini may be used to convert some of the passages to Telugu.

How do doctors die?

2011-12-11T12:58:00.002+11:00

Having come to that age when old friends are falling one by one or ill and looking for alternative medical treatments and being constantly bombared with advertisements about funeral expenses, it is reassuring to see this artcle How Doctors Die via Ed Yong's Sunday links:

Links, Dec. 9, 2011

2011-12-09T13:13:00.006+11:00

From Virender Sehwag's vision of the future, and David Warner:
"And there is something more important here than just a mindshift, than changes in tactics or techniques. The game must always move forwards and renew itself. Essentially it must accelerate to match the speed of the culture in which it exists. Test cricket of the 1950s is as distant now as the rest of that decade, with its housewives and its radio plays and its music hall conservatism. Warner may or may not succeed as a Test match opener – do you want to bet against Viru? – but plenty like him will. At some point or other they will be the norm, and they will be standing on Sehwag's shoulders, the shoulders of a giant. If he is not the best batsman of his time (and he might be), he is the most significant; a genius and a visionary with it."

From The idea of Dev Anand:
"The intellectual rigour of Hollywood has mostly eluded mainstream Indian cinema, which largely depended on capable writers and musicians to sustain the films.
Dev Anand was fortunate to have Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh, Shailendra and Sachin Dev Burman to bail him out. Without them, the idea of Dev Anand and the middle classes he wooed would be jostling with real life, just as Urdu has been battling for
survival in today’s cinema halls and outside."

Two discussions on Gita with some interesting and some strange comments:
The Agenda of the Gita by Bhpinder Singh
The Bhagavad Gita Revisited - Part 1 by Namit Arora

From "A Bluesy Road-Novel with a Lot of Economic Theory and Analysis":
"Q: Why teach The Grapes of Wrath and not some other novel?
A: Good question. First and foremost, it’s an incredibly moving novel that—I openly admit—continues to make me laugh and cry. Now laughing and crying are not necessary for good pedagogy. But it seems to me that if a fact-based story about economic history can make a grown man and professor of economics cry, it must have something important to say. The visible hand of class conflict needs to be aired and this novel does it."

Ed yong on Henrik Ehrsson,The master of illusions with a link to Ed Yong's article in Nature Out-of-body experience: Master of illusion. From the Nature article:
"Yet Ehrsson's illusions have shown that such certainties, built on a lifetime of experience, can be disrupted with just ten seconds of visual and tactile deception. This surprising malleability suggests that the brain continuously constructs its feeling of body ownership using information from the senses — a finding that has earned Ehrsson publications in Science and other top journals, along with the attention of other neuroscientists.......
At the time, some scientists and members of the public were openly sceptical that the illusion really worked. But on a trip to Ehrsson's lab this September, I was convinced. The goggles I wore displayed the view from a camera pointing at my back (see 'Out-of-body experience'). Ehrsson tapped my chest with one plastic rod while using a second one to synchronously prod at the camera. I saw and felt my chest being prodded at the same time as I saw a picture of myself from behind. Within ten seconds, I felt as if I was being pulled out of my real body and was floating several feet behind it."

Images of coastal Andhra

2011-12-09T09:45:00.003+11:00

in this series Coast Under Attack - Part 1 (Telugu language) by Saraswati Kavula. A write up about her in The Hindu Rooted to the ground. I just came across this videos and was mainly fascinated by the images of an area in which I grew up and thrilled to hear the spoken Telugu from different parts of the region.

Doing nothing helps

2011-12-08T18:02:00.002+11:00

sometimes When Nothing Works:
"I'd had tendinitis in my elbow for over a year. Even something as gentle as twisting a doorknob made me wince in pain. I went to see my brother, Bertie, who also happens to be my doctor.

As Bertie examined my elbow, I reminded him of everything I had done to try to fix my problem. When it began to hurt, I used ibuprofen. When that didn't work, we tried two injections of cortisone, six months apart. Meanwhile, I did physical therapy, tried ultrasound, used a brace, performed daily exercises, applied ice, and went to acupuncture and massage. Pushed to the edge, I even did an experimental therapy — a platelet-rich plasma injection, which had gained media attention because some high-profile athletes had used it. The shot was incredibly painful and only made my problem worse.

"Nothing has helped!" I complained.

"I have an idea," Bertie said. "Something we haven't yet tried."

"What?" I hoped it wouldn't be too time-consuming or expensive.

"You just said it yourself," he replied. "Nothing."

He suggested I stop all treatments for the next six months. "All your attempts to fix your elbow might just be agitating it," he told me. "I bet after a few months of doing nothing the pain will just go away."

I was skeptical but game. Sure enough, within a few months, my pain had disappeared."

Possibly related The Evolved Self-Management System by Nicholas Humphrey (via 3quarksdaily)

Future of small farmers

2011-12-07T08:36:00.005+11:00

Chris Blattman has a post Questions more important than you might think: Are small farms in India inefficient? wondering about the efficiency of small farms in India. I remember Katapati Muahari Rao tellings me that future of farming in India is in large farms of the order of 2000-3000 acres, leasing land from small farmers and bringing in technology. It was a brief conversation and the role of the small farmers was not clear to me. There is a model from Latin America 'Grobocopatel' mentioned in an earlier post Agriculture Process Outsourcing by an Argentine Patel ; again the role of small farmers is not explicit in this description. In a brief newspaper report World’s ‘biggest farmer’ says future is in outsourcing Gustavo Grobocopatel says:
“What they (farmers) could possibly do—as my experience in Latin America tells me—is that villages can pool together the land and run it like cooperatives.”

This, according to Grobocopatel, “is agribusiness in the new era of knowledge society” and would further help the farmers do well in times when input costs are swelling, thereby forcing many to quit farming as returns don’t match to the costs.

“You work according to your strengths: you good at driving trucks, be in transportation; you good in getting people on to the fields, be in the harvesting,” he says.
In an interview , Gustavo Grobocopatel talks of vertical as well as horizantal integration. Their organization Grupo Los Grobo uses GM seeds and many of their methods seem to avoid the degradation of land. Most of the articles about Grupo Los Grobo and Gustavo Grobocopatel I could find are in Spanish and I am not able to find any more details. But their methods seem worth looking into.
P.S. On the other hand Vamsi Vakulabharanam and others describe a situation in Andhra Pradesh Understanding the Andhra Crop Holiday movement (the article will be available free online for a month) where any kind of solution seems fraught with political problems.

A Walk-Out in Harvard

2011-12-06T11:03:00.003+11:00

The repost of a Peter Dorman's post with comments by Mark Thoma "Mankiw’s Reply to the Walk-Out". Peter Dorman says
"That’s a bias. ... There is a reason why exposure to economics, and especially the worldview-defining core of microeconomics, tends to shift student views, on average, in a libertarian direction."
with a link to the 1993 article Does Studying Economice Inhibit Cooperation?
Marion Foucarde in The construction of a Global Profession: The Transnationalization of Economics(2006) points to the influence of US trained economists in various developing countries.
A recent post by Jeff Frankel The Hour of Technocrats mentions "Among current heads of state who could be considered technocrats are President Felipe Calderónof Mexico, President Sebastián Piñeraof Chile, and President Ellen Johnson Sirleafof Liberia. Nobody could accuse these three of having led sheltered lives or being unaccustomed to making difficult decisions. But it happens that all three received their ivory tower training at the Harvard."
It seems that what is taught in Harvard concerns all of us.

Songs from Dev Anand films

2011-12-06T08:53:00.008+11:00

Dev Anand passed away a few days ago in London. Following the lives and loves of heros like Dev Anand was a part of our growing up. He always struck me as a decent man and I think that he will be remembered for a long time for the songs from his films. He seems to have been extraordinarily lucky in this respect with several singers and music directors contributing to the success of his films. atul's bollywood song a day- with full lyrics has several posts starting with this to several of his popular songs. I will just link to two which are not probably so well known, one with Suraiya and another with Sheila Ramani(?):
Tum Meet Mere Tum Praan Mere
Funtoosh - O G O Humne Aaj Koina

P.S.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/deeply-in-love-with-life-and-himself/883992/0
This seems to be from a journalist who knew him for a few years. Noticed in the links in one of Outlook blogs
http://blogs.outlookindia.com/default.aspx?ddm=10&pid=2663

Freeman Dyson reviews Kahnenman

2011-12-04T21:16:00.003+11:00

in How to Dispel Your Illusions and regrets the omission of Freud and William James:
" Admirers of Freud and James may hope that the time may come when they will stand together with Kahneman as three great explorers of the human psyche, Freud and James as explorers of our deeper emotions, Kahneman as the explorer of our more humdrum cognitive processes. But that time has not yet come. Meanwhile, we must be grateful to Kahneman for giving us in this book a joyful understanding of the practical side of our personalities."

Some children songs from Hindi films

2011-12-01T14:03:00.003+11:00

Now that Jhansi is away in India, I have to do do more baby sitting than usual. IPad seems to be a great help and apart from the games, I plat to Ava (3) and Leila (5) songs like these:
Bolree Kathputli
Chhun Chhun Karti Aayee Chidiya
CHANDA MAMA DOOR KE,PUYE PAKAYE BOOR KE
CHHUPA-CHHUPI O CHHUPI,AAGAD BAAGAD
chali kaun se des Boot Polish
LATA-GEETA DUTT DUET from Toofan Aur Diya (1956).

None of us know Hindi but they seem to like the first two or three and then get bored unless I dance along which causes much amusement if anyobe else is around. I think that dances should be natural like the first few steps Nain so Nain Naahi Milaao but many dances seem to involve too much gymnastics without much gracs. Possibly this 'naturalness' and 'grace' are very subjective depending on one's exposure and may be some naturalness comes only to the well trained.

A Tom Ferguson interview

2011-11-29T22:23:00.002+11:00

Tom Ferguson: Democratic Governance Is Becoming Discredited.
A recent article by him Posted Prices and the Capitol Hill Stalemate Machine
via Naked Capotalism

Another site for old telugu songs

2011-11-29T19:20:00.003+11:00

I found a few songs heredesibantu that I could not find (quickly) in the other sites I visit like:
oldtelugusongs
Pathabangaram
ChimataMusic
Tamil sites seem more comprehensive and some times I find interesting Telugu songs in some Tamil sites, usually via google search.

A TANA program

2011-11-28T18:31:00.002+11:00

Telugu Assosciation of North America has several programs for the benefit of the poor in India as well as USA. One of the recent programs is Be a part in Feeding the Orphans. I became aware of some of TANA programs through the organizers of Breadsocietyindia. Apparently, it was a struggling organization until TANA helped them substantially. I also heard of various health and other programs initiated and funded by TANA. My impression is that TANA and many other organizations are doing useful work. Sometimes most of what one contributes and may be more (Breadsocietyindia is not a part of TANA but I found that organizers do not take any salaries and even for organizational work, they try to combine with their own work so as NOT to use any organizational funds). It seems that TANA often finds such people for their work in India and I feel that programs such as above may be considered for supporting.

Andhra Pradesh announces interest free loans to Self Help Groups

2011-11-28T17:21:00.004+11:00

Interest-free loans for SHG members from January:
"The members of Self Help Groups in the Andhra Pradesh will get interest-free loans up to Rs 5 lakh from January 1.
This was announced by the Chief Minister, Mr N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, in the Rachabanda programme at Shadnagar in Mahabubnagar district on Friday. However, women would be eligible for interest waiver only if they ensure prompt repayment.
As banks were now charging 14 per cent interest on loans to self help groups, the interest-free loans would cause a financial burden of Rs 1,400 crore on the State Government, the Chief Minister said. .................
The Govt had a target of disbursing Rs 10,000 crore loans to poor women this year. The self help groups in the rural areas would be given Rs 9,000 crore loans while those in the urban areas would get Rs 1,000 crore. In the last five years, Rs 800 crore was given to the poor women under the scheme, he added. There are 1.11 crore women in the State in self help groups."
Guljar Natarajan says in Negative interest rate for microloans :
"Given the nearly 10% rate of inflation, the state government would actually be lending at minus 10% to these SHGs. It would form the most generous bank-lending program in scale anywhere (possibly anytime) in the world."
The following post Multiple Borrowing: One, Two, Three…..How many loans are enough? from India Development blog gives some ideas of the amounts borrowed. The largest group seem to borrow about 5000-15000 rupees at a given time. In a small microloan group I am familiar with, the usual loans are about five to eight thousand rupees. Even though these amounts are very small ( some middle class people with whom I went to school now claim to have assests worth several crores, a few upto thousand crores), they seem to help the getting by though they may not get out of poverty or may not lead to investment and growth.
Rohini Mohan in a quick write up on the microfinance crisis in AP wrote about the genesis of SHGs in AP Money for nothing. And misery for free :
"Two decades ago — around the same time that Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus was setting up the Grameen Bank model of microfinance in Bangladesh — post-liberalisation India too was mulling over a staggering figure. Sixty percent of the country did not have access to bank savings or credit. Yunus was turning the rules of banking upside down, giving millions of small loans without collateral to people normal banks thought least creditworthy: poor rural women. India’s pilot project came in 1992, when NABARD created the SHG-Bank Linkage Programme, involving 255 SHGs across the country.

In the SHG programme, women form groups of 11-20 members. Every member must first save at least Rs. 30 a month, which collectively acts as the collateral against which the group can avail bank loans at 12-15 percent interest. The group then relends to its members at 16-25 percent interest, factoring in possibilities of default.

“As a group, low-income women not only get access to bank credit, but also become more creditworthy with every full repayment, eligible for bigger loans,” says Reddy. Since the creditworthiness of the group rides on repayment, each woman in the group exerts pressure on the other to invest the loan in productive activities.

Of the 11 million SHGs, AP has the largest number (9,75,362 SHGs), with close to 90 percent of the state’s rural women as members. “AP has been the most active state in rural microcredit,” says Reddy. “The number of SHGs has increased 10- fold in the past decade.” However, in mid-2010, Hyderabad’s Centre for Economic and Social Studies published a study that shows SHG microcredit is popular, but members get three-fourths of their credit from other sources. So who was meeting this demand?"

My impression is that SHG were only able to help a fraction of the needy but their success laid the ground work for the entry of MFIs and their easy credit policiesslowly led to the later disaster in AP. Probably, we will hear more from
fractured earth and David Roodman's Microfinance Open Book Blog , though Rajshekhar's interests seem to be shifting a bit.

Kotapati Murahari Rao RIP

2011-11-28T16:38:00.008+11:00

From Telugu newspapers I understand that Murahari Rao Passed away a few days ago మురహరిరావు కన్నుమూత. Here is a description of his work from Wikipedia Kotapati Murahari Rao.
He was one of the first students of my father Gadde Veera Raghaviah who was Head Master of M.N.M. High School, Gudavalli upto 1951, I think. He was the first Head Master and I think that he was chosen because he was from a farmers' caste. It seems that those days some of the students would not come to school during busy farming days. Apparently, the first Head Master would go to the farms and persuade the farmers to send the students to school. I do not know how far the stories are true but the caste affiliation probably helped my father to do well in that village. I remember him visiting colleges for students' admissions and cities for jobs for students and relatives. Most of those students treated with great affection when my father was alive. Medical treatment was free and there were times when trains and buses were delayed for his arrival. Murahari Rao was one of those who treated him with most affection throughout my father's life. Though Murahari Rao has been part of our lives through out, I started meeting him again only during the last few years. He might have seen some role for me in AP and started introducing me to some bigwigs but I shied away from that sort of life which is not too familar to me now. He leaves behind a very talented daughter Chandra Latha. I was told that at least one of the characters in her novels, her father was the model and we may here more from her in her blog మడత పేజీ (See Remembering Sri Murahari Rao by Babu Gogineni).

P.S.1 From Babu Gogineni's article:
"...he helped bring about improved seed varieties and yet, at the same time, fought along side Dr. P.M. Bhargava, the business practices of Monsanto seeds in India. To do this, he broke up his association with that company at considerable personal financial disadvantage. He was an advocate of modern technology, but not of ancient exploitation."

P.S. 2 A memorial meeting to pay homage to Sri.Kotapati Murahari Rao , Former President Seedsmen Association , Managing Director Pravardhan Seeds Pvt Ltd .
Meeting will be held on 4th December Sunday at Sundarayya Vijnana Kendram , Baghlingampally , Hyderabad at 10.30 AM.
Honour lunch follows at his residence near-by.

An early Vijayantimala dance

2011-11-24T16:39:00.004+11:00

After starting on Minai's Cinema Nritya Gharana and Dances on the Footpath, I have been wtching more dance-songs than usual. Here is one I recently watched by Vijatantimala Pyar Ki Bahar Leke Dil Ka Karar Leke BAHAR (1951). I think that the singer is Shamshad Begum and Padmini appears towards the wnd of the dance. It is from Bahar 195i, a remake of (possibly with quite a few changes) of Vazhkai / Jeevitham. I am not sure whether the dance is in the Tamil or Telugu versions; I saw Jeevitham long ago but remember only a few of the songs. Watching dances seem to be due to the exposure to the above blogs.

From science news and blogs

2011-11-24T09:00:00.007+11:00

Leonardo’s Formula Explains Why Trees Don’t Splinter(via Ed Yong)

Coffee delivers jolt deep in the brain

UCSC professor captures video of tool use by fish: Orange-dotted tuskfish cracks clams on rocks
See also the omments by Eric Charles in Tool Use in Fish = Good, Future Planning in Fish = Bad . Similarl points are repeatedly made in Louise Barrett's book 'Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds". Eric Charles has several posts on this book.

Review of 'Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding' by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy It Does Take a Village

Reviews of The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. By Robert Trivers. Basic Books; 397 pages; $28. Published in Britain as "Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others" by Allen Lane:One by Bryan Appleyard here and another from 'The Guardian' here

A new book on the great divergence

2011-11-21T19:34:00.004+11:00

Dan Little discusses in Beyond divergence a new book on the great divergence Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe by R. Bin Wong and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal.
Apart from covering a much longer period, one of the several new points seems to be:
"The competing states of Europe were frequently drawn into conflict; and conflict often resulted in warfare. R&W argue that this fact of competition had a fateful unintended consequence. It made fortified cities much safer places than open countryside. And this in turn changed the calculation about where "manufacture" could occur at lowest cost. Labor costs were higher in cities, so absent warfare, producers were well advised to pursue a putting-out system involving peasant workers (proto-industrialization; link). But with the threat of marauding armies, European producers were pushed into urban locations. And this in turn gave them incentives to develop labor-saving, capital-intensive techniques. Putting the point bluntly: China didn't have an industrial revolution because it was too safe an environment for labor-intensive production."

Links, November 16, 2011

2011-11-16T11:20:00.006+11:00

It seems to be one of those days when several articles look interesting and connect with stuff read earlier.
NY times article Hispanics Reviving Faded Towns on the Plains
From a comment in Guljar Natarajan's post The Eurozone crisis in perspective
"Indian union has no danger of falling apart precisely because the rajasthanis have the option to seamlessly migrate to Maha/TN/Gujarat and send remittances back home. needless to say Greeks cannot do so in Germany."
An earlier post with links on the benefits of labour mobility Evidence for a development idea

MindHacks post on Challenges to the 'death of free will idea' The free will rebellion

More on faecal diet from Ed Yong Faecal diet gives bumblebees defensive bacteria that protect them from parasites
From Louise Barrett's "Beyond the Brain" reviewed here, I see that faecal diet is common among mice too. May be Morarji Desai had a point. A post from few years ago by Tara Smith Fecal transplants to cure Clostridium difficile infection

From Science News Dirty air fosters precipitation extremes and Magic trick reveals unconscious knowledge

And some fun stuff from 'Savage Minds' Buffalaxing in Reverse in Taiwan

The bard of summer gone

2011-11-14T12:32:00.005+11:00

I started reading Peter Roebuck's columns in 1989 after moving to Australia and the first difficult years were made bearable (now I would not like to live anywhere else) by his writings and gardening. Here are some obituaries:
Peter Roebuck: a gifted writer and a complex man with a brilliant mind by Vic Marks who knew him from school days at 'The Guardian',
Cricket loses a gifted all-rounder by Greg Baum at 'The Age',
Voice that became part of our summer by Tim Lane at 'The Age'.
P.S. Possible reason for death Peter Roebuck 'faced sexual assault charge'
A sharp mind, a tormented soul
and
Peter Roebuck ... a tribute from his first African son PSYCHOLOGY MAZIWISA

Some articles on Hardwick, Vt, USA

2011-11-13T10:28:00.004+11:00

A recent post in 'The Automatic Earth' November 12 2011: Bail Out or Revitalize? has an interesting article by Nathan Carey on "The Revitalization of Rural Economies:Profiling Small-Scale Agriculture". In part, it describes the efforts in Hardwich, Vermont:
"The best way to conceive of this revolution is by illustrating a place where the challenge of rebuilding our food systems from the soil up has begun in earnest - Hardwick, Vermont (pop. 3000). The town had its best days in the 1920s, as it was a primary source for granite. When Granite was replaced by concrete as a building material, the industry collapsed. Therefore, the town has been in a sort of stasis for generations. .....
However, there's a growing and well publicized movement happening in Vermont that could provide some clues to the rest of us on how to proceed in a systemic process of revitalizing rural economies. There are many small and medium sized agricultural businesses in Hardwick that popped up within a short time frame and have been growing and making their positive influence felt."
The town was profiled in a 2008 NY Times article Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town and a 2010 book The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food by Ben Hewitt. A review here.

From the NPR article Vermont Town's Food Focus Still A Growing Concept:
"Maybe the same thing can't happen in bigger towns, or major cities. Maybe Hardwick is different. But in this small town, at least, food is moving from the fringes of local life back toward its heart"

Dreze and Sen on growth and development

2011-11-10T17:46:00.007+11:00

in India. Dreze and Sen observe in Putting Growth In Its Place that eventhough India's economic growth in recent years has been impressive "India has started falling behind every other South Asian country (with the partial exception of Pakistan) in terms of social indicators." Some of the reasons may be "The neglect of elementary education, healthcare, social security and related matters in Indian planning fits into a general pattern of pervasive imbalance of political and economic power that leads to a massive neglect of the interests of the unprivileged. Other glaring manifestations of this pattern include disregard for agriculture and rural development, environmental plunder for private gain with huge social losses, large-scale displacement of rural communities without adequate compensation, and the odd tolerance of human rights violations when the victims come from the underdogs of society."
Thet also note that three states Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Himachal Pradesh which have followed comprehensive social policies in education, health care, child care and some other areas have best social indicatorsamong Indian states.
They conclude
"There is probably no other example in the history of world development of an economy growing so fast for so long with such limited results in terms of broad-based social progress.

There is no mystery in this contrast, or in the limited reach of India’s development efforts. Both reflect the nature of policy priorities in this period. But as we have argued, these priorities can change through democratic engagement—as has already happened to some extent in specific states. However, this requires a radical broadening of public discussion in India to development-related matters—rather than keeping it confined to simple comparisons of the growth of the gnp, and naive admiration (implicit or explicit) of the high living standards of a relatively small part of the population. An exaggerated concentration on the lives of the minority of the better-off, fed strongly by media interest, gives an unreal picture of the rosiness of what is happening to Indians in general, and stifles public dialogue of other issues. Imaginative democratic practice, we have argued, is essential for broadening and enhancing India’s development achievements."

Worth reading in full.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interview with L.Vijayalakshmi

2011-11-08T19:01:00.003+11:00

My granddaughter Ava who is just three has been making me listen to these two songs jalakalatalalo , Varinchi Vachina (on some days quite a few times)for the last two years. One of the four actresses that appear B. Saroja Devi is well known. I found out another L.Vijayalakshmi was a popular dancer and actress who married at the peak of her career and left films. Apparently she was inspired by the dances of Kamala Laxman. Vijayantimala and others and her father transferred to Madras for her training and after a film career of around 7-8 years married following parents' advice and is now a chatered accountant working for Virginia Polytechnic. Here are a couple of dances by her L Vijayalakshmi-Dance & Music-Gundamma Kadha-2in1

A brief biography in the article MGR learnt Bangra for a month to dance with L. Vijayalakshmi and two podcasts of interviews in Telugu and English ( a few minutes in Tamil with a cameo appearence bit of an interview with Chakrapni)
Mohana Murali Interviews Legendary Dancer Smt L. Vijayalakshmi 1 of 2
Mohana Murali Interviews Legendary Dancer Smt L. Vijayalakshmi 2 of 2
and some videos at the same site like NTR, L Vijayalakshmi: Andaala Naaraaja Alukelara.

There are links to some of her dances among other things in cinemachat (the blog seems to have some links to Melbourne).

Aside: In the second interview, at one point, she says 'it is classical but (kaani) graceful'. She seemed to enjoy her dancing and (to my untrained eyes)as good as many of the more famous dancers of those days.

A Japanese bread making experiment

2011-11-07T14:21:00.003+11:00

From the Wikipedia aricle on Tacit Knowledge:
"As apprentices learn the craft of their masters through observation, imitation, and practice, so do employees of a firm learn new skills through on-the-job training. When Matsushita started developing its automatic home bread-making machine in 1985, an early problem was how to mechanize the dough-kneading process, a process that takes a master baker years of practice to perfect. To learn this tacit knowledge, a member of the software development team, Ikuko Tanaka, decided to volunteer herself as an apprentice to the head baker of the Osaka International Hotel, who was reputed to produce the area’s best bread. After a period of imitation and practice, one day she observed that the baker was not only stretching but also twisting the dough in a particular fashion (“twisting stretch”), which turned out to be the secret for making tasty bread. The Matsushita home bakery team drew together eleven members from completely different specializations and cultures: product planning, mechanical engineering, control systems, and software development. The “twisting stretch” motion was finally materialized in a prototype after a year of iterative experimentation by the engineers and team members working closely together, combining their explicit knowledge. For example, the engineers added ribs to the inside of the dough case in order to hold the dough better as it is being churned. Another team member suggested a method (later patented) to add yeast at a later stage in the process, thereby preventing the yeast from over-fermenting in high temperatures."
This was popolularized by Nonaka and colloborators and a survey article on related researchresearch
Tacit Knoeldge and Knowledge Conversion:Controversy and Advancement in Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory by Nonaka and Krogh.

Some psychology articles

2011-11-07T14:09:00.002+11:00

Via The appliance of psychological science Psychology to the rescue has a 'series of articles from well-known psychologists that describe how psychology has helped them out in everyday life'. More impoertantly, all the articles are about 200 words long. One completeltly new to me
The Zeigarnik effect .

Some books online by Nataraja Ramakrishna

2011-11-07T10:54:00.003+11:00

From Nataraja Ramakrishna:
"He was the architect of the revival of the Andhra Natyam dance form, a devotional temple dance tradition performed in Andhra Pradesh for over 400 years until virtually extinct.[3].He is also known for reviving Perini Shivatandavam, 700 year old dance form and brought international fame to it along with Kuchipudi -another traditional dance form. On request of the then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy he established Nritya Niketan - a dance school at Hyderabad. "

A semiauto biagraphical bookARDASHATABDI ANDRA NATYAM. syllabus for a course
ANDHRA NATYAM-SILABAS-VAKYANAM and a few more books by him here and here. All in Telugu. I browsed through the first and found them quite interesting with lots of information about great dancers of yesteryears, discussion on various forms of dances in Andhra as well as other parts of India, lines from a number of songs...
Obituaryin Narthaki and 'The Hindu'. I hope that somebody like Paruchuri Sreenivas will write about him som day and put his work in perspective.

Adoptability

2011-11-03T19:21:00.001+11:00

It Happens only in India !! Genius Cow... .

Eemaata November issue

2011-11-03T13:27:00.004+11:00

has several interesting articles including a Telugu translation of A.K. Ramanujan's essay on three hundred ramayanas విషయ సూచిక: నవంబర్ 2011. Interestingly, there is 1978 Telugu book by Arudra covering some of the same ground Ramudiki Sita Yemautundi? or Are ye' sure, Sita was his wife. In any case, Delhi University seems to be doing its bit to popularize Ramanujan's excellent article ( I find that two posts about Ramanujan in my blog are getting a large number of hits recently).
There is also an article by the very erudite Paruchuri Sreenivas on 'Visual Culture:Cinema Posters' దృశ్య సంస్కృతి: సినిమా పోస్టర్లు.
There are also continuationsof the series of articles by Suresh Kolichala, Kodavatiganti Rohiniprasad, J.K. Mohana Rao and many more. Some of the links take to English articles and Hindi/Urdu songs. A wonderful e-magazine.

Saadat Hasan Manto's book on Bolloywood stars

2011-11-02T22:39:00.007+11:00

Reviewed here Stars From Another Sky . Though I do not know Hindi, I watched some Hindi films in the fifties and always enjoyed Hindi film songs. More recently, I watched several clips on the net. Hindi film songs and dances (from films)seems to be a strong part of my background. I enjoyed these pieces from Manto's book (the two seem seem very different; one gentle with genuine affection and the other difficult to describe; the first of which I came across though Qalander's twitter feed).
Ashok Kumar: The Evergreen Hero
Nur Jehan: One in a million

Vilasini Natyam

2011-11-02T14:52:00.007+11:00

Fascinated by a dance from an old Pakistani film, I started browsing the net on the origins of some of these dances and found that there is a revival in my home state of some of the devadasi dances under the name 'vilasini natyam' Dancing like the devadasis. Apparently, Arudra started the revival and encouraged the dancer Swapnasundari who has a book on the topic Vilasini Natyam : Bharatam of Telugu Temple and Court Dancers .
Here is a quick write upon the topic:

"VILASINI NATYAM refers to the Bharatham or solo dance- tradition which prevailed in those regions of Peninsular India where Telugu cultural forms were practiced for many centuries. Andhra Bharatham’s past and present history was initially researched by the renowned Telugu cultural historian , late Dr.Arudra .

Noted dancer Swapnasundari had taken up independent pursuit of the Telugu people’ Bharatham from the early ‘nineties, by directly learning from the descendants of erstwhile temple & court dancers of Telugu regions.

From 1994, Dr. Arudra guided Swapnasundari by monitored her dance-training under the hereditary Telugu hereditary female dancers while simultaneously guiding her in the historical aspects of Andhra Bharatham. The successful reclamation of Andhra Bharatham and its recasting as Vilasini Natyam is the result of their pioneering efforts."

The names Arudraand his son in law Kalyan Mukherjea appeared a few times in this blog.
P.S. A nice article about dvadasi type dances in films here

More music from Pakistani films

2011-11-01T17:32:00.003+11:00

Classical Music Competition from a Pakistani film..
The MD seems to be the same as that of a film mentioned in an earlier post A Pakistani flm song

Growing luffa in Melbourne

2011-11-01T12:33:00.003+11:00

My efforts to grow beerakaaya (బీరకాయ, Luffa acutangula)in Melbourne seem to be taking a beating for a second year. They take about four-five months to yield mature vegetables (For the Love of Luffa, or is it Loufah?)and last year the winter was long and by the time I got one luffa, the summer was over. So this year I decided to grow the seedlings indoor and plant them outside as soon as it got warm. But as soon as I took them outside, they were eaten by insects.
I should try to consult some experts before next year.

Nandita Das inducted into the International Women's Forum Hall of Fame

2011-10-31T20:02:00.002+11:00

From The Hindu article ‘My work is motivated by the realities around me':
"Will the award impact her future work? “The motivation for that [my work] is life and the disturbing realities we live in, and not recognition. I deeply care about issues concerning women and much of my work, be it acting, writing, directing or speaking, is about advocating these concerns. It is but half a drop in the ocean. Still, we all need to do our little bit,” says she."

Teen batti char rasta

2011-10-31T11:37:00.002+11:00

is apparently a film about national integration Teen Batti Char Rasta (1953). Browsing through YouTube songs, I found this
Multilingual song. Another multilingual song Shamshad Begum singing multilingual song for P.Bhanumathi in Nishan 1949 . In the Telugu and Tamil versions (Apurvasahodarulu) Bhanumati sings for herself.

Two more songs by Suraiya

2011-10-30T22:33:00.003+11:00

Suraiya-'Tum meet mere...' in 'Jeet'
Murli Waale Murli Baja - Dillagi [1949]
Apparently Suraiya was not trained to sing or dance.
And one by Sulochana Kadam:
Chori Chori Aag Si Dil Mein Lagaake Chal Diye- Dholak 1951

IMF Book Forum: "Lost Decades: The Making of America's Debt Crisis and the Long Recovery"

2011-10-28T22:37:00.002+11:00

IMF Book Forum Video and transcript on Lost Decades: The Making of America's Debt Crisis and the Long Recovery.
Menzie Chin says "...a lot of the ideas that we have here, I think, resonate strongly with Professor Akerlof’s paper with Paul Romer about how distortions in one part of the economy, particularly incentives to extract or loot, can distort a whole financial and economic system." George Akerlof and Paul Romer paper:
Looting:The Economic Underworld of bankruptcy for Profit

Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein on conditions for intuitive expertise

2011-10-28T21:38:00.001+11:00

Conclusions from
Conditions for Intutive Expertise :

"In an effort that spanned several years, we attempted to answer one basic question:
Under what conditions are the intuitions of professionals worthy of trust? We do not
claim that the conclusions we reached are surprising (many were anticipated by Shanteau, 1992, Hogarth, 2001, and Myers, 2002, among others),but we believe that they add up to a coherent view of expert intuition, which is more than we expected to achieve when we began.

.
Our starting point is that intuitive judgments can arise from genuine skill—the focus of the NDM [Naturalitic Decision Making] approach—but that they can also arise
from inappropriate application of the heuristic processes on which students of the HB [Heuristics and Biases] tradition have focused.
.
Skilled judges are often unaware of the cues that guide them, and individuals whose intuitions are not skilled are even less likely to know where their judgments come
from.
.
True experts, it is said, know when they don’t know. However, nonexperts (whether or
not they think they are) certainly do not know when they don’t know. Subjective confidence is therefore an unreliable indication of the validity of intuitive judgments and decisions.
.
The determination of whether intuitive judgments can be trusted requires an examination of the environment in which the judgment is made and of the opportunity
that the judge has had to learn the regularities of that environment.
.
We describe task environments as “high-validity” if there are stable relationships between objectively identifiable cues and subsequent events or between cues and the
outcomes of possible actions. Medicine and firefighting are practiced in environments of fairly high validity. In contrast, outcomes are effectively unpredictable in zero-validity environments. To a good approximation, predictions
of the future value of individual stocks and long-term forecasts of political events
are made in a zero-validity environment.
.
Validity and uncertainty are not incompatible. Some environments are both highly valid and substantially uncertain. Poker and warfare are examples. The best moves in
such situations reliably increase the potential for success.
.
An environment of high validity is a necessary condition for the development of
skilled intuitions. Other necessary conditions include adequate opportunities for
learning the environment (prolonged practice and feedback that is both rapid and
unequivocal). If an environment provides valid cues and good feedback, skill and expert intuition will eventually develop in individuals of sufficient talent.
.
Although true skill cannot develop in irregular or unpredictable environments,
individuals will some-times make judgments and decisions that are successful by
chance. These “lucky” individuals will be susceptible to an illusion of skill and to
overconfidence (Arkes, 2001). The financial industry is a rich source of examples.
.
The situation that we have labeled fractionation of skill is another source of overconfidence. Professionals who have expertise in some tasks are sometimes called upon to make judgments in areas in which they have no real skill. (For example, financial analysts may be skilled at evaluating the likely commercial success of a
firm, but this skill does not extend to the judgment of whether the stock of that firm is underpriced.) It is difficult both for the professionals and for those who
observe them to determine the boundaries of their true expertise.
.
We agree that the weak regularities available in low-validity situations can sometimes support the development of algorithms that do better than chance. These
algorithms only achieve limited accuracy, but they outperform humans because of their advantage of consistency. However, the introduction of algorithms to replace
human judgment is likely to evoke substantial resistance and sometimes has undesirable side effects.

Another conclusion that we both accept is that the approaches of our respective communities have built-in limitations. For historical and methodological reasons, HB researchers generally find errors more interesting and instructive than correct performance; but a psychology of judgment and decision making that ignores intuitive skill is seriously blinkered. Because their intellectual attitudes developed in reaction to the HB tradition, members of the NDM community have an aversion to the word bias and to the corresponding concept; but a psychology of professional judgment that neglects predictable errors cannot be adequate. Although we agree with both of these conclusions, we have yet to move much beyond recognition of the problem. DK is still fascinated by persistent errors, and GK still recoils when biases are mentioned. We hope, however, that our effort may help others do more than we have been able to do in bringing the insights of both communities to bear on their common subject. "

Street songs from films

2011-10-26T15:48:00.005+11:00

Through Minai's Cinema Nritya Gharana, I have come across wonderful blgs like Dances on the Footpath which made it easier to spend the last few weeks pleasantly through two bouts of flu. I do not have any knowledge of classical music or dance though I heard my mother singing some carnatic music and various film songs from different languages. From early days I could not stand lots of carnatic music or bharatanatyam; lot of it seemed gymnastics to me and not too natural unless one had some training in its various intricacies. But north Indian classical music seemed more melodious but overall film songs and some of the dances where themes and movements seemed natural and graceful appealed to me. Even now, it is the same except I am enjoying some shorter bits of classical stuff. It seems to me that films, for whatever reason (possibly for the money at the bottom of the pyramid) adopted more to what appealed to common people. As Stephen Putnam Hughes says in Music in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Drama, Gramophone, and the Beginnings of Tamil Cinema:
"To contemporaries, the rise of Tamil cinema and the ubiquity of films songs both offered a democratic promise to make music accessible for everyone and threatened to upset the social and cultural hierarchies of professional drama and classical Karnatic music. These sources also mark the shift from the music boom of the 1920s and early 1930s as it transformed into a cinema-based mass culture of music by the 1940s. This collaboration around film songs produced a new form and institutionalization of popular music at the center of an emergent cultural industry of Tamil cinema, which, in many ways, is still with us and still dominates to this day."
It is possible that the shifts in dance appreciation took a different trajectory but it is still the street dances from many films which appeal to me more. There are lots from Hindi films like Ramayya Vastawaiyya ; here are a couple from Telugu films:
Vagaloy Vagalu
Ithihasam Vinnaara
eruvaka sagaroo rannoo chinnananna
kulamulo emudira
(Kannada version Kuladalli Melyavudo )

Happy Deepavali

2011-10-26T13:05:00.001+11:00

Deepavali Deepavali from Shavukaru

An old Tamil song

2011-10-25T18:04:00.002+11:00

I remember my mother singing this around 1947-48, she even had the lyrics written in Telugu script in her song book (a book which I inherited and lost). She learnt it from the daughters of Tamilian teacher in Gudavalli who lived near us. The tune and a few Tamil words is all I remembered. Apparently, it is well known as I found in this wonderful blog yesterday: the song from 5:36 onwards

A dance square off

2011-10-22T12:33:00.002+11:00

During flu/pneumonia time
Tamil version Padmini & Vyjayanthimala's classic Tamil dance-off (HQ)
Hindi version Aaja To Aaja - Raj Tilak

A comparison Comparing Vyjayanthimala and Padmini's Dance-off in Vanjikottai Valiban and Raj Tilak and the corresponding blog post Vyjayanthimala and Padmini's Dance-off: Vanjikottai Valiban vs. Raj Tilak

A horror video from China

2011-10-20T16:32:00.000+11:00

WTF?!?! 2YR Chinese girl ruthlessly run over twice and pedestrians do nothing :'(

Some papers on economic development

2011-10-16T20:02:00.004+11:00

Browsing through Natural Experiments in History edited by Jarred Diamond and James Robinson, I find several of these articles are available online. Some of these and similar papers have also been discussed in
The Importance of History in Economic Development by Nathan Nunn. Here are links to some of the papers; the others may also be available online.

History, Institutions and Ebonomic Development: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure System in India by Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer
From Ancien Regime to Capitalismby Darren Acegmolu and others
Politics of Financial Debelopment: Evidence from New World Economies by Stephen Haber
Schackled to the Past: The Causes and Consequences of African Slave trade by Nathan Nunn

P.S. Some of these links have been mentioned before in a link to http://bayesianheresy.blogspot.com/2010/02/book-recommendation.html, See also the Haiti links in this post

John Quiggin on Australian Carbon Tax

2011-10-14T20:43:00.003+11:00

Carbon tax in Australia and A long time coming …
"Australia’s House of Representatives has just passed legislation for a carbon tax[1]. Passage by the Senate is assured, so that, as long as the government can survive another year (it needs the support of three independents to muster a one-vote majority), the tax will come into effect in mid-2012. The political history of this proposal is too complicated to recount, but is symbolised by the current Prime Minister (who previously dumped the policy, but has now succeeded in bringing it into effect) receiving a congratulatory kiss from the previous Prime Minister (who supported the policy but was unable to get it passed into law, and was replaced as a result of this)" and
"Getting this legislation passed was a big achievement, but a great many voters will never forgive Gillard for the promises she made before the election (and semantic disputes about whether it’s a price or a tax won’t convince anyone who doesn’t want to be convinced). I remain of the view that she could do most to salvage her place in history by gracefully stepping aside once the bill passes the Senate."

Another review of 'Country Driving'

2011-10-14T18:06:00.003+11:00

by David King. Except:
"While it is possible to look at descriptive statistics and analysis to understand what is happening, a work like Country Driving provides valuable insights into how economics, incentives, and cultural factors play out among people"

Three hundred Ramayanas

2011-10-12T09:25:00.006+11:00

by A.K. Ramanujan (link to the article) has been removed from Delhi University syllabi says Sepoy in Transformative Texts:
"Ramanujan’s essay is, in my view, one of the best pieces of scholarship the discipline of South Asian Studies has produced – theoretically rich, innovative and amazingly perceptive about the lived ways in which texts continue to exist – the importance of reading, of listening. It ought to be, if it already isn’t, required reading for anyone working on epic or performative texts in any historical or geographical period.

So, when I hear that the Delhi University has removed the essay from History syllabi, I feel the urge to grab my print copy, a chair, walk to the busiest intersection on campus, stand on the chair and start reading out loud his essay. Every word. Make them listen. They will be transformed."

Eeroju bhale roju

2011-10-12T07:52:00.002+11:00

and several other songs from Chandirani here. These seem to cheer me up during flu season.

Interviw with Thomas Sargent

2011-10-11T08:37:00.006+11:00

wide ranging and seems partly understandable here
via a comment by Ashwin Parameswaran in the MR post Thomas Sargent, Nobel Laureate
The same interviewer Arthur Rolnick interviews the other 2011 Nobel prize winner Christopher Sims (The interview is from 2007 and the first one from 2010)
P.S. See also Three cheers for Sargent & Sims, one and a half for the "Economics Nobel" :
"Macroeconomies all over the world are doing some really weird stuff. There are lots of ideas, but little consensus, about which theories we should be using to understand events like the financial crisis, Little Depression, and current relapse, not to mention globalization and China. In times like these, it is best to look to the data first. Pruning the idea tree is more important now than ever. If today's award to Sargent and Sims has a political message, it is that.

But in the long run, I think it would be better if the Bank of Sweden adopted more stringent criteria for the awarding of the prize, more akin to the criteria for the Nobel in Medicine. That may mean fewer winners - perhaps only one a year, or even some years of "no recipient." It will certainly tilt the award toward microeconomists. But so be it. If you're going to call it the "Prize in Economic Sciences," then my opinion is that you should back that up."
P.S. A more recent (phone) intrview

Atriums

2011-10-11T08:27:00.004+11:00

I remember Mahan Maharaj feeling sad about the waste of money and space caused by the atrium in his university building. Apparently well planned atriums can be useful:
Steve Jobs: “Technology Alone Is Not Enough”
(via Rajeev Ramachandran again)

Old Indian records

2011-10-09T21:55:00.002+11:00

Listening to old Hindi songs on YouTube, I came across Miss Wazir Jan - Chhum Chhananana Bichhua Baaje [Raag Jaunpuri] , the date of which seems uncertain. Google search led to
The Gramaphone Company's first Indian recordings, 1899-1908 By Michael S. Kinnear. Many of the pages are available and the list at the end indicates that it was recorded in between 1906 and 1907 but the quality is surprisingly good.

Rajiv Sethi on worldly philosophers

2011-10-09T09:18:00.005+11:00

Rajiv Sethi in Notes on a Worldly Philosopher:
"The very first book on economics that I remember reading was Robert Heilbroner's majesterial history of thought The Worldly Philosophers. I'm sure that I'm not the only person who was drawn to the study of economics by that wonderfully lucid work. Heilbroner managed to convey the complexity of the subject matter, the depth of the great ideas, and the enormous social value that the discipline at its best is capable of generating.

I was reminded of Heilbroner's book by Robert Solow's review of Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius. Solow begins by arguing that the book does not quite deliver on the promise of its subtitle, and then goes on to fill the gap by providing his own encapsulated history of ideas. Like Heilbroner before him, he manages to convey with great lucidity the essence of some pathbreaking contributions. I was especially struck by the following passages on Keynes:"

Robert Solow's review Working in the Dark

Discussion of Solow review Solow: Keynesian Economics Has Become Dramatically Relevant Again Today as well as a discussion of Rajiv Sethi's post in Economist's View.

P.S. A quick summary of the part in Solow's review on Keynes
Solow on Keynes and Uncertainty by Donald Marron
Another readable book introducing economic ideas which I read along with Heilbrinner's book is "Man's Worldly Goods" by Leo Huberman. Two books of comletely different nature which look at economics and development in practice "North of South" by Shiva Naipaul and "Country Driving" by Peter Hessler.

Drug prices in different countries

2011-10-07T20:36:00.002+11:00

I just noticed this blog post (after hearing from a relative that a cancer drug which costs 100,000 dollars in USA costs about 500 dollars in India and the price comparisons for bone marrow transplants do not seem any better)
DRUG PRICES - AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON
The author is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Technology in Andhra University, Visakhapatnam. This seems to be one of the several blogs in
Pharmainfo.net

The formidable Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T20:28:00.002+11:00

From Close Encounters of the Steve Kind:

"I was sitting in Steve's office when Lynn Takahashi, Steve's assistant, announced Knuth's arrival. Steve bounced out of his chair, bounded over to the door and extended a welcoming hand.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Professor Knuth," Steve said. "I've read all of your books."

"You're full of shit," Knuth responded."

(via Rajeev Ramachandran's Google Reader)

Climbing ladders

2011-10-05T12:07:00.003+11:00

Recently I was told by some Indian friends that I should not climb ladders at my age (70). But my neighbour Frank Burke climbed a ladder when he was eighty to make temporary repairs to our roof after a heavy downpour. So yestereday I brought out our ladder to spray some fruit trees but then left it outside for further spraying. When my granddaughter Ava arrived, she decided that it was fun climbing ladders. But each time she climbed and got down she decided that it was my turn to climb. It turned out quite tiring after about ten times. May be climbing ladders is not so bad but leaving then outside seems to a bad idea.

Links, October 5th

2011-10-05T09:28:00.005+11:00

From The Hidu news From barren land to rose fields, a success story:
"There are over 1,000 acres of agricultural land in the village and it is mostly rain-fed. With poor access to water, farmers had to be content with a single crop during kharif season. Annual average rainfall here is about 700 mm and during a good monsoon, the excess rainwater used to drain away without serving any purpose.

Pepsico, under its corporate social responsibility activity, in association with the ADI conducted a water resource assessment study in 2009. Check-dams were constructed on three rivulets that pass through the village and over 100 water recharge structures in the locality, to facilitate better water access to the farming community, says Vaishakh Palsodkar of ADI.

With check-dams, the groundwater levels have improved over the last two years. Most 30-40 feet deep wells in the vicinity are now filled to the brim. With adequate water, farmers are now also cultivating sweet lime and other crops in the Rabi season, which was once a rarity, points out the former sarpanch, Laxman Bobade."

From The Hibdu opinion Chinese herbal garden leads the way:
"More than 40 years ago, amidst the upheaval and turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in China, and against the backdrop of the Vietnam war, hundreds of Chinese scientists embarked on an ambitious effort to find a drug that would conquer drug-resistant malaria. The result was the discovery of artemisinin, a compound found in plants, which, with its derivatives, is now widely used around the world to treat the disease.

This year, a highly prestigious Lasker Award went to Youyou Tu, an 81-year-old Chinese scientist who played a key part in that discovery."

Concensus seems to emerge quickly in mathematics.From Big News (via Rajeev Ramachandran's google reader):
"Just to be clear, here: That’s Ed Nelson cheerfully acknowledging that the book-length argument he’s been painstakingly constructing for (probably) years, and which was intended to shake the mathematical world to its foundations, doesn’t work. This says so many good things about the culture of mathematics, and so many good things about the Internet, and so many good things about the way they interact (see here and here for more examples), and it says those things so eloquently, that I see no further need for comment." See also The (in)consistency of PA and consensus in mathematics .

From Darwinian Tax Reform via Adam Smith's Lost Legacy :
"Frank observes a similar pattern of arms race-like competition in the quest to obtain social status through luxury purchases. As the wealthiest acquire status symbols so too do the middle and lower classes race to keep up by spending money in a never ending competition for prestige. The result is a society living beyond its means. Whereas elk “voting” to change their antler size is a fantasy, we can use policy to alter wasteful spending patterns and increase savings by replacing our progressive income tax with a progressive consumption tax. This is not to be confused with a valued added tax, national sales tax or flat tax endorsed by some libertarians, which he recognizes is rightly decried as regressive. Frank’s formula goes like this:

Taxes Paid = (Adjusted Gross Income – Annual Savings) * (Progressive Rate Structure)

The result of implanting this tax structure, Frank writes, would be that the wealthiest would reign in excessive spending on status goods to avoid the consumption tax. This would relax the pressure to “keep up with the Jones,” prompting the middle and lower classes to follow suit. Of course, there would still be competition for prestige expressed in consumer goods, cars, and real estate, but everything would be scaled back. The progressive consumption tax would generate an economic surplus at the household level. It is the tax structure Charles Darwin would have endorsed and Adam Smith never would have thought of."
The point of the review seems to be that robert Frank did not understand Darwin well but not really a critique of Frank's ideas. Ideas similar to 'Frank's weird ideas about social prstige' have been proposed along ago by Fred Hirsch:
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aespop/positionalgoods.htm
http://repositorio-iul.iscte.pt/bitstream/10071/515/1/wp43-2005.pdf

Enjoying one's own cooking

2011-10-04T19:10:00.002+11:00

I noticed that I do not enjoy my own cooking, at least soon after cooking. Some of them which last (like pappucharu, chicken curry etc) seem ok the next day though sometimes I got high praise for my cooking on the day the food was cooked. It seems that this may not be uncommon according to this MR post Why Do Sandwiches Taste Better When Someone Else Makes Them?

Slime molds

2011-10-04T17:41:00.003+11:00

According to the Wikipedia article on Slime mold :
"Professor John Tyler Bonner, who has spent a lifetime studying slime moulds argues that Slime molds are "no more than a bag of amoebae encased in a thin slime sheath, yet they manage to have various behaviors that are equal to those of animals who possess muscles and nerves with ganglia -- that is, simple brains.""
See also the videos ohn Bonner's slime mold movies ", Slime mold form a map of the Tokyo-area railway system and Rebuilding Iberian motorways with slime mould .

Carl Zimmer wonders Can Answers to Evolution Be Found in Slime?. See also his post .

Kuffir on Paramakudi killings

2011-10-02T12:24:00.003+11:00

Manufacturing complicity: Paramakudi killings via Kuffir's post lessons from paramakudi for telangana
An earlier incident in Tamilnadu Justice, at last . Justice faster than in the Karamchedu case.

Food may tweak our genes

2011-10-02T11:42:00.004+11:00

From New Scientist editorial The good news about how food tweaks our genes ( via Ed Yong I’ve got your missing links right here (1 October 2011)):
"EVER since we began farming some 10,000 years ago, we have been genetically modifying the plants we eat. Now it seems that plants have been toggling our genetic switches too, by slipping bits of RNA into our intestines and bloodstreams (see "Eating your greens alters your genes" )."

From the article "Eating your greens alters your genes":
"In what is the strongest evidence yet that the genetic material in food survives digestion and circulates through the body, fragments of plant RNA have been found swimming in the bloodstreams of people and cows. What's more the study by Chen-Yu Zhang of Nanjing University in China and his colleagues shows that some of these plant RNAs muffle gene expression and raise cholesterol levels in mice. The discovery opens up a new way to turn food into medicine: we may be able to design plants that change our genes for the better."
It also suggests that further studies are needed for GM foods and the possibility of concocting useful GM foods.

Too much medicine?

2011-09-30T19:57:00.006+10:00

Recent experiences with doctors made me wonder whether we are getting too much medical care by the way testing, treatment, follow ups ad so on ( I had some minor discomfort while chewing for a few months and one of the doctors I visit for arthritic problems immediately suspected temporal arteritis and after a battery of preliminary tests wanted me to go for an invasive biopsy near the jaw. I decided that I had enough and resisted for a few weeks ad later blood tests indicated that there was probably an error in the diagnosis. But the doubts linger on. Just as with cars, I decided not to go to doctors, particularly specialists unless the system seems near breakdown). The result is that I googled 'too much medicine' and found various reports like this:
Patients get too much medical care, doctors say:28% of doctors say they overtreat their patients
Too Much Medicine: A Doctor's Guide to Better and More Affordable Health Care
both about US but I have heard similar stories here in Australia and in India. A recent article of Atul Gawande Cowboys and Pit Crews suggests that the problem may be even more basic:
"The doctors of former generations lament what medicine has become. If they could start over, the surveys tell us, they wouldn’t choose the profession today. They recall a simpler past without insurance-company hassles, government regulations, malpractice litigation, not to mention nurses and doctors bearing tattoos and talking of wanting “balance” in their lives. These are not the cause of their unease, however. They are symptoms of a deeper condition—which is the reality that medicine’s complexity has exceeded our individual capabilities as doctors."

In the case of mental illnesses, problems may be even worse suggests Ethan Watters in Crazy like us: the globalization of the American psyche. Compare the third chapter on Schizophrenia in Zanzibar summarized here and the recent report in Neurosceptic Schizophrenia And The Developing World Revisited.

The world of documents

2011-09-29T21:34:00.004+10:00

After reading Country Driving I could not resist picking up another book of Peter Hessler: Oracle Bones.
Very early in the book, he introduces the China scholar Imre Galambos in whose opinion 'China's most important literary unification took place during the Han. They produced their history book, as well as the first dictioary, and their emphasis on written word established the foundation for two millinea of empire'. Hessler quotes Galambos:
"People talk about this idea of literary worlds. There are certain cultures, like the Byzantine and the Chinese, in which the written documents create a world that is more significant than the real world. The officials who ran the country in ancient China — they were selected through exams, through this process of memorizing the classics. They lived in this quasi world of letters. Whoever came in from the outside became a part of it. Even the Mongolian tribes that eventually became the Yuan dynasty — for God’s sake, they were complete nomads, with very little written language. But they became like the Chinese for a time; they assimilated themselves. I think this literary world is the link in time that permits this thing we call 'Chinese history.' It’s not the number of people or anything like that; it’s the enormous written world that they produced. They produced this world that’s so big that it eats them up and it eats up everybody around them."
Somewhat reminiscent of the world of Sanskrit documents explored in Sheldon Pollock's The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (mentioned in this post earlier).

Stretching without wrinkles

2011-09-28T11:00:00.003+10:00

This report Stretch, but without the wrinkles of the recent paper Three-Dimensional Polymer Constructs Exhibiting a Tunable Negative Poisson’s Ratio may be interesting to mathematicians. From the report:
"A team of nanoengineers have constructed new materials that don't wrinkle when you stretch them. This makes them similar to tissue found in the human body, so they may in the future be used to repair damaged heart walls, blood vessels and skin.
.....
The secret of the two new materials lies in their geometry. Engineered tissue is made using a porous scaffold structure. It's the shape of the pores that's important. Square and circular pores, or those shaped like regular hexagons, give you a positive Poisson ratio. But it's possible to achieve a negative ratio by cleverly tweaking such basic geometries."
The modern research in this area seems to have started with a paper of Rod Lakes in 1987, partly reproduced in his site
P.S. Videos Negative Poisson Ratio Material and The strange behaviour of auxetic foams

A swamiji wins Bhatnagar prize

2011-09-27T04:06:00.005+10:00

Mahan Maharaj, a senior researcher at the Howrah-based Ramkrishna Mission Vivekananda University, was among 11 scientists selected today for the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, India's highest science award.Maharaj and Palash Kumar of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata received the prize in the Mathematical Science category.
Swami Vidyanadhananda, originally Mahan Mitra, usually called Mahan Maharaj I have known since 1995 through his work and met him for the first time around 2005. After a Ph.D. in Berkeley he joined the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and suddenly decided to join Ramakrishna Mission and disappeared for about seven years. During this period I slightly revised one of his papers (and also worked on the proof sheets of another) that I used and helped publishing it; I am not sure whether his permission was taken. Towards the end of his training Kalyan Mukherjea got to know about Mahan through Mahan's brother and persuaded him to come back to mathematics. The long break seemed to have no effect and he seemed even stronger than before. He continued with his monkly duties, has been doing strong mathematics, meanwhile helping set up a mathematics department in Vivekananda University in Belur Math. I spent a month in Belur Math during 2009 and had the pleasure of coloborating with him and saw him training several Ph.D. students. It was a fun stay and I hope to visit him again.

There is a 2009 photograph of Mahan in the photos section of this blog (currently on page 3).
P.S. Link to Mahan's papers and a young researcher meets Mahan:"Thankfully he doesn't wear his religion on his sleeve." My impression after staying in Belur Mission for a month: The organization is more into service than religion and there are monks of various religions in the RK Mission. But I have not enquired whether there were any atheists.
A nice picture here