Free bus rides for women in Delhi

Delhi’s free bus rides for women are welcome. Other cities should follow its example

Razib Khan on Indian Americans

The native and coconut civilization Not quite Macaulay’s children says Razib Khan.

Fighting back

Women From Haryana Are Leading A Campaign To Stop Wearing The Veil

Comrade

To demonstrate how the figure of the comrade can be a figure for us, an operator for a politics of those engaged in emancipatory egalitarian struggle, I’ve offered four theses:

1. “Comrade” names a relation characterized by sameness, equality, and solidarity. For communists, this sameness, equality, and solidarity is utopian, cutting through the determinations of capitalist society.
2. Anyone but not everyone can be a comrade.
3. The Individual (as a locus of identity) is the “other” of the comrade.
4. The relation between comrades is mediated by fidelity to a truth. Practices of comradeship materialize this fidelity, building its truth into the world.

Together they articulate a generic political component activated through divisive fidelity to the emancipatory egalitarian struggle for communism. A comrade is one of many fighting on the same side. From Four theses on the comrade by Jodi Dean, a review of her recent book Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging (Verso) by Macmillan Alvarez.

Criminalising begging

Breaking : 'Criminalization Of Begging Is Outcome Of Extremely Prejudiced Social Constructs' : J&K HC Strikes Down Anti-Beggary Laws  “Criminalization of begging is the outcome of extremely prejudiced social constructs of presumption of criminality against the poor and baseless stereotypes, in ignorance of the extreme exclusion and disadvantages faced by the poor who are struggling to survive. The criminalization of begging which makes poverty an offence, is intended to remove poor people from public spaces, deprive them of the Constitutional guarantees of inclusiveness and pluralism and results in further deprivation to them", observed the judgment given by a bench comprising Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Rajesh Bindal. (Jammu &Kashmir High Court).

using AI to write with the mind

AI allows paralyzed person to ‘handwrite’ with his mind

Narrative economics

The world’s top economists just made the case for why we still need English majors “Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller’s new book “Narrative Economics” opens with him reminiscing about an enlightening history class he took as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. He wrote that what he learned about the Great Depression was far more useful in understanding the period of economic and financial turmoil than anything he learned in his economic courses.”

Harvard again

Harvard and TIAA's farmland grab in Brazil goes up in smoke

Scott Alexander on indian economic reforms

INDIAN ECONOMIC REFORM: MUCH MORE THAN YOU WANTED TO KNOW
“I was vaguely aware that India had done relatively well, but I didn’t grasp the scale. This should be up there with the rise of China as one of the most important (and most encouraging) news stories of my lifetime. And if it was really due to the 1991 reforms, they should go down alongside Deng Xiaoping’s liberalization of China as one of the century’s great achievements........If we had a better understanding of what exactly happened and how it was reversed, it could be an important source of information for developing countries in the future.”

Tim Taylor on global rise in services trade

The rise of global trade in services

Juan Cole on Russia Turkey deal

Unlike Trump, Putin faces down Turkey on Plans for Massive Syria Incursion

But Trump May have his points Robert Shiller: Recession likely years away due to bullish Trump effect

Learnt a new word today

Learnt a new word today ‘praxis’. Via Gautam Menon from the Sartre lines “a binary praxis of antagonistic reciprocity.”, which may represent any thing from boxing to capitalism to marriage. I prefer D,R.Nagaraj phrase ‘intimate enmity’ which he used to describe the relation between untouchables and others.

Mathematical models for innovations

Mathematical Model Reveals the Patterns of How Innovations Arise

Based on Zipf’s, Heaps’ and Taylor’s Laws are Determined by the Expansion into the Adjacent Possible

Long read on Snowden

Snowden in the Labyrinth by Jonathan Lethem, a review of ‘Permanent Record’ by Ewpdward Snowden

Two reviews by Michael Roberts

Theft or exploitation?- a review of Stolen by Grace Blakeley
‘Capital and ideology ‘by Thomas Piketty

Another on RCTs

Seems fairly comprehensive. WHAT RANDOMIZATION CAN AND CANNOT DO: THE 2019 NOBEL PRIZE by Kevin Bryan at ‘A Fine Theorem’.

Choreography by Ragini?

“The famous Shankarabharanam thillana "Nadir deem tanadirena" (Moolaiveetu Rangasami Nattuvanar) was adapted into "Na ja, na ja baalam" by Anil Biswas in the Indo-Soviet co-production 'Pardesi' (1957, Hindi). This was beautifully choreographed for her sister Padmini by Ragini standing in for the choreographer from Bombay who did not show up in Russia. ” according to V.A.K. Rangarao in this report. This also occurs in the article Hindi film dance But does not mention the specific dance.

https://youtu.be/S1IsY_-TAss

A new book on Arabs

Review: Arabs. A Three Thousand Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires by Omar Ali
About the author Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Another review Arabs by Tim Mackintosh-Smith — charm offensive 

Sins of our forefathers

“. . . I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:5–6)
Inherited Learning? It Happens, but How Is Uncertain

Crisis of capitalism?

Why it is not the crisis of capitalism “It will either continue with its conquest of more, yet non-commercialized, spheres, or it would have to be controlled and its ”field of action” reduced to what it used to be.” says Branko Milanovic.

More on 2019 Nobel for economists

The ‘randomness’ of 2019’s Nobel economics laureates
An earlier article by Pranab Bardhan reviewing ‘Poor Economics’ and other books Little,Big:Two Ideas About Fighting Global Poverty
Another https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/06/08/2018/open-letter-fifteen-leading-development-economists

Russia emerging as the new power broker in Middle East

A Turkish-Russian entente cordiale in the making by M.K.Bhadrakumar
Russian troops patrol between Turkish and Syrian forces on border from The Guardian
Russia’s balanced diplomacy in Middle East on rise as US policy crashes by Fijian Cunningham

2019 Nobel in economics

The Nobel Prize in Economic Science Goes to Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer
A Nobel for Randomistas   H Peter Dorman:”On balance, I think it’s fine that this prize honors experimentalism, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the larger picture.  Using experimental methods to incorporate more learning in program administration should be standard practice; perhaps some day it will be.  But the big problems in poverty and oppression are too complex and encompassing to be reduced to experimental bits, and there is no substitute for theoretical analysis and a willingness to take chances with large-scale collective action.”
Chris Blattman on Randomized trials “Randomized trials will join the pantheon of mediocre methods at our disposal.”

The ones who walked away

A few friends have mentioned this short story The ones who walked away from Omelas

Baware Bain song with English subtitles

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rHZn4Ai0O3o

Yuichi Mori : agriculture without land

How Japan is revolutionizing agriculture without land or workers
Hydroponics revolutionises agriculture in Japan

https://youtu.be/7Cp8W0Ryk8Y

John Le Carré has new novel

From the review :
His attitude to Brexit is pungently expressed in the new novel. “It is my considered opinion,” one of the characters declares to Nat, “that for Britain and Europe, and for liberal democracy across the entire world as a whole, Britain’s departure from the European Union in the time of Donald Trump, and Britain’s consequent unqualified dependence on the United States in an era when the US is heading straight down the road to institutional racism and neo-fascism, is an unmitigated clusterfuck bar none.”
'My ties to England have loosened': John le Carré on Britain, Boris and Brexit 

An old theme

In the long run, wars make us safer and richer by Ian Morris (from 2014). He wrote books on the theme,
Another Is war necessaryfor economic growth? By Vernon W. Ruttan
 Y the same author The Role of the Public Sector in Technology Development: Generalizations from General Purpose Technologies* 

On Rawls

Neoliberalism and Rawls “[in a 1995 meeting] Rawls broke his own prohibition on commenting on current politics to say that the greatest challenge to American democracy, at that moment, was the systematic undermining of the fair value of the political liberties by the growth of capital and rising income inequality. As I recall, he described growing inequality as leading to a growing imbalance in political power and as a “crisis” that threatened the survival of democracy. I’m pretty sure he was talking about neoliberalism.“

Kurds in Syria

Kurdish leaders mull cooperation with Damascus & Moscow as US pulls troops from northern Syria
Worried for Kurds in Syria, abandoned by US? Here’s an obvious solution but it will make Washington hawks MAD
Juan cole’s view
Portraits of Kurdish struggle at Jaconin gives a quick overview of Ocalan’s view of democratic federalism and its influence on Syrian Kurds. This experiment may now be now reaching an end. “The authors Öcalan encountered would greatly influence the future role of the PKK, in particular the work of the American social theorist Murray Bookchin. Bookchin advocated ecologically sensitive, decentralized power-sharing in local communities as the basis of all decision-making, suggesting general assemblies at the local level were the true path to democracy.

Öcalan critiqued the Marxist-Leninist roots of the organization and introduced the theory of democratic confederalism as a new way forward in 2005. “Democratic confederalism” advocates for self-administration in Kurdish areas, which could operate in duality with the Turkish state, as well as the other parts of Kurdistan. Democratic confederalism was described as not just for Kurds, but as a system that could be replicated by any population in the Middle East. This collective mass of small units could confederate with one another to form a new kind of local power that challenged the authority of centralized states.”

About learning

I came across the article below via various academics. Thanks to Suresh Govindarajan for some clarifications. The study is about undergraduate students. One of the techniques is mentioned below. But I am not sure whether it can be done uniformly for all subjects. Some mindless learning also may be useful. Perhaps the use of the technique below extends beyond the particular subject. “Learning occurs when we get something wrong and have to correct it. So a particularly effective way to teach something in a way that will stick is to put students in a position of having to arrive at the best answer they can, without hints, even if that answer is wrong. Then, after they have committed (preferably some time after), you can correct them, preferably with a hint (just one) to prompt them to rectify the error themselves. Psychologists who have studied this refer to the approach as introducing “desirable difficulties.” Google it if you have not come across this term before. (The term itself is due to the Stanford psychologist Robert Bjork.) “ STUDENT TEACHING EVALUATIONS ARE EFFECTIVE, BUT NOT IN THE WAY YOU THINK
My experience: I have read the article a couple of times now. I wonder whether some mindless learning and just staring at stuff without understanding may also useful since it may be difficult to follow the procedure described at the end (desirable difficulties) for all subjects. I describe my experiences. In college I studied Complex Analysis during the month before the final examinations and completely forgot about it after the examinations. Then in 1978, at the age of 37, I found that William Thurston has completely changed the area that I have been working since my thesis days. I could not understand any of it. I used to stare at the notes before going to sleep. Then in 1982, I realised some elementary aspects of it can be understood through Complex Analysis and started a seminar learning Complex Analysis along the way. Then in 1984 I attended a conference on Thurston’s work at work only to find that professors from various universities studying his notes word by word and trying to fill in the details. That gave a start and some understanding, enough to use some of it and even prove some related results, came bit by bit. Now in 1979, a collaborator Peter Scott used parts of Thurston’s work I did not learn and am going through the same process again. I do not really know what mixture of methods works in learning.

A bit more about ”Growth” by V.Smil

Just got a copy of “Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities” by V.Smil after seeing a mention of it by Ashutosh Jogalekar. One problem that has been bothering is ‘interest rate’ which has been with us since Mesopotamian times. Apparently, the problem was solved in ancient times by periodic debt cancellations, as pointed out by Michael Hudson. I feel that growth is related to this since as long as there is interest on money, growth is needed in at least some important parts of the economy. I wanted to see how Smil handles this. A first look at the book shows that Smil does not even mention ‘rate of interest’. I will still read the book since it seems to have a lot of ‘facts’ but doubt whether he really solves the problem of growth.

Resentment epidemic in the west

The West Has a Resentment Epidemic “What has changed in the last generation, however, is the level of economic and wealth inequality between regions of Western countries. As Joan Rosés and Nikolaus Wolf have shown, regional divergence began in the 1980s with globalization and deindustrialization, and it has deepened in recent years.

If we are to understand the depth of populist anger, we must look to the economics of regional resentment. In the United Kingdom, for example, a person’s position on leaving or remaining in the EU in the 2016 referendum was linked to the geography of the nation’s housing market, with research showing that property prices are one of the best predictors of whether voters supported or opposed Britain’s vote to leave the EU, even at the ward level (the smallest electoral unit, of around 5,000 to 6,000 voters).”

How does this apply to India?

A bit about this blog

i have not been looking at the comments for more than three months since there has been a medical emergency in the family. My apologies to those who might have commented. In any case, my aim has always been to keep links in one place for future reference. Links disappear and so I used to copy some passages from the links. But now even that has become rare due to some pressures at home and moreover Facebook has taken over some of the functions though it is difficult to find old posts there.

Book review review of a book on aggregate production function

Book Review: The Aggregate Production Function and the Measurement of Technical Change: ‘Not Even WrongThe book has been linked before and was freely available online for a while. May be still available.

Saudi Arabia realising its weakness

Saudi Arabia Recognizes Its Weakness and Is Ready to Talk to the Iranian Foe

Long read on EU

The revenge of the elites

Infinite growth

The delusion and danger of infinite economic growth is attributed to Robert Solow who said "If it is very easy to substitute other factors for natural resources, then there is, in principle, no problem. The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources" (Solow, R. (1974). "The economics of resources or the resources of economics." Amer. Econ. Rev. 2: 1-14) via http://www.uvm.edu/~jfarley/publications/Limits_to_Growth_revised%20clean.doc

Another We must leave growth behind by V.Smil

Evolution of Gandhi

Evolution of Ganndhi’s thought by Irfan Habib. Starting as a middle class prejudiced person, Gandhi seems to have changed his views and evolved to what is still an enigmatic personality. Irfan Habib attributes some of it to Gandhi’s exposure to the poor after his return from South Africa.