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When what comes down doesn't go up from The Economist
Most of the existing workers in the Saudi oil fields are Yemenese
First female bus driver in Delhi
America's epidemic of unnecessary care by Atul Gawande
Putin's speech on the 70th anniversary of Victory Day

The Silk Road documentaries

A recent dance posted by Richard Singer reminded me of these excellent documentaries on the Silk Road which came around 1980 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlWhWyoAMRk&list=PLILRQ_uVCaoOtZ6Q6egVvUyEMhbN7OG9y&index=10 A similaqr dance at 25:50.
There are different uploads of these documentaries of varying quality on YouTube.

He worked in two atomic bomb projects

He also wrote the first book on Quantum Mechanics published in India by Osmania University Press in 1938. A review of the book here. Apparently, he influenced the famous Indian mathematician S.Minakshusundaram
Muhammad Raziuddin Siddiqui from Wikipedia and a short obituary here by his nephew.

Order in the family: Happy Mother's Day

Strange sentences

Keynes : "It is better that a man should tyrannise over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens; and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as being but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative." I thought that they go together from my observations of village landlords. The quote via Brad DeLong Jm Keynes:Concluding notes on the general philosophy towards which the general theory might lead.
Dietz Vollrath:"My mental null hypothesis here is that higher agricultural productivity, because of low income elasticities for food, means more industrialization/urbanization/non-ag production." This does not jell with my experience of Guntur, Krishna districts. The excess seems to have gone to Madras first and then Hyderabad. From Do agricultural conditions matter for institutions?

Materialism

My daughter Lalita bought new walking shoes which turned out to be very comfortable and started jumping around saying ' I am happy'. Her daughter Ava responded 'Mom, you are happy because you are greedy like me'. Getting the essence of materialism by the age of six.

Class struggle in Bollywood films

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTO-Dm5-XYY Minai has written about the choreography here.
The full film is available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi4vJQC-QJU (the two dances posted by Minai are around 3 and 14:40 minutes and look clearer to me in the film). From a review by Dustedoff, it seems Satyajit Ray saw the film and wanted to be an assistant director to Chetan Anand.
Surprisingly it is omitted from 'a listing of ten top Hindi films on class struggle, workers’ rights and unions'  in the article 'Lal Salaam On Screen'. Richard Singer on my wall " I think there are tons of movies from the '40s and '50s that could have been included in this list.....Or if they wanted to seriously pursue the "Laal Salam" theme and talk about real socialist films, they could have started with Dharti Ke Laal, the only Hindi film actually produced by the IPTA.

And so many films by Raj Kapoor... What about Mehboob Khan, whose studio logo was a hammer and sickle? I've seen a whole bunch of his films, and he really did stick the class struggle theme into everything, in sub-plots or dialogues, no matter how blockbuster-ish, swashbuckling, etc., the movie was. 

I've noticed that so many people in mainstream Indian journals write mainly about the films of the '70s and Amitabh, etc. I guess that's what a lot of people grew up with and the era that everyone thinks about. Since I didn't grow up with these films and came to classic Indian films from my own strange angle in the 21st century, maybe that's why I wouldn't look to the ''70s first. But wasn't the '50s the Golden Age?"

Kung Fu nuns

Apparently Buddhist nuns in Nepal who learnt Kung Fu from Vietnamese nuns from 2008 onwards are making a name for themselves by helping with earthquake relief efforts in Nepal.
From 2010 BBC news:
"Kung fu was introduced into the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery by the leader of the Drukpa spiritual sect, His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa....He says that he felt that previous spiritual leaders had not done enough to advance the rights of women.....He says he encouraged the nuns to "take up kung fu when he saw nuns from Vietnam practising it."
From another 2010 article , this one from Time:
"His Holiness took back to Kathmandu not just the idea of introducing martial arts, but also four experienced Vietnamese Drukpa nuns to serve as teachers. The Buddhist leader was keen on keeping the program all female, insisting that bringing in learned monks as instructors would only reinforce gender stereotypes....
The Vietnamese Drukpa nuns only began their own martial-arts training in 1992, when their local religious head, the Most Venerable Thich Vien Thanh, initiated the practice at the Tay Thien nunnery. There were only three nuns then. Now all 80 of the nuns there are said to spend sunup sparring. Many of them are eager to join their four sisters in Nepal, so they can be closer to the Gyalwang Drukpa and also try teaching. Initially, the nuns were trained in combat techniques by soldiers from the Vietnamese military."
A video from Nepal and one from Ladakh.
One of their dances https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn6_rKls9bY

Modi's model for development

I suspect that Modi's model for development is China and hence the idea of smart cities. Some new cities have been built for different purposes and there have been failures. Shenzhen seems to be one of the most successful. The connection between cities and growth is not too clear and since India is undertaking a massive undertaking, it may be good to get some information on the topic. Yesterday I browsed through this survey article 'Urbanization without growth in historical perspective' and am going to read it again. 

See also the blog post 'The connection of urbanization with growth' by Dietrich Vollrath. 
But as far as I can see, there is not much discussion about the role of specially constructing new cities for development which seems to be the concern pf Paul Romer, mentioned in an earlier post. A crucial example seems to be ShenZhen. about which he says
 "To an overwhelming degree, the measures implemented in Shenzhen pass my two tests for reform: they have been adopted as permanent policies and they have spread to the rest of China."

The propsed changes in the land acquisition act seem to be for the purpose of constructing smart cities. But Scroll.in article says that only 8 percent are affected.

Karl Marx birthday

Though I am not a Marxist or communist, I am an admirer of Marx for many of his insights. He saw many problems of capitalism but I do not think he saw financialization. See also the essay 'Why I became an erratic Marxist' by Yanis Varoufakis.

Cities, engines of innovation

says Edward Glaeser. Another version which may need subscription is in Scientific American. Paul Romer has been talking about charter cities. He recently ties it up with Pritchett criteria discussed here by Tyler Cowen. Romer's post Urbanization passes the Pritchett Test actually muddies the issues, I think. He first belittles micro-initiatives:

"In a characteristically incisive blog post, Lant expresses skepticism about the value of micro-initiatives that are being tried as strategies for encouraging economic development because they are easy to evaluate rather than because experience suggests that they have worked at a scale that is comparable to the problem that policy should address.

He recalls his experience as a member of a team with members from many developed countries that was evaluating a program in India that financed women’s self-help groups. A woman from West Bengal who had answered their questions said to the team, “You all are from countries that are much richer and doing much better than our country so your country’s women’s self-help groups must also be much better, tell us how women’s self-help groups work in your country.” Quoting now from Lant’s account:

We all looked at each other blankly as none of us had any idea whether there even were at any time in our countries’ history such a thing as “women’s self-help groups” … (much less government program for promoting them). We also had no idea how to explain that, yes, all of our countries are now developed but no, all of our countries did this without a major role from women’s self-help groups at any time (or if there were a role we development experts were collectively ignorant of it), but yes, women’s self-help groups promote development.'

There are many criticisms of this in the comments of the discussion in Economist's View . From my comment there: "In "The causes of progress" by Todd: There are two maps of Europe on pages 32-33; the first about countries with national product per capita exceeding $10,000 in 1979 and age at marriage of women over 27 around 1840.The two are essentially identical. 
But Todd's idea of progress is more general than that of Pritchett. He is not explicit about what he means by progress. In "The explanation of ideology", he hints "...urbanization, industrialization and the spread of literacy, in short by modernization...". In "The Causes of progress""This is a cultural development, beyond the realm of the material. Cultural development first shows up as a rise in the rate of literacy....In the second stage, a fall in the rates of mortality and fertility follows the rise of literacy. Man thus takes control of his immediate biological environment. Only in the third stage does development appear as an increase in the production of industrial goods or, more generally, material wealth". "

I think Paul Romer's point is about quick economic development and in one of his earlier posts, he talks of Shenzhen "But it seems clear to me that the fundamental motivation in establishing the four initial special zones, of which Shenzhen was the most successful, was to achieve local reform quickly in hopes that this would induce reform throughout China. To an overwhelming degree, the measures implemented in Shenzhen pass my two tests for reform: they have been adopted as permanent policies and they have spread to the rest of China." 

Hegemony trends

via Naked Capitalism and The Saker.
What does Putin want? A major analysis by Rostislav Ishchenko. Yves Smith says " From last month, still important. I think it paints the picture in overly bright colors (as in it assumes a deliberate strategy in the US, as opposed to a noxious mix of inertia, bad ideology, and bad incentives) but is still directionally correct."
The Haunt of History in Eurasia by Andrew Korbyko

An unusual dance from a Telugu film

More dances from Indian films from Kasuvandi2, 'Kasu Vandi'
More about Cassidy  here http://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.com.au/p/about-me.html

Interview with Uday Shankar

The last parts in the interview may be compared with Kathakali inspirations posted by Kasuvandi 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjuJsnk3PDY&feature=youtu.be
Kasuvandi (Minai, kvammayi) has several posts on Uday Shankar (search under Uday Shankar, Simkie) in http://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.com.au/

Jobs in India

Where are the jobs? by Devinder Sharma:
"The question that crops up is where the 140 million who quit agriculture, and the 53 million who were shunted out of the manufacturing sector, finally go to? The only plausible answer is they joined the ever-growing army of daily wage workers in the cities or became landless farm workers.  "
How many in India are landless? by Roshan Kishore:
"In his speech, Jaitley said the landless will get employment in India’s industrial corridors after modifications in the land acquisition law.

“I want to make a special mention of poor, dalits, tribals, backwards, those who are landless,” said Jaitley. “The land acquisition bill we are bringing, as per that, the industrial corridors which would be set up in the country, those backward people, the 300 million landless people would get employment opportunities.”

It looks like a tall order. It will take nothing short of a miracle to generate 300 million factory jobs in the proposed industrial corridors, going by India’s recent industrial history.

The country’s total workforce in 2012 was 473 million, about half of whom were employed in agriculture... industry’s share in employment increased by only 1.7 percentage points between 1999-2000 and 2011-12. There were roughly 64 million industrial workers in 2011-12, who accounted for 13.6% of the workforce..."

Both via Madhukar Shukla.

Cuba's medical magicians

"Mora's story of physician ingenuity and self-sacrifice is repeated time and again on this Caribbean island of 11.3 million people.

While the US trade embargo imposed in 1961 has restricted life-saving equipment and medicine, it has only made medical professionals more imaginative in their work - and more determined to provide the best care possible. " from Al Jazeera.

And "While most American physicians take home six-figure salaries each year, doctors working in Cuba are paid about $30 per month.

"Our salaries are very low," Gonzalez told Al Jazeera. "When you study medicine here it's for love, not money. You become a doctor because you want to help people - that's all."

Exporting health workers

Cuba has about 69,000 doctors - 6.7 physicians for every 1,000 citizens, according to the World Bank. More than 20 percent are currently on medical missions in 66 countries."

Now that the sanctions are lifted, what will happen? The article suggests medical tourism from USA.

Housing

1.2 crore vacant homes-This tells you what is wrong with Indian real estate April 30, 2015
Scandal of Europes 11 million empty homes February 24, 2014 (crore-10 million)
18,600,000 empty homes in the United States February 27, 2014 (discussion)

A review of 'The Bubble and Beyond' by Michael Hudson

I have not read books for a while and trying to think of some of the economics stuff that I have read. Finally found a book which has views similar to mine, may be because I have read Michael Hudson articles before. I could not find reviews from the main stream. Here is one from an unconventional thinker who once worked for Reagan. 
Latest from Illargi posted in Naked Capitalism:
Sucking Spoilt Milk from a Bloated Dead Sow

From Madhukar Shukla's wall

who says "it was somewhat surreal taking this pic from inside of a moving airconditioned car on a raod-less road, when outside temp must have been about 40C... the vessels in the right corner perhaps contained "mahua/handiya" waiting for customers in the evening...."

Links, May 2, 2015

Indian women chase away defecators with sticks
Modi government's boost for entrepreneurship : Fill just one form to start business today
May Day: Inside Delhi's unique left wing bookstore
Wired on Telsa's new battery
What would happen if the EU opened its borders to everyone? by Chris Blattman :
"His[Michael Clemens] best guess is population would rise 10% and this would have more benefits than costs, even to lower-income EU residents."
Agriculture of the future by Susanne Dambeck :
"In its final report “Agriculture at a Crossroads”, the IAASTD (“International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development”), initiated by the World Bank and including organizations like the FAO and WHO, declared that for sufficient and sustainable food production, ecological farming methods and smallholder farms had to be promoted, not mainly GM crops or large-scale farming. Consequently, the agrochemical companies stopped cooperating with IAASTD......Most of the projected world population growth, reaching about 10 billion in 2050, will take place in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing countries. For local food production, these countries need solutions tailored to their specific needs. Many experts agree that more than one approach is required to feed the billions – but the sole focus on large monocultures of GM crops seems outdated today." 
Steve Waldman on Baltimore riots There is a name for this