Some background information on ‘Tadbeer se bigdi hui taqdeer bana le’

The man who set a ghazal to a western jazzy tune: "Burman is given the entire history of the ghazal in brief. A ghazal has a certain metre, a definite structure. And most important, a mood. It is strict in the way it follows all this. A ghazal is a series of couplets, and the couplets always rhyme. And there is a constant refrain that recurs in the second couplet. The mood is romantic, sometimes full of pain. And the song therefore must be also slow and beautiful. Perhaps indicative of pain...................Whatever the discussion between Guru Dutt, the director of Baazi, and its music director touched upon, the fact remains that on the day of the recording, the song that was presented had the girl strumming a guitar and singing, not a soulful ditty, but a Western jazzy tune..... But when faced with the strange interpretation of his ghazal, Sahir’s angst was unbearable. He did not care that he was still making his mark, that S.D. Burman was a name of some repute. Upset and beside himself, he decided to walk out of the film. His temper would always be his companion, it had always been his undoing. This time too it almost was.
As K.K. Paul reports in the Hindustan Times of 8 March 2012, Sahir’s ninetieth birth anniversary, if Geeta Dutt had not taken him aside and spoken to him, and smoothed his ego and his temper, filmic history might have taken quite a different turn."

Jesudas worried about jeans

 a recent news item

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeRVg2yhIGM

Possible geopolitical effects of fracking

A discussion American power and frackin boom "Fracking is giving rise to a new energy abundance in the United States that has major implications for American policy in the Middle East and the debate over climate change. Over the past five years, daily oil production in the US increased 3.7 million barrels, while US net imports of oil dropped 44 percent. A revolutionary technique to tap into oil and gas reserves by drilling horizontally into underground shale formations and using liquids pumped at high pressure to open cracks in the rock, fracking is reshaping the contours of American power."

The Cuban Embargo

Check also John Oliver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7hZjNO3I-Q

Private debt

Richard Vaue says Government debt isn't the problem-private debt is
"To put a finer point on it: For major economies, if the ratio of private debt to GDP is at least 150 percent, and if that ratio grows by at least 18 percent over the course of five years, then a big crisis is likely in the offing. "

Dean Bkaker on letting the banks collapse

From the second part of an interview with Philip Pilkinton in 2011 (via Dean Baker on banks, bailouts, and reform):
"PP: Moving on, in the book you make the claim that had the financial system been allowed to melt down we would not actually have ended up in another Great Depression. This is not to say that you don’t recognise that letting the financial system melt down would have caused a lot of problems – for banks, of course, but also for pension funds and the like – but you say that those in charge of the bailouts exaggerated the importance of the financial sector. Could you explain briefly what you mean by this? And what do you think should have been done at the time of the bailouts?

DB: The point here is that we know how to reflate an economy. Massive government spending will do it. It got us out of the Great Depression, although not until World War II created the political consensus for the level of spending that was necessary to actually do the job.

A financial collapse cannot condemn us to a decade of stagnation and high unemployment. That only comes about from a prolonged period of political failure. If we had allowed the banks to collapse in the financial panic of 2008 then we would have had the opportunity to pick up the pieces and get the economy back on track with a massive stimulus program.

Of course it was best to not let the banks collapse. However the bailout should have come with real conditions that would have ensured the financial system was fundamentally restructured. This would have included breaking up the too big to fail banks (on a clear timetable, not necessarily at that time), serious caps on compensation, a commitment to principle write-downs and other real conditions.

At that time the banks were desperate. Without a big dose of public money they would almost certainly have been insolvent, so they would have had little choice but to accept whatever conditions were imposed. As it was, they almost got President Obama thanking them for taking taxpayer dollars in the bailout." 

More in both the links.
P.S. More recently there is an exchange with Barkley Rosser on the same issue in the comments of a post in Beat the Press.

Martin Wolf on inequality

Why inequality is such a drag on economies "These reports bring out two economic consequences of rising inequality: weak demand and lagging progress in raising educational levels."

The Promise and peril of democracy

New video from Al Jazeera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr0HPZwVQBM
Also available from http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/empire/2014/09/european-democracy-crisis-201492493940666829.html

Young U.Srinivas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H07Yqe5-daU

'kalise nelaraju' from Telugu film Anarkali 1955

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE4Rk-qqNE4

Budget based programs for poverty alleviation

Russ Roberts in his discussion with Piketty "... my real point about the Forbes 400, or wealthy entrepreneurs, is that it is their contributions, their innovations, that have made our lives better. And that's a good thing. And the fact that their income is growing faster, their wealth is growing faster than the average is a sign of just how much more they've created. They've created wealth. " 

Claire Melamed  in The Other Half "Where once institutions such as the World Bank and charities like Oxfam described their goal as simply ‘ending poverty’, today they tend to frame things in terms of poverty and inequality. Well, that makes sense: doesn’t it seem intuitively obvious that these two things must be connected in some way?

Yet those links can be surprisingly hard to bring into focus. "

Helena Hofbauer 'Winners and Loosers: How budgeting for human rights can help the poor'

"

But what is often overlooked is that, in 160 signatory countries, international law mandates that governments must not only provide services equitably but also must invest resources in addressing inequalities arising from past discrimination. Economic and social rights can indeed help the poor—despitearguments to the contrary—and using budget-based evidence can improve and help enforce these laws

......the International Budget Partnership (IBP), together with partners from around the world, has published a handbook on what the covenant means for government budgets. We found that the budget is a powerful and under-utilized tool to hold governments to account for their human rights obligations.."

I am not familiar with the work of Helena Hofbauer, but I came across similar projects in India using RTI and Social Audit .

Review of 'Seven bad ideas'

by Peter Richrdson "Madrick quotes MIT economist and Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow on the appeal of Say’s law. “There has always been a purist streak in economics that wants everything to follow neatly from greed, rationality, and equilibrium,” Solow wrote in 2008. “The theory is neat, learnable, not terribly difficult, but just technical enough to feel like ‘science.’ Moreover, it is practically guaranteed to give laissez-faire type advice, which happens to fit nicely with the general turn to the political right that began in the 1970s.” Those three sentences encapsulate much of what is wrong with the profession today." Another quote from the review "The split between Fama and Shiller, who shared the Nobel Prize in 2013, points to Madrick’s final bad idea: the notion of economics as a science. Madrick’s poster boy for this position is University of Chicago professor and Nobel Prize winner Robert Lucas. “I came to the position that mathematical analysis is not one of many ways of doing economic theory,” Lucas once said. “It is the only way. Economic theory is mathematical analysis. Everything else is just pictures and talk.” "
There is a discussion with another review by Paul Krugman at Economist's View.
Related 'The construction of a Global Profession: The Transnationalization of Economics' by Marion Fourcade

Three on nuclear power

Cheaper and safer nuclear power? Technological revolution in nuclear power could slash costs below coal
Nucleal plants amon emering nations defy Japanconcern
Nuclear shutdowns put Belians and Britons on blackout
(all via Naked Capitaliosm links on 9/26/2014)

Russ Roberts and Thomas Piketty discuss 'Capital 21'

at EconoTalk. Possibly a ood introduction to the book.

Namit Arora on Birla Nagar

A Place Called Home. Excerpts:
"Within the last few years, the new owner of Gwalior Rayon has revived a dyeing unit (no pun intended) by tapping the residual labor pool of employees who never left. But the township remains a pale shadow of its past, with derelict houses and roads, untended public spaces, meager municipal services, and piles of rubble and garbage.Outside Birlanagar, Gwalior’s trajectory resembles that of many cow-belt cities: A newly prosperous class is evident in its malls, big cars, and gated apartments. Abject poverty is less visible now than in my time."
"This list confirmed my long held suspicion that the supposed diversity of Birlanagar was deeply deceptive. I found not a single Muslim, Shudra, Dalit, or Adivasi among the Staff. No women either. In short, not even one person from the constituencies that make up almost 90 percent of Indians! ‘Our management had an unwritten policy of not hiring Muslims,’ father remarked casually. Labor employees did include lower-caste men but almost all Staff employees at this ‘temple of modern India’ were twice-born Hindu males, with a profusion of Marwari banias—especially in senior management, starting with Aditya Birla himself—the rest being a smattering of privileged Christian, Jain, and Sikh men. Father told me that other Staff members quietly resented the domination of Marwari banias. Staff hiring and promotions pivoted mostly on caste, not merit, and diversity wasn’t valued at all."
"It’s tempting to think that Birlanagar’s regressive business and social practices contributed to the mills’ demise in the era of globalization, but that would be wishful thinking. Caste, with its hydra-headed ways, has adapted to modern capitalism; both caste and communal discrimination continue to flourish in 21st century corporate India. Yet notably, Birlanagar was then widely admired by outsiders; even the Labor jobs were in much demand. This suggests that most people, across the social spectrum, saw Birlanagar as no worse—and better in some ways—than the society at large."
See also the comment by Ravi Verma.

Anil Biswas

is considered one of great music directors in the Indian cinema. Once I saw in this autobiographical piece http://giitaayan.com/satish/art-194.htm:
"My favourites till today are the songs from `Vatan (1938)',

`Ek   Hi  Rasta  1939)',  `Alibaba (1940)',  `Bahen (1941)',  and
`Roti  (1942)'.  Sometimes when I am  alone I recall   the  tunes
of   ``kyoN  ham  ne   diya  dil''  (sung   by Sitara,  lyrics by
Wajahat Mirza,  from `Vatan')  and  ``kahe  karta  der  baraati''
(sung  by Anil Biswas and chorus,  lyrics by Dr. Safdar Aah, from
`Aurat'.)"

Now somebody has posted the song from Watan (Vatan)1938

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ifTs5__Bms

and the second one rom Aurat 1940

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivKk5W_CVDM

They seem to be from worn out records and do not sound that great.

families

Arunkumar Deshmukh writes about Renuka Devi (Begum Khursheed Mirza) family "he story of Renuka Devi is quite interesting. Khursheed jehan was born in Aligarh on 4-3-1918, to Shaikh Abdulla and his wife Waheed jehan Beg. She was the 6th of 7 siblings. Her father Shaikh Abdulla (1874-1965) was originally a Hindu. he was the son of a rich jehagirdar and Landlord from Poonch,Kashmir. They were Kashmiri Brahmins. His name was Thakur Das. He embraced Islam in 1890, while studying in Aligarh. When his family learnt about it he was disowned by them. He took the name Shaikh Abdulla.

He became a leading Advocate of Aligarh. After he married Waheed Jehan Beg, they both- being of progressive thinking- decided to work for the Muslim womens’ education. They faced lot of resistance from the fundamentalists, but they established a Muslim women’s college in Aligarh. To provide students for this college, a school was also started for Muslim girls. Soon girls started joining the school and college. Shaikh Abdulla ensured that all his children were educated. One daughter became a Doctor, another Advocate and two daughters did master’s degrees and later on became Principals of the women’s college. Khursheed also studied upto masters but due to her marriage could not complete it. ( she completed her masters in English Litterateur in 1963, at the age of 45 years, later)."

Nivedita Ramakrishnan on Renuka Devi and Jairaj

Mitford sisters

India's Mars Mission

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-29357472
The beginnings. See also this article and one from Scroll.in
First photo. Check also India's satellites and theie commercial aspects

Revisiting two books on debt

Both of which I browsed very superficially. The first is 'A fee nation deep in debt: The financial roots of democracy' by a banker James Macdonald. A nice review by James albraith of this and a book by Acegmolu and Robinson by James Galbraith here. The other is by the anthropologist David Graeber 'Debt: the first 5000 years'. This wikipedia article has a link to the pdf file. Here is an interview with David Graeber.
A 2010 article by Ehud Kaufman on public debt. A recent article by Derryl Hermanutz, which I did not understand, brought these back to mind: Why most people can't believe the truth about money

Russia&India report on sanctions

How sanctions are hastening the world without the west. May be. Moreover there are reports that Modi looks up to China as a development model. Earlier post on sanctions which also mentions a quote from Keynes.