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Every barbarian knew how to bring a city to its knees: he laid siege to the city. How did he achieve this? Let us take the example of the walled city of Delhi, as it was even 500 years ago, and think up what any barbarian would do to lay siege to the town.
The walled […]

Cristopher Lingle has a nice article at TechCentralStation on India, which begins by saying how rich we and our rulers were when the great European explorations began; how even little Indian princes were rich. It discusses why we are poor today, and what be done for the future of today’s youth.

I’m putting up this notice to encourage people to submit an entry. Please send all further correspondance to the address at the end of the post, not to me. Also, as this is an announcement, no comments are enabled.
‘A SECULAR RETHINK’
THE INDIAN EXPRESS - CITIZENS FOR PEACE ANNUAL ESSAY WRITING COMPETITION
Citizens for Peace (CfP) […]

Dilip D’Souza on the incompleteness of “divine” or “inner conscience” justice.
We’ve had innumerable horrible crimes in India — the Delhi massacre of 1984, the Bombay one of 1992-93, the Gujarat one of 2002, the Bhagalpur blindings, assorted ghastly caste slaughters in Bihar, add your own. Pretty much never have we been able to punish the […]

Ever wondered why Mahatma Gandhi never won the Nobel Peace Prize? He was nominated five times: 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and 1948. The Nobel Foundation’s site has an article explaining the omission. Interesting commentary, more on the Nobel Prize process than on Gandhi’s “suitability.”

Thank heavens for good, honest scholarship. For an Indian libertarian living in India, fighting for freedom from the centralized socialist state, Sumantra Bose’s book Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace presents strong arguments that prove that the free market solution to India’s travails - free trade, sound money, property rights and governance based on […]

Before picking up individual issues on why India is poor, I’d like to classify the issues that came out of the comments. The classification is not going to be perfect, but it allows me to club the issues into manageable morsels. BTW, these are in no particular order.

Corruption (I’d include lack of ethics in this)
Lack […]

Pro-poor reform is the new political mantra in India. Personally, I think economic reform should ensure that there are no poor. But before we can do that, it might help to find out why is India poor? What is it that we lack or what are the chains that bind us to what is often […]

Shailesh Gandhi and others have launched Satyameva Jayate in response to the heightened degree of corruption and criminalisation in India. This is one of the many civil society responses to the break down on governance.
They have brought out a booklet and the site is the e-manifestation of their efforts. A nice set of […]

There are some issues that came up in Ravi’s Posts about Agriculture (here and here) that I think need to be addressed.
I think it is important to clarify somethings both about Economics and how it applies to the real world.

No one needs to be told that reality, is a complex, dynamic phenomenon, and to try […]

Madhu Kishwar on Anti-Globalisation Brigades (AGBs) and India doing better under the WTO.
She talks about the origin of the anti-globalisation movement with the rise of economic power in the second and third worlds. Western AGBs are more worried about their job losses to India caused by globalisation and Indian “activists” are happy to serve as […]

Madhu Kishwar exposes the hypocrisy of the Anti-Globalisation Brigade (AGB) currently parading in Bombay under diferent guises — World Social Forum, Mumbai Resistance, etc. Her focus is on NGOs who happily accept foreign aid and grants, while trying to prevent the ordinary Indian from trading and participating in the world economy.
She also brings to […]

Shubhrangshu Roy ends the year with some hope seen through Bihari eyes.
Nothing good that’s happened to us ever happened because our government planned it that way. Everything that’s happening is despite our government being there. And it’s happening because the nation’s freed itself from the fear of living under siege, brought about by years of […]

Indira!…
This morning’s Asian Age, has an editorial by H.Y Sharada Prasad about Indira Gandhi titled “What did she do for India?”. This is quite an important question, because whether it is far flung villages or Upper Middle Class dinner parties, she is considered oddly enough as a Martyr, a Saintly governess, who took a battered […]

Something that has been bothering me in the context of Libertarian thought and India, has been the brutal treatment in Indian society, almost exclusively reserved for Dalits. Though some comparisons maybe drawn with slavery, and colour discrimination, possibly even to the Tutsi-Hutu rivalry in Central Africa. But one thing that distinguishes it is the length […]

The Socialist-Mercantilist myopia that seems to drip from almost every sentence of Mr. Bidwai’s piece Don’t Privatise Oil Companies at Rediff.com needs to be addressed not only because of the ill conceived reasoning but also because it perpetuates the very myths which got us into the Public Sector mess in the first place. This being […]

An interesting idea proposed by François Gautier. Despite Gautier’s obvious biases, a museum to depict the horrors of genocide will be a great help, in making history more “real” and perhaps also in a healing process.
I would like to add many holocaust-like events to the museum’s display–cases that Gautier conviniently ignores. The Gujarat riots, Bombay […]

The TOI’s lead edit today has an interesting take on Indianness. While critiquing the hype over Bobby Jindal, it makes the point that foreigners who made India their home are somehow considered less Indian than those who were born here, but now live / work / stand for elections abroad.
This fascination with a drama unfolding […]

It’s bad enough that so many innocent people get killed in bomb blasts. But it’s infuriating to read news like this:
Intelligence agencies warn of more attacks
The Central government has been warned of the existence of more independent modules of terrorists who could strike terror in Mumbai.
The commercial capital could witness more terrorist acts ‘after […]

Over the last few August 15ths, I keep wondering at the hype and hoopla over “independence,” “freedom,” etc etc.
How “free” are we really?
Update: In order to please all the spelling language Nazis who visit my blog, I have corrected my heinous crime of misspelling independence. Happy Independence Day!