ICT driven social entrepreneurship ventures

Report on some wonderful international efforts of social entrepreneurship using ICT to improve the lives of people.

The directionless war against terrorism

I came across this article that appeared in NY Times on the futility of the rationale of using terror over an unlimited period to check terrorism.

There have been several advocates of how the entire arrogant and 'me the saviour of the world' attitude is rife with contradictions and deep limitations.

Wendell Berry in a way predicted this state when he expressed his discontent on the National Security Strategy of Bush way back in 2002 through this piece of thought. Another one is articulated in thoughts in the presence of fear.


Think advocates of peace like Mahatma Gandhi and several others will continue to live as we continue to suppress their ideas day in and day out.

The IMF chief post

Here is a strong argument by Swaminathan Aiyer on why the post of IMF chief should be going to a technocrat rather than to a politician. Lagarde, the Finance Minister of France is leading the race at present. Considering the fragile state of many of the economies in the European Union, it is highly likely that the decisions made by this person might get influenced keeping her essential nature of a 'politician' in view.

The end of third world- Speech

An illuminating speech.

Lithium deposit in Afghanistan

One of the interesting stories which serves as a refreshing break from the usual monologue of insane taliban and a state of war in Afghanistan is the story of discovery of lithium deposits worth 1 trillion $ that has the potential to reform its economy enormously. You can read it here.

As we take a look at its economic potential in isolation without looking at the more structural aspects of this discovery, everything seems hunky dory about the huge demand of this element in manufacturing of batteries and hence the potential of seeing a beeline of nations like US, Russia and China to get access to this deposit.

A couple of days later a very insightful article written by Amity Shlaes using black hat thinking to understand how such deposits can cause further damage in the absence of structures of democracy and property rights which surely are critical to take the best advantage of such potential economic conditions. The writer shares interesting perspectives from nations which failed to use their natural bounty unlike Botswana which was able to attain what appears attainable at the outset only because it had the requisite political and legal underpinnings.

The correlation between economics and politics is very clearly elicited by this instance. Really liked the effort to examine the situation from a more objective standpoint.

In support of Teachers

In the midst of growing debate on how the bail out money from the Obama government needs to be spent, here's a very strong case by Thomas Friedman where he makes a pitch for bringing down the tax for teachers .

He makes a great point when he says that instead of merely providing more money to people, it should also be used for coming up with better labs and good quality teachers on board for our children as thats when we will be able to get the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of the world who would be able to generate employment for lakhs of people.

The fact that market forces have not been successful in improving the quality of teachers, throws open a very important challenge which is not getting its due in India.

Quality of education, which is the fundamental lever to decide the way the society is going to meet the challenges of future remains a majorly undecided question not just in the most powerful nation of the world but also in a developing country such as ours-India.

Its time we start giving it the thought which it deserves

Economist backs Obama

A very balanced Statement of Preference for Obama's candidature for the position of US President from The Economist.