Picked this up as a follow-up to this, on an Eco Prof's recco, no less. Turned out to be a poor choice. Hardly anything about Public Choice. A few weaPicked this up as a follow-up to this, on an Eco Prof's recco, no less. Turned out to be a poor choice. Hardly anything about Public Choice. A few weak examples of Public Choice examples crammed into a standard economics textbook. Read it through in any case just to makes sure not to miss anything. Have to hunt outside textbooks for more about Public Choice from now on out....more
A very poignant portrayal of some of the most traumatic events for women in modern India. Well analyzed and carefully deconstructed for the most part,A very poignant portrayal of some of the most traumatic events for women in modern India. Well analyzed and carefully deconstructed for the most part, it would have been better if Veena could have also shed some light on the comparative aspects of some of these treatments and judgments from an international perspective. The essays on the Bhopal Gas tragedy and on the anthropology of pain are particularly worth reading. The language is obscure and deliberately scholarly as most anthropological works tend to be but with persistence the reader can make out the real empathy from which the scholarship draws sustenance....more
Annas focuses on providing as nonintrusive an introduction to Plato as possible for the beginning reader. He does not try to cover the vast array of t Annas focuses on providing as nonintrusive an introduction to Plato as possible for the beginning reader. He does not try to cover the vast array of topics that the prolific Plato has touched on but instead tries to give a general structure on how to approach the dialogues. Annas conveys the difficult yet rewarding nature of reading Plato: that Plato is intensely concerned both with unbiased argument and also with with bold and assertive ideas - creating a subtle contradiction that pervades his technique. The book wants the reader to accept very early on that Plato is diverse in a way that is hard to capture without simplification. One almost feels that Annas is chiding the reader for picking up a VSI on such a thinker as Plato.
The strength of this introduction to Plato then is that it does not attempt either to cover all of Plato's ideas or to provide a recipe for interpreting him, but rather aims to introduce the reader to long-term engagement with Plato. This is done by carefully showing the nature of Plato’s approach towards Philosophy - one of a careful avoidance of dogma.
Plato takes great pains to avoid any pretense towards having a final solution in almost all of his dialogues. As Plato makes a respected older philosopher say to Socrates, in the Parmenides, ‘the further work the theory needs is to be found in the practice of argument�. And this advice of Plato is what this VSI asks the reader to keep in mind as they embark on their own exploration and a lifetime of discussion and engagement (hopefully)....more
Like Physics, when a science realizes it could underpin all other sciences, it becomes an Octopus. The primary focus of this collection pre The Octopus
Like Physics, when a science realizes it could underpin all other sciences, it becomes an Octopus. The primary focus of this collection presented by Olson is to be an apologetic for this �economic imperialism�: of Economics branching out like an Octopus into almost every sphere of human endeavor. One has to admit that as Economics assumes more and more the role of examining how human beings interact with each other for the attainment of any benefit (in so far as the theory works that any benefit is ultimately economic in a sense, in the broadest meaning of the term), this is almost inevitable. Economics is dominating most policy debates around the world now. Everything has an economic tinge, the green-colored glasses of Oz is now all-pervading. History is written with economic understanding, even science is done from an economic perspective and education is more and more directed by economics.
Most of the essays are meant to illustrate this widening ambit of economics and its integration with the social sciences and beyond. This subset of the essays are not particularly informative as they are exploratory and not argumentative in nature and only attempts to show the growing linkages, not the outcomes of those linkages.
But in the process, Olson being Olson, enough of the essays also try to take on the question of the ‘origin of the world�. And to my chagrin, I have been convinced that I bought the arguments presented by Clark too easily. Olson and co dismantle any productivity based theory by asking a simple question: If the issue was with the people, how is it that they can increase as much as fourfold in productivity on the mere crossing of a border (mexican immigrants to the US etc). Olson has a few counter theories of his own that champion Institutionalism as the answer for most of the economic debates and they seem convincing for now. But the fun thing is that there are as many opinions as there are economists and of course the answers are never to be found in any one camp.
Economics probably has as much to contribute to the various sciences as Olson claims and as he quips glibly, even if economic advice increased the GDP by just 1 percent, that would pay our salaries several times over....more
Indian parents take pride in a child who gains admission to the Institutes of Technology and Management; they are ashamed of a child who studies li Indian parents take pride in a child who gains admission to the Institutes of Technology and Management; they are ashamed of a child who studies literature, or philosophy, or who wants to paint or dance or sing.
Nussbaum wants to change this situation with this manifesto, with this call to action. With the very poignantly titled Not for Profit, Nussbaum alerts us to a “silent crisis� in which nations “discard skills� as they “thirst for national profit.�: a world-wide crisis in education. She focuses on two major educational systems to illustrate this: one in the grips of the crisis and in its death row. The other carelessly hurtling towards it, undoing much of the good done before (and worse, the USA is a leader in most fields, and rest of the world may well follow where it leads).
What is this developing crisis? Nussbaum laments that the humanities and the arts are being cut away, in both primary/secondary and college/university education, in virtually every nation of the world. Seen by policy-makers, parents and students as nothing but useless frills, and at a time when nations must cut away all useless things in order to stay competitive in the global market, they are rapidly losing their place in curricula, and also in the minds and hearts of parents and children.
This is most prevalent and inevitable in the placement-based institutions, especially the IITs and the IIMs and the newspapers that hawk their successes, that measure their success purely on the drama of placements and on the excesses of the pay-packages. This sort of a higher education orientation also changes the early school cultures, with parents having no patience for allegedly superfluous skills, and intent on getting their children filled with testable skills that seem likely to produce financial success by getting into the IITs and the IIMs.
Nussbaum says that in these IITs and IIMs, instructors are most disturbed by their students� deficient humanities preparation. It might be heartening that it is precisely in these institutions, at the heart of India’s profit-oriented technology culture, that instructors have felt the need to introduce liberal arts courses, partly to counter the narrowness of their students.
But it is not really so. Even as professors struggle to introduce such courses, as students at IIM, we have an all-encompassing word for anything that comes anywhere close to the humanities: “G³¢°¿µþ·¡â€�, and boy don’t we love using it. This throughly derogatory terms sums up the purely career-minded, profit-driven orientation of education in India’s elite institutions. I now feel a sense of complete despair at every laugh shared in the use of this expression. With the standards of success thus set, is it any wonder that the culture is seeping across the education spectrum?
After this dispiriting survey of Indian education, Nussbaum says that the situation is not as bad yet in the US due to an existing strong humanities culture in the higher institutions, but issues the below caveat:
We in the United States can study our own future in the government schools of India. Such will be our future if we continue down the road of “teaching to the test,� neglecting the activities that enliven children’s minds and make them see a connection between their school life and their daily life outside of school. We should be deeply alarmed that our own schools are rapidly, heedlessly, moving in the direction of the Indian norm, rather than the reverse....more
Jared Diamond should be given the Nobel. If not for anything else but for getting historians and economists up in arms shouting “Our field is not T Jared Diamond should be given the Nobel. If not for anything else but for getting historians and economists up in arms shouting “Our field is not That simple, Mister!!�. He has kicked off so many responses and counter-responses that it has enlivened an entire gamut of fields. This is one more response/alternative to how the modern world is the way it is. In fact in the very beginning the author classes himself with the Diamonds, the Adam Smiths and the North & Thomass of the world and puts his own book in the same league. Talk about building up expectations.
The Malthusian World
To make a simple theory work - that is a major achievement. And for much of the book, Clark gives the impression that he is going to pull it off. The book builds its argument very painstakingly, with numerous diagrams and with a surfeit of statistics. A lot of effort is put in to build the foundations of the argument.
This foundation rests on proving that the whole world was more or less uniform before 1800 - that we were in a Malthusian trap (a long term one, granted) from which no society could make a true break. A ‘true break� being a sustained long term deviation from the Malthusian norm.
This “Malthusian world� is built on some very simple conditions. And it encompassed the human and animal world equally. Economically the whole world had the same constraints: that for any species, its population could never outstrip its food supply. Of course humans are ingenious and made many advances over the course of history. But for every technological advance that results in more food, the population would respond by rising until the extra food available is cancelled out. This means that in a Malthusian world, the living conditions (on average) could never rise above a certain level.
Tech improves: => (leading to) more food (or income) => more population => less food (or income) per person => back to earlier living conditions. Simple.
(Use the conditions from Engel Curve to derive food changes from changes in income as required.)
So in this world, living conditions (on average) could never rise above the pre-agrarian levels in spite of any technological innovation. This persisted till the Industrial Revolution. So overall until 1800 there was in all societies an inherent, but shifting, trade-off between income and mortality rates that tied long-run incomes to the level which balanced fertility with mortality and maintained a stable level of standard of living.
The Industrial Escape Hatch
Then, around 1800, in northwestern Europe and North America, man’s long sojourn in the Malthusian world ends. The iron link between population and living standards, through which any increase in population caused an immediate decline in wages, was decisively broken. A new era dawned. The seemingly sudden and unpredictable escape from the dead hand of the Malthusian past in England around 1800, this materialist crossing of the Jordan, was so radical that it has been forever dubbed the Industrial Revolution.
The ‘Industrial� part of the label is, Clark says, unfortunate and misleading. It was conferred mainly because the most observable of the many changes in England was the enormous growth of the industrial sector: cotton mills, potteries, foundries, steel works. There is, in fact, nothing inherently industrial about the Industrial Revolution. Since 1800 the productivity of agriculture has increased by as much as that of the rest of the economy, and without these gains in agriculture modern growth would have been impossible.
Clark says that we have to resign ourselves to the fact that one of the defining events in human history has been mislabeled.
The 'Industrious' Revolution
The Malthusian era was one of astonishing stasis, in terms of living standards and of the rate of technological change. Wages, returns, income and living standards - all should have remained the same on average from the dawn of market economies to the end of the Malthusian era. This only reinforces the puzzle of how the economy ever escaped the Malthusian Trap. How did stasis before 1800 transform itself into dynamism thereafter? This is the central question of the book.
The author has much to say about alternate theories, especial on researches such as ´¡³¦±ð³¾´ÇÄŸ±ô³Ü'²õ (review pending) who insist on Institutional explanations:
Commentators, having visited climate, race, nutrition, education, and culture, have persistently returned to one theme: the failure of political and social institutions in poor countries. Yet, Clark asserts, this theme can be shown to manifestly fail in two ways. It does not describe the anatomy of the divergence we observe: the details of why poor countries remain poor. And the medicine of institutional and political reform has failed repeatedly to cure the patient.
Yet, like the physicians of the prescientific era who prescribed bloodletting as the cure for ailments they did not understand, the modern economic doctors continue to prescribe the same treatment year after year through such cult centers as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. If the medicine fails to cure, then the only possible conclusion is that more is needed.
Strong words. And after all the build up, in answering this central question is where Clark disappoints.
Q: So what is the final solution to the great puzzle?
A: Sustained advances in efficiency.
And the reason for this unprecedented advance in efficiency of utilization of resources?
In answering this, Clark plays his final lame card. The answer is that there was no Industrial Revolution after all. It had been long in the making, this gradual advance in efficiency.
And how did this come about? Here we have to understand a bit more about the Malthusian world, we have to peer deeper into the society, look beyond the averages that was the basis of all discussion till now.
On the average, living standard might have been stagnant - but how was this average achieved? By the benefits of every advance in achievement being cornered by select groups. This would mean an advance in income for the privileged and a decrease in income for the underprivileged.
Now, what happens in a Malthusian world when income increases? You got that right: the fertility rates increases as well.
Hence, the rich consistently outproduced the poor throughout history. This might seem like a crazy thing to say, but Clark asserts that in the now counterintuitive world of the pre-industrial times, this was exactly what happened. There was a huge difference in offsprings by the rich and by the poor. So over the long term, what would be the effect of this? The number of the relatively well-off keeps on increasing and that of the relatively worse-off keeps on decreasing. And since Malthusian pressures apply to the rich as well, they get less rich as time goose on. One would think that eventually they would fall back into the average, given enough time. But there’s the rub.
According to the author, the rich, even as they tend towards the average, also carry with them the values that enabled their fathers or forefathers to become rich in the first place. So this meant that these industrious values began to spread across the society. Eventually this accumulating industriousness of the people reached a tipping point around the time of the industrial revolution and society has not looked back since. And that explains the world.
Well, not quite. One more thing had to happen before the inevitable trend towards the mean by the rich could be checked. They had to stop out-producing the poor so that income wouldn’t be redistributed in Malthusian fashion as soon as it is accumulated by one generation.
The Demographic Revolution
Along the way somewhere, humanity seemed to realize that children was an ‘inferior good� (anything that you consume less of as income increases) and this turned Malthusian logic on its head. What triggered the switch to the modern demographic regime with few children despite high incomes? This is where I feel the author finally trips comprehensively.
Clark has no explanation to offer on why this demographic revolution should have happened only in England. The only explanation forthcoming is that perhaps in England alone the diffusion (mentioned above) of values reached its tipping point earlier. Now this may well be the best explanation but it leaves the reader disappointed.
Conclusion
In the end, the reader has to applaud the statical dexterity of the author and the very creditable model that has been built up. The conclusion is unavoidably weak but it fits fairly well into the model itself and hence is acceptable within those frameworks.
As a critique on current models available, this book works well. But as an alternate theory, not so well.
Firstly, Clark brackets all of pre-1800 humanity into one single average. But history is not about the mean curve, it is about the people at the edges of the curve, continually creating it, changing it. Clark can surely learn a thing or two from Armesto on how history is much more about human drama than about statistics.
The progress that humanity was making was affecting radical changes at the edges of the curve even if the curve itself might not have ben shifting. So to me the Malthusian world is not so much different from today’s world - the difference has always been about how the gains from any advance in technology was apportioned among the population. It might well be the case that we are in a slightly prolonged deviation from the curve currently and will return to the curve once the free lunches that we have unearthed get exhausted. The Industrial Revolution might well then be called The Industrial Aberration by future historians.
Cheers to the reviewer for the biased conclusion please. Thanks....more
It is easy today to produce an economic defense for capitalism, at least in its modern form with the carefully chosen welfare garb. But the moral crit It is easy today to produce an economic defense for capitalism, at least in its modern form with the carefully chosen welfare garb. But the moral critique has often been harder to counter. Wehner and Brooks tries to evolve a moral defense for capitalism. They begin by distilling morality and view of man into three perhaps over-simplified but still interesting categories based on the contention that our style of government is bound to derive from our view of man.
The first school with Rousseau and co as the board of directors is the grandiose, utopian view of man as malleable and infinitely noble and hence capable of creating an utopia of anarchy. Man needed no master in their perception.
The second school is the Hobbesian idea of man’s life as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. This requires man to be controlled with every authority exercisable. It required an all powerful state.
The third of course is capitalism, which the authors say are based on a more rational assessment of human nature - of man as noble and self-interested at the same time. This school tries to move towards a form of authority that leaves men as free as possible and erecting only as many checks and balances as are unavoidable.
To Wehner and Brooks, all government failures are due to misreadings of human nature: by choosing the wrong basis for government, authoritarianism and communism and such were bound to fail. Capitalism, by getting the first step right, is haltingly on its way to perfection in their view. The argument above is only one among those presented in the book. While all the other standard tropes of arguments are there, only this seemed reasonably well argued to me. The low rating is entirely due to how the majority of the book turns into a theological argument based on biblical authority and the feeble attempt to construct a biblical sanction for the capitalist way of life....more
Public Choice is a fancy economic expression that used to go by the name common sense or by ‘healthy skepticism� earlier. But bringing it into formal Public Choice is a fancy economic expression that used to go by the name common sense or by ‘healthy skepticism� earlier. But bringing it into formal theory has been a commendable accomplishment. Tullock’s essays in the first part are indeed a good primer as the book’s title claims. But after that the second and third authors rapidly takes it from healthy skepticism to an almost neurotic revulsion of government, even going so far as to predict the coming anarchy.
The intro might turn you off before you can even start but that is because it is written by Seldon, he won't make a reappearance till part 3: don't miss Tullock. By the end this primer has turned into a thoroughly depressing book, probably the worst of the year yet. Now I have to pick up a public choice text-book to confirm if the authors were not oversimplifying in their zeal....more
The complexity of Gandhiji's life requires careful attention to both his public and personal trials. This is the basis on which Wolpert proposes to bu The complexity of Gandhiji's life requires careful attention to both his public and personal trials. This is the basis on which Wolpert proposes to build yet another biography on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the most well examined and yet one of the most enigmatic personalities. Wolpert says that even as he was writing his many works on India, he was always drawn towards Gandhi’s life but yet shying away from the endeavor, invariably daunted by Gandhi's elusive personality and the extent of his archive, yet hoping that greater maturity and deeper knowledge of India would help him to understand the Mahatma's mentality and reasons for his often contradictory behavior. When he finally decided to do so and confronted the veritable mountain of literature that exists about the great man, he almost decided then to abandon his "Gandhi" once again, “feeling that perhaps I had nothing new to add to what was known about the amazing man who called his life an "open book," and fearing that at age sixty-eight, completing my research and writing might take longer than my lifetime.�
While a noble quest in itself, in the search for an alternative take and for a more comprehensible explanation Wolpert can be said to have stumbled, and badly. One wishes he had taken better heed of his own misgivings. Gandhi used to famously call his own life as his Tapasya. Wolpert translates this tapasya as passion (thence the title of the book), then elaborates on the classic, noble meanings of the word (in drawing a parallel to 'the passion of the christ', for the benefit of his western readers) then ends up reverting back to the modern and much more ordinary meaning of the word with no sanction from the original tapasya. He continues to use the word passion in all sorts of contexts and gets it thoroughly mixed up. The reader has to put in a special effort to keep things straight about which context the word is being used in in any given instant.
Wolpert's overly spiritual take on Gandhi’s life and seeking an explanation in that alone is detrimental to any real understanding. Gandhiji was not a mere spiritual guru, he was a shrewd political leader who mobilized more people voluntarily than perhaps anyone ever has. He combined religion, politics, idealism and personal relationships into a single field of action. Gandhi's life can even be said to be, without too much exaggeration, an object lesson on codes of purity and honor, on the meaning of martyrdom, and on the construction of a heroic life. Nevertheless, his life should be seen as a human life, no more and no less, and as a testament to the heights that the human spirit can climb with patient effort. That is where the inspiration of his ‘life as message� lies: in replicating a part of that ambition of spirit, not in being a distant unattainable sainthood emulatable only through statues and honorifics.
In the end, the book is reduced to an overly romanticized set of platitudes, talking sometimes dreamily of yogic strength and sometimes of some mysterious ‘ancient civilization� in Wolpert’s half-distracted quest to explain the reason behind these ‘experiments� and of Gandhi's 'passion'. The explanations are not always coherent and shows scant understanding of the scriptural knowledge and Vedic traditions that Gandhi drew from in order to formulate his life and rules, and if drilled the author might be hard pressed to supply what he meant by half of these platitudinous terms.
In never being able to make up his mind about whether he wanted to explore the personal life or the political life, or in perhaps not being able to find any way to separate the entangled strands of the two, Wolpert compromises too much and presents us with a very shallow work. The book cannot serve as an introductory read because it leaves out and simplifies too much, and it cannot serve as a supplementary read since it has nothing original to add. So what purpose did the book serve? I cannot discern one....more
Bonus: A quick passage from the book (representative, both):
And here is the letter of accep Single Quote Review:
[image]
Bonus: A quick passage from the book (representative, both):
And here is the letter of acceptance, shorn of honorific implications, that a philosophically frank law school should send those it admits:
Dear successful applicant,
We are pleased to inform you that your application for admission has been accepted. It turns out that you happen to have the traits that society needs at the moment, so we propose to exploit your assets for society’s advantage by admitting you to the study of law.
You are to be congratulated, not in the sense that you deserve credit for having the qualities that led to your admission—you do not—but only in the sense that the winner of a lottery is to be congratulated. You are lucky to have come along with the right traits at the right moment. If you choose to accept our offer, you will ultimately be entitled to the benefits that attach to being used in this way. For this, you may properly celebrate.
You, or more likely your parents, may be tempted to celebrate in the further sense that you take this admission to reflect favorably, if not on your native endowments, then at least on the conscientious effort you have made to cultivate your abilities. But the notion that you deserve even the superior character necessary to your effort is equally problematic, for your character depends on fortunate circumstances of various kinds for which you can claim no credit. The notion of desert does not apply here.
We look forward nonetheless to seeing you in the fall.
Singer takes a different approach with this book and instead of culling from existing literature, he calls for essays. The result is an eclectic mix o Singer takes a different approach with this book and instead of culling from existing literature, he calls for essays. The result is an eclectic mix of essays that exhibit a wide range of contemporary’s takes on some of the classic and current problems that philosophers wrestle with or theorize about. It consists of some fifty original essays. These essays deal with the origins of ethics, with the great ethical traditions, with theories about how we ought to live, with arguments about specific ethical issues, and with the nature of ethics itself.
As Singer puts it, a quick summary might go like this: in the first part, we see how little we know about the origins of ethics, how ethics in small-scale societies takes forms very different from those it takes in our own, and how the most ancient ethical writings already reflect a variety of views about how life is to be lived. Then the great ethical traditions are put on display; and we find divergence of opinion not only between the different traditions, but within each tradition itself. The history of Western philosophical ethics shows how, from the earliest Greek thinkers to the present day, old philosophical positions have resurfaced at intervals, and old battles have had to be fought out all over again in more modern terms. When, in Part IV, the volume moves from the past to the present, we are presented with many theories of how we ought to live, and about the nature of ethics, all plausible, sometimes disagreeing with other approaches.
The many voices makes this a valuable collection in that the method provides a level of over-all detachment that a single author tackling multiple philosophies might find hard to achieve. Here each of the authors are (presumably) scholars who wanted to make a distinct point and Singer is okay with accepting that the book might not have any coherence beyond being a companion to the many schools; but the reader also develops a sense of convergence of ideas as the book moves from the past to the present and from questions to possible solutions. What is striking at this point is the unexpected extent to which writers who had started from quite different places all seemed to be heading in the same direction.
That is the strength of the book. It lays out the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle but leaves it to the reader to divine if there is an overarching outline connecting them. And a book on philosophy should always endeavor to let that thrill be the reader’s....more
This book was an Independence day gift to myself and it has turned out to be a good choice. In Nariman’s exploration and assessme Common Man's Umbrella
This book was an Independence day gift to myself and it has turned out to be a good choice. In Nariman’s exploration and assessment of various issues based on constitutional tenets, the ‘state of the nation� seems healthy only when these issues collide with the courts of law. Men seem good, reason seems triumphant and government officials and leaders seem to be the arbitrary children that they actually are, but all without feeling that this is cause for a tragic gloom - because the parent is around to discipline them. We need the courts to overreach, Nariman seems to be saying in all earnestness (with his characteristically profligate smattering of exclamation marks in the text).
It has to be admitted that there is a genuine (almost perverse) pleasure in seeing leaders who are consistently acknowledged to be the scourge of modern India being put in their place, being given a public reassessment of their sense of importance. This is what Nariman provides (drawing heavily on his 60 odd years of experience at the bar) through his numerous anecdotes and mini case-studies - this is also what the courts Vs government drama provides to the common man. It allows us to generate a healthy skepticism of the government and moves us away from the ‘mai-baap� mentality. The highest courts play a vital role in this.
While the Govt might see this as an erosion of credibility, and resent this incursion and ‘overreach� Nariman seems to say that this is exactly what the doctor (constitution) ordered in the first place: what a good governance really requires are institutions that have full cognizance of their own fragility and of their own failures.
Thus the majority of the book enumerates the state of the nation using the Constitution as a yardstick and seems to imply that as long as we have wise men in the courts acting as zealous watchdogs of the Constitution, democracy is safe and if not progress, at least regress is effectively checked.
But in the end, I have not let the brooding last chapter detract from the overriding confidence that the book asks of me towards the judiciary and by proxy to the nation and its ‘state�. Every section in this book begins with one of the political cartoons of the legendary ‘common man� (from the series of iconic sketches by Laxman who used to express the 'state of the nation' more powerfully than what many serious journos ever managed - a role that the amul ads now seem to be valiantly trying to fill) that illustrates poignantly some of the issues that Nariman wants to address in it. The last chapter did not have one, presumably because he could not find one. In the end, that lack of a cartoon was the most telling thing for me....more
A good collection of articles that the author had contributed over the years. The essays prove to be analytically rigorous and readable at the same tiA good collection of articles that the author had contributed over the years. The essays prove to be analytically rigorous and readable at the same time. While the book suffers from the usual problem that plagues such compilations: repetition, the individual articles still maintain a continuity and flow that keeps boredom at bay.
Being from a highly acclaimed policy advisor, the essays have special value in that they allow an insider's perspective on how the 2008/9 crises was looked at by Indian policy makers and what their prime concerns were. The disappointing aspect is that there is not much innovation or experimentation in the suggested approaches and the policy making seems to suffer from a persistent copy-cat mentality and a predilection to import policy solutions for homebrewn problems. Be that as it is, the analysis is always strong and there is a strong inclination toward consistency and data-based approach throughout and that is encouraging. ...more
A collection of entertaining anecdotes. Not particularly mind expanding, not at all knowledge-expanding, unfortunately. One good sample tidbit is thatA collection of entertaining anecdotes. Not particularly mind expanding, not at all knowledge-expanding, unfortunately. One good sample tidbit is that the popular �Hic sunt dracones� (here there be dragons) is just a misrepresentation, those words never permeated medieval maps after all. Another is the origin of the expression 'orienting oneself'. If the bulk of the anecdotes were similarly obscure or offbeat, the book might have been worth it. The poetical intro by Dava Sobel is the best chapter. Not for Mapheads, this one. Not the right kinda trivia.
Another tidbit for the curious (from the second best chapter in the book): Steinberg’s Manhattanite’s view of the world - the precursor to many of the maps that invade your facebook timelines periodically.
[image]
“The parody has been parodied many times, but the best modern parallel, and certainly the rudest, is to be found in the work of the much travelled Bulgarian graphic designer Yanko Tsvetkov. Tsvetkov, who works under the name Alphadesigner, may well have constructed the most offensive and cynical atlas in the world, all of it stereotypical, some of it funny. His Mercator projection entitled The World According to Americans showed a Russia labelled simply ‘Commies�, and a Canada labelled ‘Vegetarians�. He has also produced the Ultimate Bigot’s Supersize Calendar of the World, which includes Europe According to the Greeks. In this one, the bulk of European citizens live in the ‘Union of Stingy Workaholics�, while the UK is categorised as ‘George Michael�.�
Through most of the reading I wanted to be critical of the book. I was disappointed that the wisdom that was characteristic of the Das who wrote The D Through most of the reading I wanted to be critical of the book. I was disappointed that the wisdom that was characteristic of the Das who wrote The Difficulty of Being Good was not much on display in his exploration of the 2nd of the four foundational principles (Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha) of Indian life [sic]. I could only conclude that it must be difficult for one man to take on the challenge of elucidating all four. I also had some fun imagining that this might be even more the case if he ver decides to turn to the third of the big 4!
The reason for this criticality was that it was constructed as a personal history - it was supposed to be a growing up story for India, entwined with Das's own. For most of the book this imbued it with a needless tragic sense and also made it seem artificial. The view seemed to be too one-sided, almost like a deliberately bourgeoisie history. There was something not quite right in the telling and while Das’s smooth writing mostly glosses over this, it did come out plainly in instances such as (for example) when he talked about the psychological basis for indian’s inability to cooperate and work in a team atmosphere. A patently absurd Freudian explanation that even the author seemed to know as just playing for the stands.
In all, there seemed to be too much of being wise after the event and Das seemed reluctant to put behind his early enchantments and disillusionments with Nehru and his dreams, not seeming to realize that the models were the best ones available back then. This was exactly the sort of wafer thin analysis that lends very easily to the sort of creeping criticism for India and ‘our ways� that is characteristic of the modern 'middle-class'.
Then somewhere towards the end, Das gives up the pretense of telling his own story and plunges into a reflective and more clear-headed assessment of present day India, no longer overshadowed by the perceived failures of the past. From being a depressing saga, the book suddenly leapt into the sunlight of such intense optimism and sudden lack of generalizations. The tide turns with the account of the exciting days of reform. The drama and the personae are wonderfully captured and in spite of being a well-worn story it literally keeps the reader at the edge of the seat as it unfolds like a Bollywood drama, full of machinations and quick steps and side steps - a subtle dance that Das takes great pleasure in composing and unravelling.
From then on the writing takes on a breathless character, as if Das in his old age has recaptured the spirit that was supposed to awaken Independent India half a century ago. That explains the title of the book, though he could just as well have titled it "Gurcharan Unbound" - after all, it was not just India that reinvented itself towards the end of this 'personal history'. In doing this Das vindicates his narrative choice - the narrative moods were meant to capture the turbulent see-saw of emotions that the nation itself went through. Das does it beautifully, it was just that I failed to appreciate it till the very end. ...more
Another one of the myth-buster books. Sure, we have all the solutions. And they are so obvious too. And so simple that every major problem can be explAnother one of the myth-buster books. Sure, we have all the solutions. And they are so obvious too. And so simple that every major problem can be explained away in a bite-sized chapter. But still we cant get off the ride. Riddle that....more
This very engaging introduction to Indian Philosophy can be thought of as a series of essays on some of the most prominent schools of thought of ancie This very engaging introduction to Indian Philosophy can be thought of as a series of essays on some of the most prominent schools of thought of ancient Indian philosophy, with each essay being followed up by detailed 'further readings' that can be used to explore particular ideas further. While this presentation of the book facilitates an easy introduction to each of the schools of thought, it can have the effect of obscuring the subtle interconnections and derivations within and between them.
Also, the fact that Bartley chose to use Buddhist arguments as the point of departure for defining all the other schools of thought has the unfortunate effect of making them seem overly derivative. In spite of these defects, the books is worth a read, particularly the sections on Sankhya and Nyaya are a discursive delight to read.
The section on Buddhism is a bit stretched out, as it had to be given the nature of the presentation. The section on Mimamsa school is given a slightly simplistic explanation and the earlier and later schools are not delineated enough to give full play to the power of this school of thought, nor are the connections with Sankhya, particularly with Gita, fully explored. The Vedanta school is given a lot of detail and space but without looping back and connecting fully with Sankhya through the upanishadic arguments.
Given the scope of an introductory book, it is perhaps asking too much to address all the nuances but some o f the space dedicated to quoting Sankara's and others' arguments could have been given over to tracing the differences and similarities between the schools and in showcasing the organic nature of the growth of the entire philosophic edifice.
P.S. Forgive the omission of diacritical marks. Please do google to pick out exact pronunciations....more
There are books one turn to sometimes, not for improving knowledge but to be reminded of the extent of one’s ignorance. The Revanche of the Geographers
There are books one turn to sometimes, not for improving knowledge but to be reminded of the extent of one’s ignorance. This has turned out to be one more of such books even though I had gone in thinking I was ready.
Many times in my overzealous nature, I have jumped into books which I was unable to appreciate fully because of a lack of background. In such cases, usually I end up grasping the full implications of many of the ideas only later - when some other author educates me on the foundations from which the ideas I had rejected earlier emerge and make sense. I have quite some experience in this humbling exercise, if I may say so myself. And now I have been developing an instinct for noticing when I am being skeptical about a book and examining if it comes from my own reasoned arguments or just from ignorance of the author’s arguments. With this developing knack, I cant shake the feeling that Kaplan’s book is going to turn out to be one more of those books. What right now sticks me as thinly-veiled war-mongering and a very unhealthy revanchist framework might well turn out to be an uncomfortable truth that my berlinesque education is finding hard to accept. But I have been telling myself to keep open to even contradictory ideas - my aim is not ideology, that is what comes easily if one doesn’t put efforts towards developing a steady aversion to easy rejections.
I do commend Kaplan for shocking me so thoroughly with this book and for the strategic insights into the genesis of much of today's geopolitics - at least his version of them. While I am sure Kaplan cherry-picked extensively by only selecting those geographers who can claim vengeance in the present context of world geopolitics, which strikes me as a possibly manipulative exercise, I am still going to grant the possibility that he might be right. Especially on Iran and Mexico and their interplay with the USA where Kaplan projects a purpose onto history and a possibly bright future, but not so much with the strategic views/recommendations on containing China which unfortunately reflect the “Yellow Peril� mindset of the patron geographers that Kaplan builds upon. But, of course, that is not to say that they are wrong.
The geographers might indeed be getting their revenge. But, in 40 years I wish I would get to read another, more positively enthymemetic book about the revenge of the humanists. ...more
The book is supposed to be one of the most authoritative histories of the period, presented by a set of celebrated authors who were instrumental in au The book is supposed to be one of the most authoritative histories of the period, presented by a set of celebrated authors who were instrumental in authoring most of the text books of the academic curriculum (India). It is disappointing then to see that ideology colors even such a work. If you can stay away from the strong biases that run through most of the interpretative chapters, this is actually quite a good book read.
It provides a good contrast (counterpoint?) to Guha's history. It is quite stunning how history changes so radically from one book to the next. The two books tell of the same period but with such marked divergence. As a reader one can accept this transition with surprising ease since the story is not in the telling but in the leaving out, in the focusing of the searchlight on select incidents and in leaving the rest in the darkness. This strengthens my growing obsession with historiography and its many wonders. Has any fully illumined history of any period yet been written? I am yet to find one.
The next book in my romance with historiography might have some answers - History at the Limit of World-History. I am thoroughly excited to have stumbled on this one and am hoping to continue this review over there. ...more
Malone delivers a surprisingly intimate and forgiving account of India’s sometimes exasperating mix of foreign policy and external relations. This boo Malone delivers a surprisingly intimate and forgiving account of India’s sometimes exasperating mix of foreign policy and external relations. This book is a refreshing break from the posturing and grandstanding typical of many Indian writers and the partisan and sometimes startlingly ignorant rhetoric coming from most foreign commentators on international relations.
The author manages to see the issues from a uniquely Indian viewpoint (gleaned from his seemingly chummy relationship with most of our prominent scholars - anecdotes litter the book) and to a large extent internalizes the many contradicting tendencies (mostly domestic, unsurprisingly) that influence the outcome of India’s foreign policies and comes up with a coherent attempt at showing that it is not as discordant and incomprehensible as it might appear at first to the outside (or even inside) observer.
Malone gives hope that there is no need to get lost in the cascade of apparent contradictions that might spew from our overly eloquent delegates and that with the right kind of effort India too can be deciphered by her foreign allies and also by her own students.
This gives pause for thought about the right method towards approaching other similarly situated countries which seem to have as patently a lack of ‘grand strategy� and a similar tendency for ‘getting-through�. This book is a strong case for more scholarship and less diplomacy in international relationships. It seems to be good advice....more
Loading...
