Worry about India's economy. Worry a lot!

Less than a fortnight into the hundred days in India, the more I observed, the more I wondered whether India's economic "success" story was more hype than real.  That line of thinking morphed into to this column in which I wrote that "the economic health of India is not looking good."

Every day, evidence seemed to pile on to further reinforce the impression that India could run into some serious economic troubles really soon.  I was particularly concerned that the country was not paying enough attention to the long-term requirements of resources, energy, and infrastructure.  

Thus, it was pretty much all "doh!" for me when I read Tyler Cowen's NY Times column where he writes that "We ignore India’s troubling trends at our peril"

 the economy has decelerated from projected rates of more than 8 percent, and negative momentum may bring a further decline. The government reported year-over-year growth in the October-through-December quarter of only 6.1 percent.

What is disturbing is that much of the decline in the growth rate is distributed unevenly, with the greatest burden falling on the poor. If the slower rate continues or worsens, many millions of Indians, for another generation, will fail to rise above extreme penury and want. The problems of the euro zone are a pittance by comparison.

India's growth, or lack of, will affect the smaller neighboring economies, Cowen writes.

India's finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, who is now canvassing to become the country's next president, offers an upbeat assessment, which I find hard to believe:

 India was growing at over 9 per cent before the global financial crisis of 2008 pulled down the growth rate to 6.7 per cent in 2008-09. India has projected a growth rate of 7.6 per cent in 2012-13, up from 6.9 per cent recorded in the previous fiscal. 

Even if India records that rate of growth, there is inflation to worry about.  Thus, a report like this one appears to be a lot more realistic than the ministerial pontifications.

Meanwhile, when I talked with my parents the other day, they said that electricity rates have gone up, and power cuts continue.  It is a continuation of the power shortage that forced my college-mate to shut down his mill in Coimbatore.  While the upward revision of the rates is a correct policy approach--one that had previously severely under-priced electricity--not much can be created without new sources of electricity, which is needed for rural and urban economic activities alike.

Not lookin' good :(

We force students to go through college .... instead of ...

Richard Hersh, whose work I first came to know about a few years ago, thanks to the AACU, explains how we are losing our minds, and how we are shortchanging students:

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Couldn't think of a better follow-up to my rants, like this one, on the deplorable state of contemporary  higher education!

BTW, I came to this Hersh piece this late, via a friend's post on Facebook, about MIT ... Strange are the ways in which we come across anything anymore--profound and inane :)

Ban football. Yes, college and NFL

I can't help but wonder how a student at the University of Oregon will cope when in-state tuition has recently gone up by 9% and the state legislature passed an 11% decrease in funding to the Oregon system overall for 2011 and 2012. Yet thanks to the largess of Nike founder Phil Knight, an academic center costing $41.7 million, twice as expensive in square footage as the toniest condos in Portland, has been built for the University of Oregon football team.
Always important to feed those Ducks.

 Quite a few interesting aspects to the above excerpt from this piece:

• It is from the Wall Street Journal
• A friend, "R," in India--yes, India--sent me the link, along with a note "you'll love to read this"
• The last I might have seen/met this friend in real life? About 35 years ago!

Anyway, we can't seem to write enough analytical and editorial essays about why football ought to be "punted" away from colleges and universities. And then when we think about the atrocious damages it causes, especially to the brain, it becomes all the more urgent to ban the bloody sport.  It needs to fade away the same way that boxing has lost the kind of attraction it once had.

All the more that I am looking forward to the upcoming Intelligence Squared debate on football. 

Strictly from an academic perspective, there is nothing for me to add to what the author writes:

Call me the Grinch. But I would much prefer students going to college to learn and be prepared for the rigors of the new economic order, rather than dumping fees on them to subsidize football programs that, far from enhancing the academic mission instead make a mockery of it.

We ought to keep in mind that this sport-centered academic culture is an uniquely American irrationality.

In no other country’s university system, after all, does sports play anything like the central role it does in American academic life. Men do not go to Oxford to play cricket; the Sorbonne does not field a nationally celebrated soccer team. Even in the most sports-mad countries, sports is sports and education is education. That’s a better system.

But then, ahem, who cares for what I blog/think/write/say, right? :)

(Ryan) Gosling saves a woman. Big deal: I saved five goslings!

So, there I was driving and thinking about the midterms and essays that I have to grade, when I spotted two geese slowly waddling across the lane with five goslings in tow.

I switched the hazard lights on, and came to a complete stop. 

The geese apparently thought it would be a great idea to pause for a second and take it all in.  The gosling bringing up the rear almost ran into the one that was ahead of it.

We were about six cars in my lane, and perhaps three in the opposing direction, all patiently waiting for the goosy family to move.  This being Eugene, nobody "honked" nor edged their cars--we are only way too appreciative of how much the geese allow us into their habitat and their lives.

I was so fascinated with this scene that by the time it occurred to me that I could take a gazillion photos, well, the geese started hurrying up, and so did the goslings.  While no digital image exists, it is a scene that is well etched into my memory, for which I have nothing but thanks to the goslings.

Can you beat that, Mr. Gosling? :)

McJobs in America: What exactly does "manufacturing" mean?

First this video (ht):



A couple of weeks ago, Matt Yglesias worried that Obama's push industrial-policy push for manufacturing could be more than election gimmicks and could guide his second term:

It is sensible for public policy to pay attention to the creation of great firms, to strength in specific sectors, and to the quality of the jobs generated by different economic models. But it should be obvious that the path forward for America is to focus on our strengths in information technology and media, and not compete with the Chinese for manufacturing supremacy.

Because ... the big money is not in the manufacturing of the widgets themselves; The Economist's chart on the breakdown of costs and profits serves as a classic illustration:

So, do we really want to bring back manufacturing, or ... And, BTW, remember what Steve Jobs said?

“Those jobs aren’t coming back”

Scream: laugh and then .... scream?

The Scream goes on sale, and the New Yorker's cartoon editor serves up quite some laughs, like this one:

and this one:

Muahaha :)

Good questions on the future of higher education; But, answers?

I read the following sentences in an email from the university's provost about an upcoming "campus conversation"

The Conversation will provide a chance to respond to multiple questions:

We’re in the midst of a radical change in how knowledge is acquired and shared.  What do we see as opportunities or challenges in responding to that change?

What are the instructional challenges that have come about in the recent past that are beyond some faculty or staff members’ skill set and require support or assistance?

How can we guide the institution’s use of limited resources to help faculty and staff meet students’ needs to succeed?

Of course, other questions will come up.  At the end of the meeting, the ideas will be gathered and serve as the basis for another Campus Conversation in the fall when we can share what we learned and begin to identify possible answers.

Now, these are the kinds of questions that I would love to discuss with fellow professionals, and the laity too.

However, past experience has been that my fellow professionals do not want to hear about how I think about these kinds of questions.  I don't blame them; after all, it would not be comfortable to think about:

how higher education is another speculative bubble that needs to be popped, or
how the way the "business" is conducted it resembles a ponzi scheme; or
how the system is only about serving itself, instead of being focused on the welfare and success of students; or
how the wasteful spending on athletics is too sacred a topic to be discussed; or
how teaching is failing big time; or
how ... 

 Well, I could list them forever ... no point attending such meetings, which almost always are exercises in self-congratulations, and scheming about how to raise more money from taxpayers, students, and donors.

I love (higher) education way too much :(

A minor point about separation of church and state

The President issued this proclamation, in which he notes the date as:

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.

Ahem, "our Lord" is not an appropriate usage under a constitutional prohibition against the government favoring one religion over another, right?

Even if this comes out of mere habit and traditions--that this is how proclamations have always been issued--shouldn't the mistake be corrected at some point?

What was the proclamation about, you ask?  It is hilariously tragic and will have you screaming "mayday, mayday!"; read it up here, from where I proceeded to the White House web site.

On Mohammed Rafi, Heineken, and Auto-tuning

Trying to catch up on the Americana that I had missed out on by having been outside the country for a hundred days is impossible, I know.  But, I try :)

I read this piece about how Bollywood is slowly diffusing into the mainstream here in the US, and there I came across the following ad that apparently went viral:



So, naturally, I went after the original, which has Mohammed Rafi providing the vocals.  There is some high octane dancing--even without Shammi Kapoor, the actor whom I always imagine manically gyrating away whenever I hear such Hindi film music :)



Well, this is infinitely better than the auto-tuned "hits"--reading the New Yorker essay was one awfully depressing experience, to know that this is how the radio Top Forty hits are manufactured :(  In the Culture Desk blog, following up on the essay,  John Seabrook adds:

Almost all the music you hear on Top Forty radio these days is made on machines. You may hear a real guitar once in a while, but an actual drum sound is pretty rare. The singing is still done by humans, but the voices are never ever off pitch, thanks to Auto-Tuning. Is there a problem here?

Ahem, frankly I don't know if there is a problem here.  But, awfully depressing to think that a Rafi might not be necessary for the magic anymore.  Well, at least we have the gems, like the following one, from the past:

The Nobel Peace Prize recipient Obama is "warrior-in-chief"

Robert Wright is not happy, especially when it comes to drone attacks:

The fact is that, when it comes to drone strikes, President Obama has been much more reckless than any of us had reason to believe. He has lobbed missiles prolifically and sometimes undiscerningly into an allied country, embittering many of its citizens in a way that may come back to haunt us. He's also used a drone to assassinate an American citizen abroad, disregarding the constitution's guarantee of due process of law. Obama probably does qualify for the term "warrior in chief," but those of us who aren't happy about this have a right to feel betrayed.

I, for one, do not feel betrayed at all.

Because, from the moment Obama stepped up as a candidate, I have always viewed BHO as a version of Slick Willie but without the sex. 

This level of a hawkish presidency would have normally invited a whole lot of protests from Democrats.  But, they sweep it all away because BHO happens to be a Republican Democrat.  It continues to be a tragic irony that BHO is the only Peace prize recipient who has lobbed quite a few missiles that, as Wright links to, have killed many who were neither terrorists nor soldiers--often, we don't even know who they are, and apparently we don't care either. 

We live in a truly 1984-like world where war is now peace :(

The Buddha at Ayutthaya. Hey, I have seen that!

After having had a delicious pizza that I baked at home ... ok, I didn't start with making the dough, but in the grand traditions of praising fast food, I got the base with a little bit of sauce and cheese, to which I added: red chili flakes, onions that I sliced, tomato that I diced, cilantro that I chopped, and then, to top them all, cut up the chicken that I had cooked yesterday into tiny pieces.  This multi-topping pizza was awesome, and way better than a similar one that Wolfgang Puck's outlets serve--I did get the idea for this combination from having had one too many of Puck's pizzas!

Now, where was I?  Oh yeah, so, after the dinner, here I am scanning through some of my favorite web sites, and came across the following photo at Slate:

Caption at the source: AYUTTHAYA, Thailand—Buddha head embedded in a tree, 2008.

If not for the pizza still working its way through my stomach, I might have jumped up with excitement, for I have been to Ayutthaya, and have taken photos of this very Buddha:

Ayutthaya itself was simply amazing.  As I noted before.  I hope the place has recovered from all that nasty floods.

I think. Therefore, I am an atheist?

Last week, I had an opportunity to guest-lecture where I tapped into my autoethnographic ways of understanding the world.  In explaining a situation that I had experienced, I made what I thought was a passing comment about my atheism.  Turns out that quite a few students wanted to explore that aspect, too.  Some of the questions during the Q/A were strictly about atheism, which was quite a surprise to me.

After the meeting ended, one student walked up to me and asked whether the atheism resulted from my undergraduate in engineering.  Apparently the bunch of science courses he had taken had triggered him to ditch his faith.  And, consistent with the popular images of people of his faith, the toughest time he had about his atheism was with his mother.

I told him that while engineering might have played a part, it was a whole bunch of readings I had done that took me over to the other side.  I agreed with him that science tends to make us question everything around us, and that it is more than likely that science folks are atheists for a good reason that the physicist Weinberg so succinctly put it:  "science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible to not believe in God."

Thus, I am not at all surprised with a recent news:

Scientists have revealed one of the reasons why some folks are less religious than others: They think more analytically, rather than going with their gut. And thinking analytically can cause religious belief to wane — for skeptics and true believers alike.

The finding is, for all purposes, quite a duh! moment; I have always wondered how those trained to think have not managed to walk away from religion.  

A couple of times, I have shared with the less-doubtful this essay by Steven Weinberg, in which he writes:

Living without God isn’t easy. But its very difficulty offers one other consolation—that there is a certain honor, or perhaps just a grim satisfaction, in facing up to our condition without despair and without wishful thinking—with good humor, but without God. 

Yep, humor--good or bad doesn't really matter, I think.  Wait, I did blog about humor contributing to my health and life :)