Author Archive
Posted by Aditya Kuvalekar on April 28, 2012
I am posting after a long time and this is not going to be a terribly interesting post either. The reason for this hiatus, as one might guess, is because grad school is tough! But I don’t want to crib about that right now. I would rather say something positive and nice that I saw today.
Every now and then the Economics dept of NYU arranges a Friday evening “Beer and Eocnomics” where some professor gives a small speech and then people drink, eat, go home and work on problem sets. Today, it was Prof.Andrew Caplin talking about his research and what he wishes to do. It was simply fantastic. He combines a lot of psychology into his mainstream economics research. He has spent a lot of time understanding the housing finance market in the U.S. Econ professors are not known for picking topics of this kind in general. So, this in itself is quite a courageous thing according to me. But on top of that, he had a very interesting thing to say about the theoretical models in economics, data and real world. Firstly, it is well known that theoretical models are abstractions from the reality. However, as he said, the models are very interesting in themselves and although they don’t mimic the real world or rather are quite far from it, one needn’t be radical because they offer quite a few beautiful things such as the methods. But radicalism is rarely interesting. On the contrary, him and many other economists, are doing something else. That is, making small changes in the existing framework by looking at the data and getting closer to the real world. They are gathering more and more data, data that might not seem relevant by the theoretical models but in reality does affect things. The world, is a complex place. The hope is someday, we will be able to predict things in a much better manner than what we have been able to do so far.
The reason why I say this is because I wish to point out the honesty within the profession, the effort to take things to real world and explain. The problem is real world is extremely complex. Economics is not useless. Research, unlike blogging and tweeting, is not a place where people solve problems in five minutes. And that’s actually the beauty of it.
Posted in Economics | 1 Comment »
Posted by Aditya Kuvalekar on January 18, 2012
It is no secret that we are very emotional and sensitive people in India. A mere book is enough for us to set buses and cars on fire. Our sentiments being hurt is all it takes for us to take to streets, stop traffic, cause nuisance, express anger and then go home and sleep. It is this behaviour of us that receives constant flak from the liberals and intellectuals and quite deservedly so I must say. As a society we present a very grim picture about the level of public discourse we can have. That is why, a considerable section of our society has been calling for a serious reform in the norm of freedom of speech that we have in our constitution. Compared to the US or some other liberal countries, we fare very poorly on the freedom that an individual has in speaking up his mind. And as some people say, we require freedom of speech especially to say things that are not pleasing to everyone’s ears. That’s exactly the reason why it must exist.
Enough of preamble. Let’s get down to the point I have in mind. As the title suggests, it’s about the recent turn of events. First, Dr.Subramaniyan Swamy, a man I respect wholeheartedly for more than one reason (getting a publication in Econometrica as a M.Stat student for example) and have no qualms in admitting the same, wrote this in DNA on July 14,2011. It has been removed from the DNA website subsequently. Amongst many controversial things that he wrote, he proposed the following things to wipe out Islamic terrorism -
But still, if any Muslim does so acknowledge his or her Hindu legacy, then we Hindus can accept him or her as a part of the Brihad Hindu Samaj, which is Hindustan. India that is Bharat that is Hindustan is a nation of Hindus and others whose ancestors are Hindus. Even Parsis and Jews in India have Hindu ancestors. Others, who refuse to so acknowledge or those foreigners who become Indian citizens by registration can remain in India, but should not have voting rights (which means they cannot be elected representatives).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General, Law, Philosophy | Tagged: Dr.Swamy, Ethics, Freedom, Liberty, Mill, Speech, Subramaniyan Swamy | 2 Comments »
Posted by Aditya Kuvalekar on November 18, 2011
A friend posted something related to Indira Gandhi and an airplane hijack in 1978 on Facebook. The post seemed propagandist in nature to be honest. These days there are so many things floating around about the Gandhi family and their crimes that it’s hard to discern between the truth and fiction. Out of curiosity I googled a bit and found a Wikipedia page (Yes, a Wiki page!) that says
December 20, 1978: Two Hindus, Devendra Nath Pandey and Bhola Nath Pandey hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-410. They demanded the immediate release of Indian National Congress party leader Indira Gandhi who was imprisoned at that time on the charges of fraud and misconduct. Later, they were awarded with party tickets for this act by the Indira Gandhi government in 1980 such that Devendra Nath Pandey rose to become a minister in the government of most populous state of India, Uttar Pradesh. This case was also mentioned by Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale to justify his claim regarding the hypocrisy of the Indian government.
This intrigued me further and I searched a bit more. Here’s more on the heroes of that story.
I will leave you with a quote from this book by Devendra Nath Pandey on the hijack incident-
“Yeh to deewanagi thi. Gandhi family ke liye deewanagi ki had tak samarpan tha” (It was an obsession and devotion to the Gandhi family”) Also, hijacking was not mentioned a crime then.
Marvelous!
Posted in General | 3 Comments »
Posted by Aditya Kuvalekar on November 10, 2011
This is too late to write about this lovely development. Thomas Sargent from NYU got the Nobel prize this year. I am not a macroeconomics guy. Neither am I an “economics and policy blogger”. So I have no qualms in declaring that I am absolutely incapable of writing about his work. This might be a good resource to read a bit of serious stuff about his work.
The purpose of this post is to narrate a sweet incident I witnessed a few days after he won the Nobel. I attended a Champagne session to celebrate this achievement where one of his students (unfortunately I don’t know her name) gave a small little talk about his work.
Apparently, Sargent was asked a few months ago about a question on Financial Crisis and some policy action to be taken. Sargent answered, “That is a question to be resolved by the model and the data”
When a Nobel laureate is that humble in admitting that economics is far harder than what may seem and most questions don’t have “obvious” answers as many bloggers and journalists think, maybe there’s some food for thought for those who think before they speak. For many Indian policy bloggers/journalists of course, these rules of humility do not apply.
Posted in Economics | 1 Comment »
Posted by Aditya Kuvalekar on July 25, 2011
Today morning, a friend of mine sent this link to me, asking for an opinion. In a nutshell, the honourable Supreme Court has directed the centre to provide subsidised foodgrain to BPL families in 172 poorest districts around the country. It is very hard to predict how successful the policy will be, but to me it sounds good. There is no doubt that this is only a redistributive policy and will not do much to alter the status of the impoverished as such.
In the arena of economic policy making, there’s that golden rule – You can’t make all the people happy. Given this binding constraint, it’s natural for the birds of the same feather to flock together. Any debates over any economic policy take the shape of Us vs Them, with “experts” belonging to various ideological stance taking potshots at each other. Redistributive policies are particularly problematic in this regard. Any proponent of them is termed as “Marxist”, “Socialist” and any opponent is called a “Ruthless Capitalist”.
At this moment, it would be a good idea to take a step back and think why redistributive policies exist and what they strive for. To do so, we must acknowledge the fact that many developing democracies are ridden with problems of crony capitalism (scams, corruptions, underhand dealings etc) due to the fact that politicians are not very accountable. People do not expect politicians to do much and politicians oblige without retribution. The weakest section of the society makes only marginal progress over the years and the development as a whole is highly inequitable. This is often termed as a bad equilibrium by economists.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Development, Economics, Government | Tagged: Krugman, NREGA, Redistributive policy, subsidy | 1 Comment »
Posted by Aditya Kuvalekar on June 27, 2011
In November 2008, the atmosphere towards assembly elections in a few states was heating up. One of the most prominent of those was Delhi. Vegetable rates had hit the sky. Common man was helpless, dejected and disgusted with all that he had to face. Not that the situation has changed much since then. But probably it was slightly new then. BJP painted the streets of Delhi with Advani’s posters and slogans of “Mehengi Padi Congress”. It also attempted to “expose” Congress’ failure in curbing terrorism. And 26/11 happened. It was almost like the icing on the cake for the BJP. I had called a Congress party worker friend of mine and he simply laughed in despair at the situation. Even he had given up his ever-optimism post-26/11. Just two months before that, there was a series of bomb-blasts in Delhi. Just like the previous times, an inquiry was initiated and no considerable success was achieved. Perpetrators were not even identified, let alone brought to justice. Just like the old-times, it all looked hopeless.
Shiela Dixit was facing a seemingly uphill task. In spite of all her achievements, she represented a party that is perceived to be weak on terrorism. Congress, the opposition has been claiming since the pre-historic times, caters to the minorities through vote-bank politics resulting in marginalizing the majority. Apparently, Congress’ agenda to go soft on Islamic terrorism is one of the major reasons why we have had to face rampant terrorist attacks in the recent times. The atmosphere had heated up. Post 26/11 wave of protests and patriotism had traveled to Delhi. As usual, Manmohan Singh was silent. The picture was grim for the Congress. But, against all odds, Shiela’s agenda of development thrived. She earned a landslide victory in Delhi. BJP was wiped out. Rajnath Singh was clenching his fists yet again.
That brings me to the question, how much of truth is there in any of the allegations of the opposition against Congress’ performance in counter-terrorism? In spite of my distaste for the G family, I thought it worthwhile to explore the trend of civilian casualties in terrorist attacks over the years.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Development, General, Government, Terrorism | Tagged: BJP, Congress, Islamic terrorism, Manmohan SIngh, NDA, Sonia Gandhi, Terrorism, UPA | 6 Comments »
Posted by Aditya Kuvalekar on June 20, 2011
There are essentially three classes of comedies – The first are the ones that are intended to be funny and actually end up being funny. Typical examples would be movies such as Andaz Apna Apna, Hera Pheri, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. The second class is of the movies that are not intended to be funny. They are often made to evoke pity, sympathy, love, hate, anger. However, they just end up being funny. Examples of this class are Gunda, Loha, Wake Up Sid, Paa. Bheja Fry-2 has made it successfully to the third class.
When the two-hour atrocity on my brain ended I was just thinking what exactly has brought us to this situation? A good comedy film comes in about every five-six years. The case of serious intellectual films is even worse. And if we are talking about TV serials, where once, as kids, we saw Malgudi Days, Bharat Ek Khoj, Tenali Rama, Chanakya and such serials, now we are watching the Kyunkis, Kkkussums and all such stuff.
The best analogy for this problem is, I think, in the paper for which George Akerlof got the Nobel Prize in Economics. The paper’s called The Market for Lemons. It’s a very very simple paper. Simple to the point that some people would even want to conclude that “if one can get a Nobel for this sort of stuff then even I can get one”. My best wishes are always with them of course.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Economics, General | Tagged: Ekta Kapoor, Market for Lemons, TV | 7 Comments »
Posted by Aditya Kuvalekar on June 12, 2011
Ignorance is indeed bliss. This has been reinforced in my small little brain after I read some juvenile attempts on the internet by the “Internet Subject Experts” lumping Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare together. As Atanu Dey writes here, when it comes to politics, economics, geology, stock markets and many other subjects, that Baba Ramdev would do himself and others great service by keeping as away from them as Digvijay Singh from sanity. And in much the same spirit, when it comes to the knowledge of people working on grassroots, contribution of some activists to problems of the distressed, contextual analysis of economic policy and many other topics that require slightly deeper understanding of a subject than Google, bloggers (many, not all) should also refrain from them. (I too have indulged in casual criticism of something or the other in the past but the Anna episode has made me realize that I need to dig slightly deeper in order to say something significant.) They need to take some efforts to evaluate whether they possess the understanding/information/knowledge to criticise/poke fun at Anna or Baba. It is of course pardonable should a person think, upon hearing Baba’s solution to homosexuality, that this man has just about enough brains to open his mouth to eat but no more. But a bit of effort to understand the men in question would probably do everyone a lot more good, or so I believe.
But the issue is the Anna-Baba hyphenation. Do we like Ind-Pak hyphenation? How would Sachin Tendulkar feel upon reading Sachin-Venky-Sreenath as some great players of the 90s? Would AB Vajpyaee ever be able to digest it if someone were to write something like “Vajpayee-Singh type of PMs are ever reticent”? Then why not apply the same yardstick to Anna?
Baba Ramdev is a yogic guru who has managed to make a fool of himself thanks to his ludicrous ideas of solving social problems. It is not anyone else but he himself who is solely responsible for the mockery that he has been subjected to lately. At the same time, he is phenomenal when it comes to Yoga and Pranayama. Thousands of well-educated people are his followers. He does not preach astrology. He preaches only Yoga and millions have benefited through it. So those deriding Baba-The Yogi, can continue to do so without ever realizing how outrageously stupid they sound in declaring that thousands of highly-placed managers, engineers and others, who are Ramdev’s followers, are in fact stupid and it is them who possess the knowledge to separate the wheat from chaff. Equally, he has no experience whatsoever in dealing with the corrupt leaders of the country that run across all the parties in equal measure. He should, in the very first place, have not taken up the issue at all. Like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, he should simply have played a silent-supporter only supporting the cause and let the experts decide on the means.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General, Government, Politics | Tagged: Anna Hazare, Antonia Maino, Baba Ramdev, Rahul Vinci | 8 Comments »
Posted by Aditya Kuvalekar on May 31, 2011
I am writing this post in the wake of this article from “THe Hindu” where Prof.K.S.Jacob (yes, he’s a professor contrary to what one might infer at the end of the article) is basically saying that we need to introspect. That’s actually pretty much all that’s encompassed in his specious claptrap. The beauty of such articles is that they can’t be criticized beyond a point as they don’t have much of a point.
The author is apparently disturbed by the spate of suicides by dalit students at various leading academic institutions. While the author does not entirely dismiss the possibility of discrimination by what he calls as the “elite faculty” he is essentially saying that the underprivileged are left to fend on their own and that they feel intimidated by their better educated peers. To quote him,
The indifference of the faculty, most of whom come from a privileged class and caste background, adds insult to injury. Discrimination, both subtle and not-so-subtle, continues to plague their career and life. The focus of university programmes on the elite and the blindness of the faculty to the need for additional support to students from disadvantaged backgrounds often seal their fate.
This is bizarre to be honest. In IITs students minority students have a one-year preparatory course which is intended to strengthen their basic concepts so that they come on equal grounds. Professors in IITs typically don’t fail students that often. Without putting in much of an effort one can easily scrape through with poor grades. Yet, if these students are not even able to manage that whose fault is it? What are the faculty expected to do? Go to their rooms and sit with them?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Development, Economics | Tagged: caste, discrimination, iit | 14 Comments »
Posted by Aditya Kuvalekar on May 16, 2011
Noted economist Jean Dreze (a strong proponent of NREGA) wrote recently in Indian Express against Indian govt’s idea of conditional cash transfers. Government of India has been contemplating about transferring cash to poor individuals conditional on good-behaviour such as sending children to school. He is quite against the idea of targeted (aimed at a certain segment of the population) cash transfers as he thinks they don’t serve the purpose. He sees quite a few problems in the scheme. The whole argument can be best summarized in three points –
1 – Cash transfers worldwide are used as compliments to existing infrastructure and not substitutes. For example, in Brazil basic healthcare is provided by the government and people use cash for other purposes. So, in India unless the government does so there’s no point of using cash transfers. That is, the Government of India can think of cash transfers only after it provides the basic healthcare, educational facilities. Government can not hope that private players will fill that gap and it can merely distribute cash and the people will get the services.
2- Targeting the poor is extremely difficult. The problem is government’s inability to find a foolproof way of identifying and helping only the deserving. Therefore, either we will end up paying a lot more people than the really poor ones or we’ll leave a lot of poors untapped. In fact, we can have both the problems together.
3 – The last point is more of a paternalistic nature. Dreze says that people might spend cash on other things that the govt. does not intend to. In kind transfers offer a better alternative. People are not wise enough to spend the cash in the “right” manner and government must play a role of moral police of some sort. Inducing people to make the right choices is rather difficult and in-kind transfers could perform better in that sense.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Development, Economics, Politics | Tagged: Cash transfer, Dreze | 14 Comments »
RSS - Posts
