Interesting readings

The new Indian
journalism: Vinod
K. Jose in Caravan magazine profiles Narendra Modi.

Bibek
Debroy on the prospects for the CPI(M) in West Bengal.

Ronald
U. Mendoza has an article on voxEU which should ideally
trigger off similar research by political scientists in India,
about politics as a family business.

A
caucasus wedding, by an unnamed US foreign service
person. This is fascinating reading from two points of
view. First, I'd love to get the Wikileaks report about the same
wedding filed by the corresponding Indian diplomat. I fear our
guys are just not in the same league in terms of the quality of
despatches. And, there was something eerie in this story: it
reminded me of the socially backward subset of India.

Trampling on the individual in
India: A
response by Suw Charman-Anderson, on Firstpost, to Kapil
Sibal's dreams of tracking the location of every resident of
India. A country where the government knows less about citizens is
likely to be a country with
greater de
facto freedom of speech

Learning
how to argue, an interview with Ran Yunfei by Ian Johnson in
the New York Review of Books. It's an interesting glimpse into
China. It's also relevant for India as we face a series of attacks
upon freedom of speech.

Haseeb
Drabu in Mint worries about the record 25 amendments
found in the Finance Bill that apply with retrospective effect.

Mobis
Philipose on SEBI's concerns about algorithmic trading.

The Kingfisher bankruptcy is helping us think more clearly about
the problems of failure of firms. I read

a remarkable blog post about it. And,
see a
debate between Vikas Bajaj and Heather Timmons on the New York
Times blogs.

Open DataCamp 2012, in
Bangalore on 24 March.

The
public and its problems by Raghuram Rajan, in Mint.

How
to help the Syrians by Hugo Dixon. He talks about Why
civil resistance works by Erica Chenoweth and Maria
Stephan. This
is a
paper and a book. Put together, these give
you fresh insights into India's path to independance.

Glowing
pork, exploding watermelons by Thomas N. Thompson,
in Foreign Affairs, on the problems of food safety in
China. I wonder how we are faring on these questions.

I have wondered why my interest in watching TED talks had dwindled
away. Benjamin
Wallace, in New York magazine, helps understand what
happened there.