Posts in Governance Category

March 31st, 2008

Media Coverage and Federal Spending

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email alerts. Thanks for visiting!“Federal spending is lower in areas where there is less press coverage of the local members of Congress.” Interesting. I would’ve expected the opposite considering that legislators might want to sneak in earmarks if no one [...]

March 8th, 2008

Blackberry Banned in India

Talk in the government circles about telecommunication regulation and raising the specter of unspeakable doom by ignoring national security concerns. Sound like the U.S. Congress debating FISA authorizing warrantless wiretapping of American phones? Nah! In fact, this time it is India banning the use of Blackberry services in India. Reason - “does not allow for [...]

March 4th, 2008

Green Train Toilets in India

One of the worst nightmares of Indian public transportation is in using the toilets in the long-distance trains. Even the so-called upper class trains like the Rajdhani didn’t have half-decent toilets at least when I last traveled. I remember holding it back for the entire journey which sometimes lasted couple of days just so that [...]

January 29th, 2008

Security and Privacy - Zero Sum Game?

“If privacy and security really were a zero-sum game, we would have seen mass immigration into the former East Germany and modern-day China.” Wonderful essay by Bruce Schneir on the tradeoff between security and privacy.

November 28th, 2007

How do women leaders fare?

Indian women who serve as village chiefs (pradhans or sarpanches) do an excellent but thankless job of leading their community. But then so does your mom with your home.

November 14th, 2007

Illegal immigrants are terrorists?

Gov.Spitzer of New York finally succumbed to pressure from anti-immigration groups and abandoned his plan to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. While not commenting on his decision to issue a legal document to individuals residing illegally in this country, his intentions to bring them out of the shadows cannot be faulted.
However, the argument offered [...]

October 30th, 2007

Zakaria v. Podoretz

Reading Zakaria decimate neo-con Norman Podhoretz is wonderful. It doesn’t take much time for Podhoretz to take refuge in the Hitler argument.

October 26th, 2007

Error of Making Lists

The United States Government terrorist watch list now stands at 755,000. The list has grown at a rate of 200,000 names a year since 2004 when it was first established to counter terrorism and keep the homeland safe. Of course, racial profiling is rampant but there have been plenty of names toddlers, grandmas, and Senators [...]

October 22nd, 2007

Change your Leaders

Friedman explains why changing your leaders for the environment might be better than changing your light bulbs.

October 18th, 2007

Your country needs immigration

Philip Legrain, author of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them provides excellent responses to a Q&A session over at the Freakonomics blog. It is unfortunate that he has to make pretty obvious points in support of immigration to a country built on rational thought but unfortunately has been hijacked by elements who have lately stepped up [...]

October 16th, 2007

Health Guidelines for BPO Employees?

What is it about our Indian government that refuses to butt out of our personal lives? The moron that is our Union Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss who had earlier tried to ban smoking from movies now wants (health) guidelines for people working in the BPO and IT industry [via]. In an earlier statement, he even [...]

September 6th, 2007

Athlete’s fate

I was really disheartened to know about Santhi Soundarajan’s attempt at suicide. There is still some confusion about her current health condition. The doctors says she could slip into coma but the police say that she is stable. I’ll take the doctor’s word in this case.
It is reported that Santhi had slipped into heavy depression [...]

September 3rd, 2007

400 Khokha..that’s it?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Mumbai caused a lot of pain for the city commuters a couple of days back. Manmohan Singh had an entourage of 52 vehicles or in other terms 2.5 kms long… it has been reported that 50 cent called the PMO to ask if it was PM’s birthday!!!
Our [...]

June 21st, 2007

The Cause of Iraqi Refugees

The Iraq war and its subsequent consequences are endlessly debated in American political circles as well as international meets. However, the biggest casualty of the war - the Iraqi civilian - is hardly given any thought. The Lancet Journal published a study few months back that pegged the civilian casualty figures at around 650,000. President [...]

June 17th, 2007

Swear by Socialism

A reader, S V Raju wrote in recently to Mint that he tried to rejuvenate the Party so that voters in India would have an alternative to the socialist policies that are peddled by current parties. Bloggers have made the case for such a party in India at least for the sake of choice spurred [...]


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