India in the Age of Ideas: Select Writings: 2006-2018
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Read between December 27 - December 29, 2019
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The term ‘License Raj’ was coined in the 1950s by C. Rajagopalachari, who predicted the corruption and inefficiency that was to follow.
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Krishna cynically dubbed the poor economic performance as the ‘Hindu rate of growth’. In other words, India’s cultural and religious traditions were at fault and not economic policies.
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intellectual and institutional framework of the Nehruvian project was not systematically replaced. Academia remains in the firm grip of the old mindset.
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two-thirds of jail inmates are undertrials who are being forced to live in jail as they cannot afford bail or do not have the legal support to apply for it.
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self-restraint is the single most important attribute in a king. In
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His view would be that every complication breeds corruption.
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it is time to revisit Kautilya. After all, it was he who created a large, well-functioning empire, while Ashoka presided over its disintegration.
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focus from birth control to other issues like infant mortality. Second, long-term schemes like pension systems must anticipate a time when the old population will be expanding much faster than the youth population.
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Population may keep growing until mid-century, owing to rising longevity, but, reproductively speaking, our species should no longer be expanding.
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Its dominance is driven by the fact that it saves and invests almost half of its eleven trillion economy.
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India’s intellectual establishment remained, and still largely remains, wedded to the idea that Nehru’s socialist economic model was essentially good;
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India’s first prime minister also benefited from the fact that all other leaders who could have provided different visions died soon after Independence: Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Syama Prasad Mookerjee and B.R. Ambedkar (controversy still rages on what happened to another alternative, Subhas Bose).
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The answer lies in the near total dominance of all intellectual institutions by the Left.
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am no fan of the argumentative Indian; much prefer the Indian who gets things done.
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In ancient times, India ran a large trade surplus with the Roman empire. As Pliny wrote in the first century, not a year passed in which India did not take fifty million sesterces away from Rome. That trade imbalance implied a continuous drain on gold and silver coins, causing shortages of these metals in Rome. In modern terms, the Romans faced a monetary squeeze.
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emerged as a superpower following its conquest of South America. Between 1501 and 1600, seventeen million kilograms of pure silver and 181,000 kilograms of pure gold flowed from the Americas to Spain,
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China attempts to move up the value chain into services and adjusts to a shrinking workforce, its investment requirements shrink, and its investment rate will fall sharply.
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US Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers asserted that public investment really is a free lunch,
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China dominates global investment because it saves and invests nearly half of its 10.5 dollar trillion economy.
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East
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Asia has successfully developed using a Confucian approach: the political leadership’s main role is to impose order so that the civil service can deliver public services efficiently.
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Karma:
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Dharma:
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Manthan:
success is measured by the ability to absorb the negative and adapt to take advantage of the positive.
Rule of Law:
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