IT HAPPENED IN INDIA |Book Review
Read this book to know how Future Group arrived and carved a niche for them. Read how the journey of Maharajah of Retail actually began. The journey from being an organizer of Dandiya to the biggest festival of country- 26 Jan Sabse Bada Din. Read to know what policies govern the Bazaar and Pantaloons and what is in the roots of the policies that baffle even the most experienced managers. The journey of Biyani on professional front.
When you pick this book from a stall, don’t expect to read saucy tales of biz whizs. It is all about business in a light conversationalist tone, explained and exemplarified. It is not an autobiography, it’s a business manual.
Written By: Sujoy Ghosh
The business of getting wrong | Sumit Speaks
Crisis seems to have undone the science that economics is. Economists now are bitching about the failure of the theories they gladly embraced and endorsed to. They also have drawn a conclusion that since they have failed to foresee the crisis,all the models,with lot of maths thrown in,are wrong and futile. What they seem to have forgotten is the fact that the job of an economist is not clairvoyance but making abstraction of what is real. More often than not economists have to play with data and model it and these models may or may not be the truth. Given the fact that economics is a social science,the probability of a model correctly predicting the future is low because the agents are no machines. The impulsiveness,eccentricity drive the human decisions and these quirks limit the power of an economic model.
Last month the Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote a piece for NYT 'How Did Economist Get It So Wrong’ in which he decided to throw the baby away with water. He writes the predictability of models isn’t a problem. The problem lay with the attitude of the economists,who constituted the majority,that market might never go wrong. This attitude has its root in belief in models which assume rational individuals and perfect markets. He wrote,” As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth”. All right,Paul,but you seem to have forgotten that these very models have been successful for past fifty years or so barring the recent crisis. These models went wrong because people decided to go crazy and models don’t have any panacea for extraordinary circumstances which the crisis was. Casino capitalism replaced the free market and this is what caused the crisis.
It is not true that economists didn’ t give a thought to a possible financial crisis. Raghuram Rajan,in 2005,wrote a paper ‘Has Financial Development Made The World Riskier’ arguing that development in financial sector could possibly lead to a crunch.
Returning to the Krugman’s piece,it’s interesting to note that the central theme of the article was to lampoon the efficient market theory which says,in a nutshhell, that no one can outguess the market by tweaking with something which it already knows.According to Krugman,the whole idea of efficient market is a cloud-cuckoo one and must be shunned.
In response to Krugman’s tirade, John Cochrane, a Chicago school economist retorted,”the central empirical prediction of the efficient markets hypothesis is precisely that nobody can tell where markets are going – neither benevolent government bureaucrats, nor crafty hedge-fund managers, nor ivory-tower academics” . Cochrane defends the use of mathematics in economics by arguing that “maths serves to keeps the logic straight”.Cochrane gets it wrong when he blames regulation of banks for the financial crunch. The truth is the stock markets initiated the crunch and commercial banks,inevitably,got into the vortex of the bubble.Cochrane’s response can be found here.
Where does the profession stand now? I guess the free-marketers and the regulation-lovers will diverge further creating a chasm between the two schools of thought.Whether government intervention is good or bad is the bone of contention. The bottom-line is that economic models have to move ahead of the rational agent-perfect market theme. The behavioral foundations of the subject are going to play a pivotal role in post-crisis macro-economics.
Justin Fox,writer of “The Myth of Rational Market" has summed up the debate between Cochrane and Krugman on his blog, here.
By: Sumit Mishra; Student IGIDR, Mumbai
Last month the Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote a piece for NYT 'How Did Economist Get It So Wrong’ in which he decided to throw the baby away with water. He writes the predictability of models isn’t a problem. The problem lay with the attitude of the economists,who constituted the majority,that market might never go wrong. This attitude has its root in belief in models which assume rational individuals and perfect markets. He wrote,” As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth”. All right,Paul,but you seem to have forgotten that these very models have been successful for past fifty years or so barring the recent crisis. These models went wrong because people decided to go crazy and models don’t have any panacea for extraordinary circumstances which the crisis was. Casino capitalism replaced the free market and this is what caused the crisis.
It is not true that economists didn’ t give a thought to a possible financial crisis. Raghuram Rajan,in 2005,wrote a paper ‘Has Financial Development Made The World Riskier’ arguing that development in financial sector could possibly lead to a crunch.
Returning to the Krugman’s piece,it’s interesting to note that the central theme of the article was to lampoon the efficient market theory which says,in a nutshhell, that no one can outguess the market by tweaking with something which it already knows.According to Krugman,the whole idea of efficient market is a cloud-cuckoo one and must be shunned.
In response to Krugman’s tirade, John Cochrane, a Chicago school economist retorted,”the central empirical prediction of the efficient markets hypothesis is precisely that nobody can tell where markets are going – neither benevolent government bureaucrats, nor crafty hedge-fund managers, nor ivory-tower academics” . Cochrane defends the use of mathematics in economics by arguing that “maths serves to keeps the logic straight”.Cochrane gets it wrong when he blames regulation of banks for the financial crunch. The truth is the stock markets initiated the crunch and commercial banks,inevitably,got into the vortex of the bubble.Cochrane’s response can be found here.
Where does the profession stand now? I guess the free-marketers and the regulation-lovers will diverge further creating a chasm between the two schools of thought.Whether government intervention is good or bad is the bone of contention. The bottom-line is that economic models have to move ahead of the rational agent-perfect market theme. The behavioral foundations of the subject are going to play a pivotal role in post-crisis macro-economics.
Justin Fox,writer of “The Myth of Rational Market" has summed up the debate between Cochrane and Krugman on his blog, here.
By: Sumit Mishra; Student IGIDR, Mumbai
Google Wave Features List
Email since its inception from the early days of internet has more or less remained the same, so we decided to make email more apt to today’s technology –Google Wave Team at Wave Preview.
By 2010, Google Wave will hit the web and email, with host of new features that are intuitive but were unthinkable a little time back. Check out the List of Features of Google Wave:
1. Reply to emails- to reply to a part of mail one can simply click under the paragraph and type in the reply, in effect making emails more like conversations.
2. Attachments- older email is based on MIME used to take ages to transfer files but now it is all just drag and drop.
3. Collaborate- many users can join in the conversation called a “Wave” and can participate in working together.
4. Social email- well as images and blog posts are being posted friends via Wave will receive it in their Inbox as alerts and commenting can be done from inbox itself without visiting the webpage.
5. Protocol- “Wave” has its own protocols that’s what makes it so fast over email
6. Apps- like Facebook applications can be made by any developer using Wave’s framework..
7. Contextual Language check- (Killer Feature) consider the sentence “I big you” is correct spelling wise but we obviously mean to write, “I beg you”, well Wave knows and will suggest ‘beg’ instead of ‘big’. For this feature google has used its massive internet data to determine correct context.
Written By Ali Naqvi.
By 2010, Google Wave will hit the web and email, with host of new features that are intuitive but were unthinkable a little time back. Check out the List of Features of Google Wave:
1. Reply to emails- to reply to a part of mail one can simply click under the paragraph and type in the reply, in effect making emails more like conversations.
2. Attachments- older email is based on MIME used to take ages to transfer files but now it is all just drag and drop.
3. Collaborate- many users can join in the conversation called a “Wave” and can participate in working together.
4. Social email- well as images and blog posts are being posted friends via Wave will receive it in their Inbox as alerts and commenting can be done from inbox itself without visiting the webpage.
6. Apps- like Facebook applications can be made by any developer using Wave’s framework..
7. Contextual Language check- (Killer Feature) consider the sentence “I big you” is correct spelling wise but we obviously mean to write, “I beg you”, well Wave knows and will suggest ‘beg’ instead of ‘big’. For this feature google has used its massive internet data to determine correct context.
Written By Ali Naqvi.
Meaning of Citizenship | Axioms of Land
In every country, people can be categorized as- citizens or foreigners. The issue of citizenship is so important because citizens enjoy certain privileges and rights which are denied t foreigners or aliens.
In this country under Citizenship Act 1955, there are five modes of acquisition of citizenship:
1. Person born in India is a citizen by birth.
2. Person bon outside India but if parents are Indian, is a citizen by descent.
3. Residents of five years can apply citizenship by registration.
4. Foreigners can apply for naturalization o the Government.
5. If a new territory becomes a part of India, the residents will acquire the citizenship.
Written By: Sujoy Ghosh
In this country under Citizenship Act 1955, there are five modes of acquisition of citizenship:
1. Person born in India is a citizen by birth.
2. Person bon outside India but if parents are Indian, is a citizen by descent.
3. Residents of five years can apply citizenship by registration.
4. Foreigners can apply for naturalization o the Government.
5. If a new territory becomes a part of India, the residents will acquire the citizenship.
Written By: Sujoy Ghosh
Mamta Di And The Silly Thing| Bong Connection
Every politician tries to highlight people of his/her constituency or zone of influence because his is elected representative. But what about the sanctity of the constitutional position he/she holds. As a Railways Minister, Mamta Banerjee should have considered artists and writers from each and every part of the country considering them equal. Ignorance can be a valid reason but still she cannot use it as an excuse because she is a cabinet minister and not some CM. She is expected to be aware of everything under her sphere of concern. Lingual diversity cannot be termed as a handicap. She should have given appropriate representation in a more distributed way.
Today Mamta Banerjee is a regional icon and it will take some good time to achieve a national level influence. Sonia Gandhi and Vajpayee have been so successful because of their universal acceptance. By fiery fists and inappropriate actions, Mamta Banerjee won’t achieve anything in the long run.
Written By: Sujoy Ghosh
Rural MBBS | Promise
A news item in papers read that health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has Okayed the proposal of Rural MBBS. Congratulations Mr. Azad for the step.
Accordng to the proposal, about 50 students will be selected from each state for MBBS (Rural) and taught under suitable environment that ill generate sympathy for villagers. The education will be imparted on the condition that the doctors will have to teach in rural areas for first ten years. After that span only, one can pursue a PG or private practice.
A hope has finally seen the dawn. Finally, the villages will get better facilities and there will be a generation that will diminish the lines between the rural and urban areas. Lets hope that rules are not tweaked and everything goes the fair way.
Written By: Sujoy Ghosh
Accordng to the proposal, about 50 students will be selected from each state for MBBS (Rural) and taught under suitable environment that ill generate sympathy for villagers. The education will be imparted on the condition that the doctors will have to teach in rural areas for first ten years. After that span only, one can pursue a PG or private practice.
A hope has finally seen the dawn. Finally, the villages will get better facilities and there will be a generation that will diminish the lines between the rural and urban areas. Lets hope that rules are not tweaked and everything goes the fair way.
Written By: Sujoy Ghosh
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