[Reader-list] India's new ruling caste

[Rana Dasgupta]

actually I was even more flumoxed by this:

 > Lant Pritchett of the Harvard
 > Kennedy School has coined a new term for India: a "flailing state" –
 > where the government's extremely competent upper echelons are unable
 > to control its inefficient lower levels, resulting in poor
 > performance.

Soman is fighting internecine battle against this position of course, 
and his own vision is too much bathed in the rosy light of post-Obama 
election glow.  but is Pritchett's position not astonishing?



Taha Mehmood wrote:
> Dear Rana,
> 
> Thanks for the post. I read it and thanked god for giving us such
> pearls of wisdom  through Appu jee- imagine for a second, that  by
> 2019, good sense prevails and we did opt for presidential style
> elections. We will have a federal structure in place and then imagine
> somehow, that President Modi is able to win over a mere contender
> called President Rahul. So!! what could we have as a possibility -
> Praveen Swami as NSA, C Raja Mohan as Sec of State , Mohan Bhagwat of
> the RSS as capable Sec. of Interior, APJ as Sec of Science and
> Technology, Gurumurthy as Sec. of Finance, Praveen Togadia as Sec. of
> Defense, Jaitely as Sec of Information and Broadcasting and Pramod
> Muttalik as Sec of Culture. I am sure it is high time we pay heed to
> the likes of Appu Jee by 'allowing the country's leader to select
> competent people for cabinet positions' then and only then can India's
> cherished dreams could be realized.
> 
> Regards or should I say Amen??
> 
> Taha
> 
> PS: Whose agenda is he following by the way??? We have just had a
> bizzare election where an old man tried to lift weights, write blogs,
> invite people for TV debates, wrote book and hopped around on a
> chopper and spoke at length about what old people talk anyways like
> getting weak at the center and so on and yet lost the bloody election.
> And then we have Appu Jee telling us that no no no no....this is what
> we need...arre bhai Why??? Thik hai why not. Point taken but why any
> ways???
> 
> 

-- 
"I'm an ex-citizen of nowhere. And sometimes I get mighty homesick."

Rana Dasgupta
www.ranadasgupta.com