Chhota Pegs

From L to R: Dipak Banerjee, Mihir Rakshit and Nabendu Sen. These are notes written for a panel talk I gave on my undergraduate education at Presidency College in Calcutta, 1974-1977.  I joined Presidency College in 1974 to pursue a BA in Economics after finishing school from St. Xavier's in Calcutta. I had taken the IIT entrance exam but my heart wasn't in it. Besides, I didn't want to go to Madras, Delhi or even Kharagpur. Then I read Samuelson's Economics text and I was hooked. Here was a language in which social concerns could perhaps be adequately expressed, and which aspired to some degree of precision. I took the economics entrance exam at Presidency and to my great joy I was accepted. It was a small class and obviously I remember every one of my classmates with not a small amount of affection and pride. The best three students -- perhaps the best four -- were all women. (I don't believe any of them went on to do a Ph.D. in economics: read into that what you ...

On Bordeaux: Tales of the Unexpected from the World’s Greatest Wine Region , edited by SUSAN KEEVIL, with an Introduction by JANE ANSON, Académie du Vin Library (Simon McMurtrie), 2020, 287 pp. ISBN 978-1-913141-05-09 (hardcover). To be published in the Journal of Wine Economics. On Bordeaux is a rambling collection of extracts and articles on “the world’s greatest wine region,” that poetic patch of southwestern France that straddles the Gironde as it nears journey’s end. We are reminded of the special, distinct nature of this terroir from the get-go: the book begins with four testaments to Bordeaux’s delicate yet proud dependence on the “power of the vintage.” The compendium then winds through a litany of interlaced themes: topography, individual châteaux , the aristocracy, Bordeaux personalities, the ravages wrought by Phylloxera , the serendipitous benedictions of Botrytis cinerea , and the uncertainties of global warming. There are the inevitable comparisons: across vintages and a...

Fuji-san on the approach to Narita airport; Debraj Ray (2017) On June 25, 2021, the Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Technology , located in Hyderabad, released the Report of an "Expert Committee," entitled " Open Reviews of the Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis ." The “proof" referred to an unpublished paper by Professor Kumar Eswaran, which claimed to have settled one of the most distinguished open questions in Mathematics, a conjecture stated by Bernhard Riemann in a classic paper written in 1859. As the Preface to the Report states, Eswaran’s contribution “was lying extant on the Internet for nearly four years and had received thousands of reads and downloads but had not received the assent of a mathematical journal to subject it to a detailed peer review." The Committee sought an open review of Eswaran’s paper from 1,200 “eminent mathematicians and scientists." Based on the reports received by the Committee, and its own deliberations, the Commit...

Published in Ideas for India , September 11, 2020. Jean Drèze has recently proposed a "Decentralised Urban Employment and Training" Scheme, or DUET for short. In his words, "DUET could act as a step towards urban employment guarantee." The essential idea is for state governments to issue job stamps to “approved public institutions”, who would use these to pay wages to suitably registered workers. Workers would present job stamps and a work certificate (from the institution) for reimbursement directly into a bank account. I refer you to   Jean's proposal   for more detail. I personally believe that we should push forward with the agenda of employment as a universal right, one that transcends rural versus urban. DUET would move that needle. With the rising tendency to displace labour – a trend that will only be heightened by the pandemic – such a right provides protection, at least to some minimal degree. So I support this proposal. That said, there are many issue...