Sunday Posts

Bill Gates calls Hernando Del Soto 'the world's most important living economist'. He seems to have the mantra - the elixir of the 'mystery of capital' - that can turn the fortunes of the developing countries around. But while his insights are being celebrated, it is worth looking closer into his ideas. Mr Soto's idea is actually quite simple: That property rights create access to capital. His point is that the developed countries are developed because their citizens have definite and secure property rights, which opens up access to capital, and therefore, enterprise and road to better life. In contrast, the property rights in developing countries are opaque, non-realisable and enmeshed in bureaucratic tangles. Therefore, the capital formation in these countries is weaker - and therein lies the roots of inequality. This is an insight with intuitive logic and easy appeal. It is easy to prove empirically too: Mr Del Soto's work is full of fascinatin...

I have an aversion to the word Great! This is one of the words in English language, employed to describe a little island, which has taken an altogether new level of superficiality in the usual American habit of splashing it onto anything: For example, "the Great Country of North Korea" - ok, except that! I was, therefore, naturally suspicious when I come across The Great Courses, the audio/video learning content aimed at Lifelong Learning (another meaningless expression, admittedly, except that it has a specific meaning in the European Union). I came across these through the regular advertisements in The New Yorker and The London Review of Books, and also, in a Bill Gates interview, where he mentioned that he uses The Great Courses to learn about different subjects. Gates' point was interesting: He was arguing that more than the MOOCs, The Great Courses, high quality recorded videos on a rage of subjects, designed for self-study, has great potential to change Educat...

Bill Gates have now given us a new word, or more precisely, a new meaning to an old word: Decoupling. He suggests that knowledge and employability may be 'decoupled' from university degree in the coming days. Which effectively means that he is predicting university degree may not be relevant anymore. It may sound counter-intuitive, but coming from Gates, the statement is worth exploration. One could argue that college education was never more popular: College-going population worldwide has surged and is continuing to grow. So, the demise, or irrelevance, or, if we must play safe, 'decoupling', of a college degree may sound fantastical. But then, the surge needs to be seen in the perspective of the global jobs crisis. The college has not created jobs, nor it can: It has been an instrument to sell middle class dreams to many, only for those to fail eventually to achieve the promised life. In fact, the surge in college education may be seen as a part of the global...