Brinda Somaya - A great interview

 I just sat through this absolutely wonderful interview of Brinda Somaya.

Brinda is just a fabulous and a fantastic alumni colleague.

Many years ago I wrote an article which was a highly controversial one. It was called "Rural Urbanisation 2010". The original was written in 1976!

It harks back to a paper of the same name that Abraham Thomas (then Managing Director of the building group Southern Investments) and I wrote based on his book "The Affluence Machine" and my experience of running a beautiful farm which had belonged to the late Sir C. V. Raman in Kengeri, near Bangalore.

The technology of creating Rural Urbanisation existed 50 years ago and exists in much greater abundance today. We wanted to reverse the migration of the brural population to urban areas and yet create self-generated wealth in the rural urbanised areas.

Brinda talks in this interview about her experience in an earthquake devastated area in Gujarat where the villagers rebuilt their village based on their needs. 

This is exactly what Abraham Thomas wrote in his book and based on my farming exoerience, could see such development in every nook and corner of India without resorting to "Smart Cities" which will result in the same problems we face in Indian cities of today.

Thank you Brinda for being such a wonderful standard bearer for our school and in the world as a leading lady architect.

Brinda Somaya - Award for Excellence

AD100 2024Award for Excellence 

Our own 64er Brinda (née Chinappa) Somaya of Somaya and Kalappa (SNK) Consultants have been awarded the AD100 2024 for their excellence in the renovation of the Cathedralite and John Connon School project at Thomas House in Fort, Mumbai. (Not St. Thomas House but it is named after T. Thomas, who was married to my cousin. Thanks to Shyla Boga Patel for this correction.)

Brinda recently shared with me the above picture of her with her brilliant two children, Nandini Sampat and Vikram.

She also shared the details of the inauguration plaque of Thomas House laid Mr. Solomon Raj Sathia, Chairman Emeritus  Anglo Scottish Education Society.

She shared with me a few more photographs of details the building and its interiors.

A truly fabulous collection of photos which will be treasured by all Cathedralites. 

Every detail is perfect. 

I especially love the flooring which gives a beautiful ambience to the space!

Thank you Brinda for sending me these photographs which will be a delight for all our alumni to bask in your well deserved glory.

Hindu Astrology - Author: Dr. Anthony Stone

This blog entry is in two parts, the first on the book "Hindu Astrology" by my late friend Dr. Anthony Stone (Tony) and the second part of the blog is the inauguration of the Ram Mandir Temple in Ayodhya by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 22nd January 2024.

The first part is being cross-posted on all my major blogs while the second part is only being posted on my main blog - Jacob’s Blog.

Late Dr. Anthony Stone

Tony was my teacher of Mathematics in St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and my good friend. His book on Hindu astrology is to be shortly released as a paperback and I wanted to give you a look into the facts behind Indophile, Tony, and our relationship pre the release oif the paperback edition.

I was sent the details of this book by the publisher, another dear friend and alumni of St. Stephen’s College, Professor Prabhu Guptara.  

Tony was the teacher of Mathematics in St. Stephen’s College in 1962-63, my final year. He took over the duties of Principal S. C. Sircar in the Mathematics Department and joined Professors S.R. Nagpaul, S. B. Mathur,  and Ranjit Bhatia (Rhodes Scholar and of Indian Olympic fame) in the college Mathematics Department.

I lost touch with Tony till he turned up on my Kooler Talk Blog in the late 1990s. We established a close  relationship. When his wife Bertha was hospitalised and he had a short holiday in 2000, as he was then caring for Bertha, he decided to visit Annikki and me in Oulu, Finland. He stayed with us for a week and we had wonderful reunion, and discussed many of his projects.

He was well versed in Indian culture and he was working on a few projects, one of which was Hindu Astrology.

He was also working on a special area of mathematical research which coincided with the interest of a Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai, friend of mine, Bhupinder Singh Anand (Bhupi).

Bhupi was a couple of years senior to me but stayed on in School to do the 12th standard HSC qualification. He was also from Savage House and in our final year, he was the Head Boy of the school while I was the Savage House Captain.  

Bhupi, the School Captain is sitting third from the left, while I am sitting second from the right.

I did keep in touch with Bhupi as he joined my “Seventh Heaven” Cathedralite Heaven Google Group although he was not technically a 59er. I had great respect for dear Bhupi as he was a sincere individual and a true Cathedralite.

The publisher of this book on Hindu astrology is Professor. Prabhu Guptara, from St. Stephen’s College, junior to me but also a good friend now living in Cambridge in the UK.

Prabhu had done an chapter in the book "Malayali Diaspora" several years ago about the oldest Malayali in Continental Europe (not the UK), which was about me. 

Frank Raj was the editor of "The International Indian till 2017".

Frank Raj (Picture from LinkedIn)

This was later published in his magazine with pictures of us and our family in the Dubai publication “The Indian International” edited by Frank Raj.

In 2014, when for several reason, I was stranded in New Delhi, which is explained in Annikki and my book “The Titanic Called India”, Prabhu put me in touch with Ivan and Silvia Kostka.

Ivan and Dr.Silvia Kostka (Picture from LinkedIN)

I had the pleasure of dining with them and a couple of friends. Just a couple of months after they were harassed by the Hindutava faction because they were practicing Christians devoting their their life to uplifting the OBC Community. They were raided by the Delhi Police in October 2014 for supposedly saying derogatory statements about Goddess Durga. Their publication FORWARD Press was being targeted by the Hindutava faction of Narendra Modi’s BJP/RSS wing claiming that Ivan and Silvia were converting Indians to Christianity.

Here I must make a point that I went to Christian schools in Mysore, Bangalore and Mumbai. In my class in Mumbai we were just 4 Christian’s while the rest of the students were Hindus, Jews, Muslims Parsi, Sindhis and Sikhs, from all parts of the world, not just India. I did not even know or even care, what religion the students in my class were.

60 years later, I am still the fulcrum of keeping the surviving classmates together and there is not one single student who has changed his/her religion. They all subscribe too a secular education which has broadened their attitude to life and there is no discrimination on any grounds whatsoever. 

Christians lead by example of the two principles laid down by Christ. . 

There is only one God (different names: Jehovah, Allah, Brahma). Secondly, we must love our neighbour as ourselves. 

All the other laws are man-made derivatives of these two fundamental principles.

Thefollowing year, I had the good fortune to get an email from Silvia (a noted plastic surgeon) that she and Ivan were likely to transit through Helsinki and they were likely to be delayed in their return trip to India. She was interested in meeting up with me.

I did offer to put them up in one of the apartments that Annikki and I had in Helsinki during their stay but we lost contact after that.

Ivan was the Founding Editor of FORWARD Press and it was likely to be shut down by the intolerant society which had spread its wings under Narendra Modi. Silvia had told me then that the last edition of FORWARD Press was likely to be in March of that year (2015).

However, FORWARD Press has survived and is thriving even today under Anil Varghese who is the current editor-in-chief.

So that is my personal background to the book on Hindu Astrology penned by Tony.

Until a few years ago, interest in astrology was widespread - but thin. 

Now the astrology market is growing by leaps and bounds.

In the US, over the four years to 2019, revenue from the top 10 astrology apps market saw an astonishing  compound growth rate of 72.8 percent per year! In India, ten astrology firms in 2021 raised INR 1300  million -300% the combined amount raised by ALL such start-ups over the previous five years!!

No figures for the UK are available, but here is a BBC report:

 https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210205-why-astrology-is-so-popular-now

Into this burgeoning international demand, Prabhu Guptara’s “Pippa Rann Books” imprint is publishing the paperback version of Tony’s book, Hindu Astrology.

The hardback came out some decades ago, but only in India.

The author, late Tony, was an Oxford PhD in Mathematics who went as a university teacher to India, where he was so intrigued at finding most highly-educated people allowing their lives to be ruled by astrology that he learned Sanskrit for the specific purpose of reading the texts in the original language, and writing an adequate history of Indian astrology as well as evaluation of it. 

Brief information on the book is attached below, in form of the full cover the book.

But of course the field is highly contested!  

The honourable Supreme Court of India proclaimed in 2004 that astrology is a SCIENCE.

On the other hand, Madhavankutty Pillai argued in OPEN magazine (2011) that astrology is a HOAX - 

openthemagazine.com/features/living/the-scientific-case-against-astrology/

In a 2018 article in The Guardian, “I was an astrologer”, Felicity Carter concludes that astrology is a form of ENTERTAINMENT.

And here is a recent article arguing that astrology is a SCAM: Digital ‘Vedic Astrology’: The $40 Billion Scam | Madras Courier

Naturally not with reference to the articles mentioned immediately above but, in general, Tony concludes: “…it is a pity that many critics of astrology argue at a very superficial level. My purpose in this book is to shed some genuine light on the subject.  I hope the book will stimulate serious discussion about astrology.”

Do we need to start more knowledgeable debates and discussions on astrology?

Read the book and come to your own conclusions.

Remembering our loved ones

 Dateline 28th November 2023

(Posted on Jacob's Blog, Seventh Heaven Blog for Cathedralites and Kooler Talk (Web Version) Blog for St. Stephen's College alumni.

Cathedral & John Connon School 59ers have lost many of our ones in the last few years. 

Here is a partial list of those from our 2969class who have passed on. 

(I do not have any information about our lady classmates except dear Farhana. I hope someone will update me on this.)

Ashok Ruia

Bala Parasursman

Dossu Pagdiwalla

Fali Dhondy

Farhana (Kably) Poonawala

Farukh Kanga

Flicky Shroff

Hasnain Chinwala

Indrajit Shah

Jacob Eapen 

Jack Haskell

 Jaswant Ghatge

Kurshed Balsata

Michael Colaco

Murali Balani

Naubir Mohindar

Pradeep Bhakar

Prem Goel

Ramesh Mirchandani

Virat Gidwani

Trevor Newnes

I have deliberately left out from this list, one of our dearest, who was tragically lost  15 years ago, Ashok Kapur.

59erGolden Reunion Directory

Our Mumbai 59ers met as a memoriam to Ashok

At our 2009 Golden  Reunion of 59ers,  Annikki and I dedicated our Reunion Directory to Ashok with these pages:

But besides Ashok, we lost many others during those fateful days, which has been brought to mind by Rajiv Bhatia on his Facebook page.

26/11

Remembering the late - Ajit & Monica Chhabria, Sunil & Reshma Parikh, Sanjay & Rita Agarwal, Rohinton Maloo, Mohit Harjani, Lavina Harjani, Anand Bhatt, Pankaj Shah, Vishnidas-Nilam-Gunjan Narang, Neeti-Uday-Samar-Kang, Rupinder Randhawa, Ashok Kamte, Hemant Karkare, Vijay Salaskar, Tukaram Omble

I also remember one of my other alumni from St. Stephen’s College with this post from our alumni Facebook page. 

None other than the heroic Ashok Kamte:

Ashish Joshi , the Moderator of our alumni Facebook   page posted this.

LEST WE FORGET

This is what my friend & college senior, Gary (Justice Anupinder Grewal), wrote in the memory of late Ashok Kamte (Gary's batchmate) a brilliant police officer who attained martyrdom on 26/11. Late Kamte was a friend & one year senior to me in the College .

ASHOK KAMTE

I have been attending the annual St. Stephen's College, Reunion very frequently ever since I passed out of college in 1987. However, this year on 14th December, it was drastically different as it turned into memorial service for Ashok Kamte and I was entrusted the painful task of paying tribute to Ashok. 

It was a tragic personal loss as besides being my classmate in college and a friend, I had the privilege of living with Ashok and his family at his mother’s Flat in Hira Mahal on the Amrita Shergill Marg for about year while studying law. 

Ashok had joined us at St. Stephen's College for his Post Graduation after he had Graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Bombay. What stood him apart from the rest of the Stephanians was the enormity of his physical stature, which alongwith his quest for academic excellence was a rather unique combination. What surprised many was why is the National Power Lifting Champion pursuing Post Graduation at St. Stephen's. There is no preference for sports persons for admission in M.A. Little did they realize then that Ashok always strove for excellence, whether in the classroom or the playing field. He had single minded commitment to succeed. He was very happy when he was selected to the I.P.S. He used to say that he was meant for action and disliked other civil services for their bureaucratic file work.

While training for the Power Lifting Championship, he would not compromise on his diet. As his mother would not allow him to have more than two eggs, due to its high cholesterol content he would buy a dozen eggs from the market, cook and eat them at his neighbour's house. He had broken three national records in Power Lifting and won half a dozen Gold and Silver Medals. He had also won the Bronze Medal in Junior World Power Lifting Championship. Power Lifting is one of the toughest sport and Ashok would train for hours in complete solitude. Despite his powerful build, he was extremely agile and could sprint quite fast. Besides his love for swimming and squash he would generate amazing pace and bounce while bowling on the rather placid College Cricket pitch at Morigate. He had played an important role in the victory of our team. 

Ashok was proud of the fact that he had the blood of two Martial Races the Maratha’s and the Sikhs. While his father is a retired Colonel settled in Pune, his grand-father was in the Imperial Police. His mother Mrs. Paramjit Kamte,, who now lives in Gulmohar Park is from the well known Bawa Family of Goindwal Sahib and is grand-daughter of Late Bawa Budh Singh of the Indian Service of Engineers. Bawa Budh Singh was the 14th descendent of the Third Sikh Guru, Guru Amar Dass. When I called on Mrs. Kamte, she said that though she is proud of the fact that Ashok has become a National Hero yet at times she cannot comprehend that he is no more. He was the only male member in the family whom she could look forward in times of need. He had perhaps inherited his very fair features from his maternal grandmother Mrs.Surinder Bawa (maiden name Violet) an English Lady. His sister, Sharmila, a well known model and a ballet dancer, now runs her famous Dance Academy in Dubai. His wife, Vinita, stays at Pune alongwith his sons, Rahul and Arjun. Besides serving the U.N. Force in Bosnia, Ashok had also trained in Punjab for some time. 

Ashok was known for his high integrity and efficiency which was evident in his earlier stints in Maharashtra especially in Solapur, where he had brought an inflammable communal situation under control within a few hours. I had spoken to Ashok sometime back when as Commissioner of Police, Solapur, was in the news for bringing to book the local M.L.A who was flouting the law for noise pollution. Ashok had personally gone and arrested the M.L.A. from his residence at mid-night after the M.L.A. had earlier roughed up police officials. I had asked him whether he had really beaten up the M.L.A. He replied that if he had done so, the man would not have survived as though he no longer competed in power lifting but maintained regular exercise regime. It was his conscientiousness, patriotism and devotion to duty which made him the target of the terrorist attack at Mumbai. He was the Additional Commissioner, (East) and even though the area around the Cama Hospital(South) did not fall within his jurisdiction, he had reached there as he had undergone specialized training to handle terrorism and hostage situation. He would lead from the front and was not the kind to send subordinates to do risky jobs. He lived for others and had a proactive approach. He made the supreme sacrifice and attained martyrdom in the battle field and made his family, friends and the nation proud. "

Anupinder Grewal

Additional Advocate General, Punjab (Now Judge, Punjab High Court)

Let us each keep a moment’s silence, wherever we are, to honour of all our alumni. Founder’s Day for the schoo was November 1th. That for our college is 7th December. 

May all these dear ones friends 

Rest In Peace.

Guest Blog: John Billington - Classmaster Std. XIA 1959

I requested the classmaster of Standard XIA in 1959, John Billington, to write the Guest Blog to coincide at the time our 59ers are joining together in Khandala/Lonavala on the old Mumbai-Pune Highway this week at our 60th year Reunion.

(You can see  the picture of the unique "Golden Reunion", Directory of 1959ers which was released at the 50th year Reunion in 2009.)

Not only John, from UK, but also our Physics Teacher, William Shiri, and his wife, Pushpa, from Canada, did make it and attend what is now known as the Mother of Reunions! ".

The picture of most of those who attended oir 2009 Golden Reunion has been included in John's Guest Blog.

From our personal correspondence I learnt that  John is still playing his morning game of tennis!

Thank you John for this Guest Blog contribution.

"Jacob has asked me for some recollections, so here goes: 

The Class of 1959 was my second year of teaching at CBS, as I arrived in Bombay in the middle of the monsoon in 1958 just days after receiving my degree at Oxford. I chose India for my first job because from the age of 16 or 17 in England I had been drawn greatly to India for its spiritual heritage. Young people are often interested in the great unanswerable questions (Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Why is there so much suffering? etc.) but I was unusual in that I had read Jiddu Krishnamurti while doing my O levels in 1952, and Paramhansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi and Christmas Humphrey's Buddhism in the same year – closely followed by the works of Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna. So I arrived in India not just to teach but to learn. 
From the start I loved India. In few (if any) other countries can you drop into a roadside cafe and find yourself deeply involved in a serious conversation on matters spiritual. Western males especially shy away from talk about the "inner life", preferring the safety of football or politics as topics for conversation. 

The Indian practice of referring even to casually encountered people as bhai or bahaina (brother/sister) struck me as profoundly wise and right, and indicated a way of thinking about other people very different from Western practice. I gave a talk in London three weeks ago about relations between Tibet and China and found myself taking about our "brothers and sisters in Tibet" and the need to persuade "our Chinese brothers and sisters" of the injustice of their treatment of Tibet. I owe the locution to India. 

I was enormously impressed by the CBS students. Their intelligence, commitment to learning and the inter-communal harmony they exemplified were admirable. 1959 was a good time to be in India for the idealism of a recently-independent country was still untarnished and India led the way for a high-minded grouping of non-aligned countries, steering a path between the communist USSR and the capitalist West. That idealism has long since gone and the world is poorer for it, but it was probably China's betrayal of the Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai catch-phrase and the 1962 border war that hastened its, and Nehru's, demise. 

1959 also saw the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet to India. A notorious left-wing Bombay rag called BLITZ, probably funded by the communist party, lampooned him mercilessly and was vociferously pro- communist. I bought an old Grammar of Colloquial Tibetan from a bookshop near the Prince of Wales (as it then was) Museum and took the train to Darjeeling to find out more. Sixty years later I am still an advocate for Tibetans to have the right to determine their own future. 
Bombay (as I still think of it) was a fascinating city culturally because of its rich ethnic, religious and linguistic mix. I visited all the temples I could get entry to, attended concerts of Indian classical music and dance, and was a fan of Ustad Vilayat Khan and Mrinalini Sarabai, among others. Oh, and I attended a talk by Krishnamurti at the J.J. School of Art. 

I said I was highly impressed by CBS students. Names and years get muddled up but I enjoyed taking a small number of pupils for A level and among them Statira Guzdar and Yasmin Batliwala from the Cathedral Girls' School joined Madan and Hussain from the Boys' side. They were very bright and a pleasure to teach, as were the O level classes. First names now escape me in many cases but Sethi (Ed: Viney), Ashok Kapur, Parasuraman, Jacob Matthan of course, Dabolkhar (Ed: Vinay), Sabnis, Ajgaonkar, Cyrus Guzdar, David Colaco, Trevor Newnes, Choksi (Ed: Armeane), Stevenson (Ed: Abe), Venkat Kurma, Mark Sopher, O'Halloran and Peter Miovic all come readily to mind – as would others if I saw their names or photographs --- but I will certainly have muddled up people's years. (Ed: Names in bold are 59ers)

 Picture of 59ers at St. Thomas Cathedral Church after the 
2009 Founders Day Service on 14th November 2009. 
(Photo Courtesy 59er Hasnain Chinwala)




 A number of your year I did, of course, meet again ten years ago at your Bombay re-union and Peter Miovic is one with whom I have remained in contact and met a year or two later in Wales, and again this year when he very kindly invited me to visit his native Slovenia – a lovely country, iridescently green from its Alps to the sea, and the highlight of my year's travels. With some staff also I remained in contact until they died, including Rider Salmon, James Clarke, Alberto Zavala and Olpherts Gregory; and I am still in touch occasionally by email with Willie Shiri, and regularly receive messages from Mohan Rao. 

( Picture courtesy 64er Rajiv Ved- 2009)

And I meet Pauline Salmon annually when I visit north Wales to see the Welsh Opera. I have always admired her cheerful outlook and in her late eighties she continues to paint and to exhibit with undiminished creativity. Which reminds me of Lady Marie Temple... But I must stop! 

Faces and memories merge with age but are not forgotten – they are all part of life's rich tapestry. But I remember with affection how kind, polite, intelligent and well-behaved were the boys at CBS. That I have returned frequently to India and treat it as my second home is a measure of your hospitality. My Namastes and Salaams to you all! Floreat CBS!

John Billington (CBS 1958-1961)"

Budget Battleground

This post is made in three of my blogs as it of interest to all my readers of Jacob's Blog, and more specifically the readers of my Mumbai Cathedral and John Connon School Blog, Seventh Heaven, and readers of the Stephanian Blog, Kooler Talk (Web Version).

I apologize for this multi-blog posting, as many of you are readers of all the three blogs!

Budget Battleground was  event that took place against the backdrop of my alma mater, St. Stephen's College, beautifully lit in the background, had a selected audience of young economists from Delhi School of Economics, Shri Ram College and St. Stephen's College, three of the many premier colleges in Delhi.

The anchorman was NDTV Managing Director, Dr. Prannoy Roy, who was connected with another good friend, great economist with tremendous wit, the person who turned around Doordarshan in the late eighties and early nineties and then went on to head Rupert Murdoch's Star TV and then his own channel, Broadcast Worldwide Ltd.,  and also a Stephanian, 61er/63er Rathikant Basu.

This is from the Wikipedia entry for NDTV Managing Director, Prannoy Roy:

Controversy

On 20 January 1998 Central Bureau of Investigation filed cases against New Delhi Television (NDTV) managing director Prannoy Roy, former Director General of Doordarshan R Basu and five other top officials of Doordarshan under Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for criminal conspiracy and under the Prevention of Corruption Act. According to the CBI charge-sheet, Doordarshan suffered a loss of over Rs 3.52 crore due to the “undue favours” shown to NDTV as its programme The World This Week (TWTW) was put in `A’ category instead of `special A’ category

The two in the hot seats were 63er Montek Singh Alhuwalia, who was very much present in St. Stephen's College during my three years there, and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen (difficult to say whether he is an Indian or Bangladeshi as both countries have laid claim to him).

One can never forget 63er Montek, not for his knowledge, but for the unique way he wore his turban and certain mannerisms (the nervous laugh when he knows what he is saying is not what he believes), which have not changed, even as of today. The way he argued a point was always from a point that he could not be wrong, although many times, he was and is!

I give below three extract from the autobiography of Amartya Sen (Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1998). In these extracts you will see the mention of a name - Mumbai Cathedral School 59er Sudhir Anand, my classmate who is Professor of Economics at both Oxford and Harvard, a brilliant economist and undoubtedly a brain who influenced Amartya Sen considerably more than a three time  mention in his autobiography.

59er Sudhir was from our Mumbai Cathedral and John Connon School. Although unable to make it top our 50th year reunion in 2009, he was very much there in spirit.

"I was also fortunate to have colleagues who were working on serious social choice problems, including Peter Hammond, Charles Blackorby, Kotaro Suzumura, Geoffrey Heal, Gracieda Chichilnisky, Ken Binmore, Wulf Gaertner, Eric Maskin, John Muellbauer, Kevin Roberts, Susan Hurley, at LSE or Oxford, or neighbouring British universities. (I also learned greatly from conversations with economists who were in other fields, but whose works were of great interest to me, including Sudhir Anand, Tony Atkinson, Christopher Bliss, Meghnad Desai, Terence Gorman, Frank Hahn, David Hendry, Richard Layard, James Mirrlees, John Muellbauer, Steve Nickel, among others.) I also had the opportunity of collaboration with social choice theorists elsewhere, such as Claude d'Aspremont and Louis Gevers in Belgium, Koichi Hamada and Ken-ichi Inada in Japan (joined later by Suzumura when he returned there), and many others in America, Canada, Israel, Australia, Russia, and elsewhere). There were many new formal results and informal understandings that emerged in these works, and the gloom of "impossibility results" ceased to be the only prominent theme in the field. The 1970s were probably the golden years of social choice theory across the world. Personally, I had the sense of having a ball.

From social choice to inequality and poverty

The constructive possibilities that the new literature on social choice produced directed us immediately to making use of available statistics for a variety of economic and social appraisals: measuring economic inequality, judging poverty, evaluating projects, analyzing unemployment, investigating the principles and implications of liberty and rights, assessing gender inequality, and so on. My work on inequality was much inspired and stimulated by that of Tony Atkinson. I also worked for a while with Partha Dasgupta and David Starrett on measuring inequality (after having worked with Dasgupta and Stephen Marglin on project evaluation), and later, more extensively, with Sudhir Anand and James Foster."

 

Later he says in his autobiography:

"During my Harvard years up to about 1991, I was much involved in analyzing the overall implications of this perspective on welfare economics and political philosophy (this is reported in my book, Inequality Reexamined, published in 1992). But it was also very nice to get involved in some new problems, including the characterization of rationality, the demands of objectivity, and the relation between facts and values. I used the old technique of offering courses on them (sometimes jointly with Robert Nozick) and through that learning as much as I taught. I started taking an interest also in health equity (and in public health in particular, in close collaboration with Sudhir Anand), a challenging field of application for concepts of equity and justice. Harvard's ample strength in an immense variety of subjects gives one scope for much freedom in the choice of work and of colleagues to talk to, and the high quality of the students was a total delight as well. My work on inequality in terms of variables other than incomes was also helped by the collaboration of Angus Deaton and James Foster.

Readers of Seventh Heaven will remember how I have written about Sudhir and the Nobel Prize awarded to Amartya Sen!

The discussion was lack lustre. Montek took the view that he could not discuss the Budget (the whole point of the programme) and gave no real answer for the blazing question how the poor of India had not improved their lot during the time he has been at the head of the Planning Commission. (At one point he says "We have said, the Government has said,…." )

Montek minced  words as only a political chamcha can do!

Roy was not hard-hitting in his position as Anchorman. He was being pleasant to his guests!!

Amartya Sen was his own self and wanted to be nice to everyone.

Not a receipe for a successful  discussion, but for me, being in the setting of our beautiful college was good enough to sit through the 45 minute discussion!

Anyway, it was good to be away from the depressing media coverage of our hallowed institution which has been plaguing us for almost half a decade!