Atanu Dey on India’s Development » Blog Archive » An Urban Voter’s Manifesto As an urban Indian, I will vote for a party that promotes the values that matter to my country, my family, and me. I address this open letter to the political parties who seek my vote in the upcoming elections. Drop m...

Lessons from Vijayanagar Empire Indians would do well to leaf through the pages of history and see the state that our past disunity has always left us in. Starting from the early invasion of the Greeks, Huns, Turks, Afgans and finally the British, Indians have failed India repeatedly because of narr...

Aishwarya Rai, in an interview with CNN-IBN, says: He [Abhishek Bachchan] is the real ‘Padma Shri’ and I’m his ‘Padma Shrimati’ (giggles). Immensely cloying cuteness, but they’re a young couple, so fine, we can forgive them that. But if we are to take this line of...

This is quite the WTF headline of the week: Kerala housewives demand pay from govt Actually wait, on second thoughts, what’s so WTF about it? Why is this odder than any damn subsidy that the government of India gives? If the GoI can support failing businesses (for by definition only a failing ...

There we were, two tourist bums sitting on Pondicherry's seawall, drinking wine hidden in a bag.  Pondicherry (now Puducherry)  is in South India, and therefore the wine was Indian--Grover Vineyards Cabernet-Shiraz, produced from grapes grown on the slopes of the Na...

  A hardline Hindu organization is launching a soda in India that they predict will sell like hotcakes, better than Coke or Pepsi. That's a tall enough order in itself, but it's even more laughable when you learn what bodily excretion the beverage contains.  Each bottle will contai...

Quite often, among our friends or acquaintances, there is someone who has astonished - or appalled! - us with a few magic tricks. The Ease of Learning and Performing Basic Magic Tricks Most children and adult libraries have a selection of books on the how-to of a wide range of magic tricks. These sh...

1/12/09 So where do you go in Hyderabad to find the nightlife, you may wonder?  Certainly not the campus bar, which we depleted in 10 minutes our first night out.  We sure wondered.  And wandered.  And we found ourselves in a mall.  Yes, that's right, a mall. ...

1. Baby elephant dies after eating explosive A day after a Gujarat state cow was injured eating an explosive, a baby elephant in Goa has died eating an explosive bait meant to catch wild boars. Its jaw and teeth ripped out by the explosive, the elephant survived 3 weeks of hell before it died. 2. Ma...

Back on October 7th, 2007 I wrote a piece about Dell closing a U.S. call center in which 500 folks lost their jobs. [ Original post here ] Some people responded to the article in a negative tone citing their unfortunate experiences with Dell. The main focus was of those who commented was to share th...