“If you need anything, our pretty and lovely stewardesses will be happy to help you.” Thus spake the pilot on my flight home on Saturday. How come pilots in America never describe the Air Hostesses as “pretty and lovely”?
The trip to the Northeast went well—for Your Humble Narrator at least. We were all slated to leave for Assam on Monday morning at 8:00. On Sunday night at 10:00, Janet turned on the news (as she is wont to do) and the headline was “Bomb Blasts in Guwahati.” Now, Guwahati is not only in Assam, but is the capital of Assam, and more relevantly is the location of both the airport and the hotel at which we were slated to spend half the week. Janet decided that she did not really want to be wandering around a city with three kids in tow in the wake of some bomb blasts in the marketplace. So, the rest of the family stayed home, while I went on the lecture tour. They all seemed to have had a nice week.
The rough outline of my week: On Monday, I flew to Guwahati. (I was accompanied throughout the trip with the Cultural Affairs Specialist from the US Public Affairs Office—he took care of all the details, which was good because a) there were a ton of details needing care and b) I didn’t have to think about any of them as a result.) I gave a talk in town Monday afternoon. On Tuesday we drove to Shillong (3-4 hour drive in a neighboring state). I gave the keynote talk in a session at a conference there, then met with the editor of an opinion magazine for a couple of hours. On Wednesday, I gave another talk (at a women’s college!) and met with the reporter from the Shillong Times (who wrote a story about me in the paper the next day. On Thursday, we drove back to Guwahati; I gave a talk at a research institute mid afternoon, and then we drove to IIT-Guwahati (an hour drive each way) to give another talk in the early evening. On Friday, I gave two more talks, met with an NGO to discuss their operations in the Northeast and was interviewed by a reporter from the Assam Tribune (who wrote a story about me in his paper the next day—in that paper, I was front page, above the fold (!)). Saturday, I returned to Kolkata and my wonderful family.
Notes on the trip:
1. Aimee asked for more details on the talk I was giving. Roughly it was as follows:
The American Experiment: Using Michael Novak's work on democratic capitalism, an essential feature of the American system is the division of society into distinct economic, political and moral-cultural orders. When one of these areas of society reaches beyond its bounds, the society suffers.
New Growth Theory: Recent economic work has taught us a lot about what causes countries to grow; an overview of these findings points to the importance of things like good institutions.
Lessons for India: The combination of the two things above point to what it is about America that has enabled it to become so prosperous. The further implications are 1) there is no reason that America's growth cannot be replicated in other countries, but 2) economic growth is not inevitable. If a country wants to grow, it will need economic liberalization and privatization, a good set of political and legal institutions (including good rule of law, low corruption, good infrastructure, including financial infrastructure, and recognition of property rights), openness to international trade and capital flows, and good schools, particularly at the lower levels of education. Economic growth, however, also involves a large degree of social change as old relationships are altered. While India has done much to begin the growth process, to keep growth from stagnating will require increasing amounts of societal and economic change.
India is at a Crossroads. Some people would like to see India adopt US institutions have economic growth leading to US levels of wealth which will mean vast societal change. Other people would prefer that India retain its traditional society which will mean there is not much economic growth. There is currently a big debate in India between these two visions of the future, and it isn’t clear to me which will win out in the end.
2. Te reactions to that talk were fascinating. There were three types of questions. 1) Some people just wanted more details or had questions about assorted parts of the argument; 2) Some people wanted to know more about how India could get on a high growth path; 3) Some people become extremely agitated and terribly upset, demanding a) Why should India want to be like the US? (to which I replied, “I don’t know—I am an American. It is up to you to figure out what you want India to become”); b) Why should we imitate the US; why don’t we find and Indian Way of Growth (to which I responded that it was fine to look for an Indian Way of Growth, but we have no evidence of any country ever in the history of the world being successful in that sort of an attempt); or c) Economic Growth is evil because it is destroying the way of life of many poor tribes in the country (to which I responded that this was exactly the question the tribes themselves needed to answer—do they want to continue to live the same way they have lived for thousands of years or would they rather that their grandchildren had the same opportunities for wealth that American children have).
3. IIT-Guwahati was a very depressing visit. Everyone in India talks about how the IITs are top-notch universities. That may be true in Engineering, but in Economics, that campus was disgraceful. There are two economists at the school. Neither one of them understands econometrics—and I am not exaggerating. One of them even said that he rejected the whole econometric approach. Now, it is strange enough to find an economist who rejects econometrics—Econometrics is the tool economists use to do all empirical work—it is simply statistical analysis of economic data. But, the depressing thing is to realize that IIT Guwahati does not have *any* economists who understand econometrics. Our undergraduate majors in economics at Mount Holyoke know more econometrics than the *faculty* at this IIT. I am not kidding. On top of that, these two profs seemed unaware of the norms of question and answer sessions; frequently one of them would ask me a question during the discussion part of the talk. I would start to answer it, get about two sentences out, and then the same prof would immediately interrupt with a completely different questions. It was pretty obvious they didn’t care about the questions they were asking, they were just so angry that I was saying something with which they disagreed, that they started sputtering. I think the Dean of the College was terribly embarrassed by the behavior of the faculty.
4. The Conference at North Eastern Hill University in Shillong was a train wreck. They had me in a session slated to last two hours and 15 minutes. They asked me to speak first, and then they had a set of people to present papers in the session, which was supposed to be followed by questions and discussions. But, they scheduled 10, yes 10, prostrations for the session. [A normal session like that would have 3-4 presentations.] By the time the session was scheduled to end, there were still several presentations left to go. And, the worst of it was that I had to leave to go to my next event—so I wasn’t even able to stay until the end. I have never seen any conference organizer try to cram 10 papers into a single session before.
5. And just so it doesn’t sound negative—all the rest of the talks and discussions went extremely well—very interesting discussions and questions everywhere else.
6. The NGO was interesting. They have a microfinance operation, so I was able to find out for myself how well the microfinance programs are working. In the initial presentation, they told me they had over a 96% repayment rate on the ;loans. I asked them what interest rate they charged, and it was over 15%. Then I noted this—if they have a loan program with a 96% repayment rate and interest rates over 15%, why do they have any trouble at all getting funds to lend?—after all, this would be the single best way to save in the entire world. The people in the NGO immediately looked a little sheepish. There was an academic who is a member of the governing board who was there, who then noted that the 96% replacement rate was just considering the time since the new director had taken over a year or so ago (the new director has Ph.D. in economics from Rutgers). Before that, the repayment rates were, in fact much lower—around 10% or so. And then once that was admitted, everyone in the room readily admitted that the microfinance groups all over did in fact have terrible repayment rates. This is exactly what every single student of mine who has done an senior thesis on microfinance has found. The organizations report these incredibly success rates, but the reality is that they aren’t very successful at all. Also, of interest was this NGO’s assessment of other NGOs in India. About 90% or so of the NGOs operating in India are frauds—someone sets up an NGO as a way of getting large grants from donors and then the NGO never actually does anything at all.
7. The bomb blasts on Sunday were done by ULFA, which poses as a Liberation Front for Assam. They claim that they are seeking to make Assam an independent state. But, in asking around up there, it seems that everyone knows that it not really a political organization at all. It is more like the Mafia. It extorts lots of money from politicians and everyone else around, and then periodically blows something up. Several people in Guwahati said to me that every day they consider themselves fortunate to still be alive—what a way to go through life.
8. There is a large Christian community in Shillong—it is about 70% Christian and the rest is Animist. It was rather strange seeing so many Christian churches in an Indian city. Also, many taxis had stickers saying “Jesus” or some such thing in the back window. In Kolkata, the taxis all have these little plastic shrines to Ganesh with flashing lights on the dashboard.
9. The drive to Shillong was…well, it was noteworthy. Shillong is in the mountains, so it is a very windy mountain road. Coming down, our car was moving along at around 45 miles per hour. And, they were driving like they do in Kolkata—if there is enough room to pass, you pass. The car we were in would not pass someone *right* before a blind corner, but the driver didn’t need a lot of space to deem it worthy of passing. I could not even count how many times we moved by cars coming in the other direction with about a foot of room to spare. And, of course, there are no guardrails on the side of the road. Janet would not have liked that drive at all.
This week will be another busy one for me. Today, I gave a talk over at the American Center of getting into graduate school in the US (it is International Education Week for the US Consulate). Tomorrow, I have a lecture at IISWBM. Then Wednesday, I leave for another State Department trip—this time to Tripura. Again, they put together a “few” talks for me. While there, I will give lectures at: Agartala University Economics Department, the Agartala Chamber of Commerce, Agartala University Management Department, and the Indian Institution of Engineers. I also have two separate meetings with the media, and finally I will meet with the Director of the State Institute of Public Administration and Rural Development (SIPARD) and discuss “Public-Private Partnership.” I have no idea what that last item means either.
On this trip the new Public Affairs Officer in Kolkata will be coming with me, so it will be interesting to talk with him.
Book Reports:
1. Trollope, Dr. Thorne
Book three in the Barsetshire series. This one brings in a whole new set of characters—some of the people form the earlier two books have cameo appearances, but none play any role in the narrative. This volume had more charm and less wit than the last entry.
2. Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
Light entertainment; it’s interesting in a way—people are still reading this book over a hundred years after it was written, but it is not a Great Book. It’s the kind of book that people like John Grisham would love to write—something entertaining enough to stick around for awhile. The most refreshing part was the ending—it did not end the way it would if the same book were being written today.
3. Shakespeare, The Tempest
This play usually makes the list of one of Shakespeare’s Great plays, but it is the only one of the plays so listed that I would personally put in the Almost Great category instead. It always strikes me as too rough around the edges; the characters don’t get fleshed out enough to be really interesting.
4. Wodehouse: Eggs, Beans and Crumpets.
A collection of short stories; most of which feature either Ukridge or Bingo Little. Obviously, a very amusing set of stories.
