The Most Wonderful Time of the Year [Lily]

As today is December 1st, I would like to take this time to tell you our plans for Christmas. Most decorations won’t be out for a week or two, as we’ll be in Bhubaneswar and Puri on vacation till December 20th. But our Christmas music, which is downloaded onto my mother’s I-Pod, is already on and filling our living room with Christmas joy. Later today, we’ll be putting up our advent calendar.
The main decorating will be very fun. We’ll have home-made paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, and on our tiny Christmas tree (probably about two feet tall) there will be bows and strings of pop-corn. There is a store here that sells Christmas merchandise year-round, so we’ll probably be checking that out for decorations.
On Christmas morning, we’ll have plum pudding and other festive breakfast foods from a bakery. I’m really hoping we’ll also have dosas and idilis, too, because this year Christmas is on a Monday, and the Dosa Man (as I like to call him) comes Monday mornings.

The Smell of Thanksgiving [Emma]

On Thanksgiving, my family and I went to the Consoler General’s house for dinner. The house was really big and nice with a good sized backyard. My mom made apple sauce and peas in orange sauce to bring. There was also a lot of other side dishes that other people brought too. There was turkey and mashed potatoes and all the normal food. I liked the mashed potatoes a lot because there’s tons of potatoes here but we never have mashed potatoes. For desert there was really good pumpkin pie and some chocolate cake and a few other things too. It was pretty fun but it was sad that I couldn’t smell the turkey cooking all day.

100% Lily-Typed [Lily]

(Before I start typing up this blog entry, I’d like to tell a certain person that this is 100% Lily-Typed. Now, I don’t like to say any names, but someone (ahem; Mr. Dan Brown) has thoroughly insulted me by thinking that I was not the one who is writing these blog entries; and that my father is. I would also like to tell that certain person (Mr. Brown; listen up) that because I am rightfully appalled that he or she (he) would even think to doubt my superior knowledge, I am expecting a long, solemn apology.

Oh, and I’d also like to thank Mrs. And Miss Brown for never doubting my blog entries.)

There. Now that I’ve set Mr. Brown straight, I will write my actual blog entry. Normally, I’d be writing about the Thanksgiving dinner thing we went to, but I have collected over time that both of my sisters seem to write about the most easily thought up topics; so I will tell you two things that aren’t as obvious.

The first thing I’d like to write about is an interesting story about a pizza place we ate dinner at in celebration of Your Humble Narrator Sr.’s entering of his fifth decade of life. The pizza place is called Fire and Ice, and not only does it have the same name as the pizza place we went to five years ago in Katmandu, Nepal; but as it turns out, the Italian owner just decided to move the restaurant’s location from Katmandu to Kolkata. But anyway, the owner wanted to have fresh Mozzarella cheese to make her pizzas; not just not-as-good, who-knows-how-old, packaged cheese. So she gave some money to some women in poverty, and with that money they bought some cows. Then, she taught them how to make Mozzarella cheese. And now, every day, they send her fresh, delicious Mozzarella cheese which she puts on her scrumptious pizzas.

The second thing I’d like to tell about is the odd similarity to the way some of the taxi drivers here drive, and the way Ernie drives the Night Bus. For those of you who don’t know, the Night Bus is a three-story purple bus in Harry Potter 3: Prisoner of Askaban that zips around everywhere real fast. Obviously, the taxis here (or at least the ones I’ve been in) don’t have talking shrunken heads or anything, but they do drive really fast and make sharp turns and swerve all over, cutting in front of tons of cars, and then slam on the breaks and end up like, two inches from hitting the car in front of them. And some of them do try to squeeze in between two cars, even if they can’t magically grow thinner to go in between them. But if you really think about it, there are a lot of similarities between the Night Bus and taxis in Kolkata.

Dilbert in India [Jim]

As was noted earlier, Friday was my birthday. I spent the day trapped in a Dilbert cartoon. The Human Resource Management program at the school at which I work had a day long seminar organized by the students. They invited me to go, so naturally I went. While there I learned that the goals of the Human Resource Department of a company are 1) to continue to efficiently engineer cutting edge solutions so that the company may endeavor to synergistically customize interdependent sources while promoting personal employee growth; 2) to proactively initiate diverse leadership skills as well as to interactively build long-term high-impact services; and 3) to synergistically coordinate ethical services such that the company may continue to globally engineer inexpensive solutions. And I always thought HR departments just managed the payroll.

None of those are actual quotations from the seminar, by the way, the real versions were much, much, much longer. I almost had a complete breakdown when one young man spent 4 minutes explaining that if you don’t tell employees what they need to know to do a job, then, shockingly enough, they won’t be able to do the job. The program started at 10; the speeches were non-stop until 2. Then lunch. Then an amateur version of Shaw’s Pygmalion (meant to show that HR departments are really important because they can convert anyone to something special); and then an endless quiz competition in which the questions were so esoteric that nobody in the room knew the answer to about 90% of them. Then another speech to summarize all the valuable insights of the day.

Things were much better after I got home--we went out to dinner at a pizza place. There is an interesting (to us, but probably not to you) story about this pizza place. The last time we were in India, we went up to Nepal and the Public Affairs Officer at the Consulate there took us to a pizza place called Fire and Ice, owned by an Italian woman. The owner has opened up another store in Kolkata, and we finally got over there. It was extremely good and the pizza was real pizza, not the Indian version of pizza (e.g., tikka chicken with cumin sauce). Janet read in one of the local papers that when the woman wanted to open a store in Kolkata, she needed a source for Mozzarella cheese. So, she arranged a small loan to some local women to get cows, and then she taught them how to make Mozzarella cheese which they deliver daily to the restaurant.

For my birthday, my family gave me socks, olives, and a 5-volume collection of Jeeves and Wooster stories. The olives were from Lily; Lily likes olives and figured this was a good opportunity to convince Janet to buy some.

Today, I had to go over to the school for a three hour seminar on “Globalization Through Overseas Investment.” The speeches were all as vacuous as the title. Well, expect the Communist guy who was painfully ignorant. The main speaker was the Chief Advisor to the Minster of Finance of the Government of India—he is the equivalent of a Assistant Treasury Secretary or whatever we call these people in the States. He seemed like a sharp guy, but he was clearly trying not to say anything in his speech.

Thanksgiving Dinner was great. It was a good sized crowd, maybe 75 people. Most of the Americans in Kolkata are either Consular Officials or missionaries working in some sort of social service organization. The Consol General has a 5 year old boy who was running around wild in the backyard. At one point Clara tackled him--that’s my girl.

Thank you Noah for an excellent birthday card. For those of you not in the Gould clan, Noah sent me a card with a hand-drawn picture of Dilbert talking to Dogbert. Dilbert says, “According to market research, 99.9 percent of 40 year olds do not shovel snow in their shorts.” [The inside reads “Happy birthday to one of a kind.”] I feel bad for those 99.9% of 40 year olds. And thanks Carol and Sam for your cards too—and Sam, when we get back, you can put on a pair of shorts and come over to help me with the snow.

It is weird to think about snow.

Happy Thanksgiving [Jim]

Last week I went to the city of Argatala in the State of Tripura on another lecture trip arranged by the US Consulate. Tripura is a rather isolated region in India—-it is the extreme end of the Northeast part of the state. On this trip, the new US Public Affairs Officer was with me—-we had many overlapping activities. The brief overview: we flew in Wednesday morning. I gave a lecture at the postgraduate school of economics at Tripura University. We then went to the Argatala Book Fair-—an event where local publishers set up booths to sell their books. I left that to go meet with some members of the Argatala Chamber of Commerce and discuss business activity in the Northeast. On Thursday, we toured the facilities of the NB Institute of Rural Technology, an NGO which shows people how to use better technology in production. We then went to the Ramakrishna Mission for a tour of the facilities, a discussion with the students and then lunch with some of the monks—-this was an incredibly large lunch. After that, I gave a lecture at the postgraduate school of management at Tripura University. Next was an informal meeting with the local journalists at a facility they use to type their reports. They provided “snacks” for us—-the “snacks” were another large meal, all local tribal food-—excellent taste, but after the large lunch I had just had a few hours ago, it was rather hard to eat enough to show that I did, in fact, like the food. I managed-—as did the others who were with me. After that, I was interviewed by a local reporter. That night, we were all taken out to dinner by someone who had been on a Consulate arranged trip to the US (this is another State Department Program)-—the third huge meal in a span of nine hours. Friday morning, we left the hotel at 6 AM to drive down to one of the local tourist attractions-—a huge, truly huge, palace built up in the middle of a beautiful lake-—quite an impressive sight. Later that day, I had a meeting at the State Institute of Public Administration and Rural Development, which turned out to be a meeting with all the top secretaries in the State of Tripura. (The Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Agriculture, by the ay, are both quite good and interesting people.) Later, I was interviewed by a local television station. Then, finally, I gave a lecture to the Indian Institution of Engineers, a professional organization. Saturday, we came home.

Some notes from the trip:

1. Argatala is the Kingdom of Bugs. I have never seen so many bugs. On Friday morning, the floor of my hotel room was littered with corpses—probably around 200 dead things—a combination of moth-like things and cricket-like things and assorted other things. Before going to bed at night, I had to sweep off the bed to get rid of all the moth-like things. The bathroom also had its fair share of assorted creatures. In the morning, the hotel halls were similarly littered with corpses. And, mind, this is the best hotel in Argatala.

2. The Book Fair was quite a spectacle. The Public Affairs Officer, Doug Kelley, was with me. People in that area were unbelievably excited to have an American Official visiting them. There were about two dozen cameramen surrounding us as we entered and walked around the Book Fair. It was funny watching him-—he is a nice, pleasant guy, but as soon as he enters situations like that he turns into a Diplomat-—he was smooth; I was impressed. The other memorable feature: Imagine what happens when there are lots of bright lights in the Kingdom of Bugs. There must be dozens of pictures of me in Argatala with bugs on my hair, neck, arms, clothes…

3. Even beyond the Book Fair, though, this trip was a media sensation out there-—apparently nobody ever visits the state. There was coverage of our visit every day in all of the papers; my picture is in a go0d chunk of them. I was a front page story in the English language paper. I have no idea what was said about me in most of the papers though since they are in Bengali.

4. The most fascinating news story though came on Thursday. Doug received a call from the Consulate office in Kolkata; they were telling him how sorry they were that he was having so many problems on the trip. He was puzzled at first. It turned out that the Argatala correspondent for a Bengali-language newspaper published in Kolkata had written a story about our visit. It was all about how the Public Affairs Officer had been greeted in Argatala by large anti-American demonstrations and was meeting with a lot of hostility. What is most incredible about that story is that it cannot even be described as exaggeration—-we never saw a single anti-American demonstrator and we never met anyone who expressed anything even remotely resembling hostility. All the local papers had very positive reports of the visit. Yet, there is now a section of the Bengali speaking population in Kolkata who “knows” that there were large anti-American demonstrations in Argatala. No wonder many people in the world don’t like America—-one can only imagine what they read in their daily paper.

5. The NGO was again a rather depressing visit in the end. They have an incredibly impressive facility—-they have whole areas devoted to teaching people how to make cheaper and better walls for houses, plus a complete demonstration house; an area devoted to teaching people how to repair agricultural machinery; and area devoted to teaching people how to make cheaper and better bricks for construction; an area devoted to teaching people how to be better tailors; an area devoted to teaching people how to convert methane gas to power; an area devoted to teaching people how to repair solar panels for use in homes; several classrooms, a hostel for people who are being trained, and a nicely air-conditioned model store showing people how to design better retail outlets—-the store had local handicrafts for sale. They also had assorted animals on display, a few nice looking plant displays and a science center. The tour was most impressive; it looked like an amazing place doing a lot of good. They have a picture of Prince Charles meeting with the founder of the Institute. They are on the tour bus route, so tourists come to visit the facility regularly. Then at the end of this most impressive tour of the facilities, I asked: “How many people come here for training per year.” The answer: 200. Yes, 200—-less than 4 per week on average. They have ten sewing machines alone—-if they had people coming in once a week for the tailoring lessons only, they could train 520 people per year. Multiply that by the number of different training areas they have—-most of which could accommodate at least ten people at a time, and it is readily apparent that we were not visiting a place that actually does much training at all—-it is rather a showplace for tourists, whose tour undoubtedly ends in the nice air-conditioned store. Depressing.

6. The start of this trip was rather rough. On the night before we left, I was running a fever of 102.5. When I woke up, I had a fever of 101.7. I was seriously hoping I would not faint in the middle of a lecture. But, the fever broke mid-morning. I slept a lot on the trip, but fortunately there were no illness related difficulties.

7. I am happy to report that some of the food I ate in Tripura was both clean and served on clean plates.

Other News:

1. I gave a lecture Tuesday at the Megnhad Saha Institute of Management and Technology. This is one of the new (5 years old) private schools in Kolkata. A very nice building out in the middle of nowhere—-we had to travel quite some way down a barely paved one-lane road to get to the facility. The students there were very interesting.

2. For Thanksgiving, we are going over to the Consol General’s house for dinner. He lives in the big Compound as it is officially known. They fly in turkeys for all the Consular Officials, so it will be a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner. I have no idea how many people will be there—-we were at the house the last time we were here (different Consol General) and it is a very nice place with a large backyard for entertaining.

3. I found out that I have an official designation with the State Department for all these trips they arrange. I am a TOO—-Target of Opportunity. They give that designation to people like me who are already in the country, so they can send them out for lectures without having to pay the airfare from the US.

4. On Friday, I will enter my Fifth Decade of Life. In thinking about the first four decades of the Life of Your Humble Narrator, it is terribly obvious that the highlight is Janet. She will be terribly annoyed with me for writing this and putting it on the Web, but since it is soon to be my birthday, I would like to note that there is nothing on Earth that makes me happier than knowing and being married to Janet.

5. Milton Friedman, RIP. I suspect that he will be known to posterity as the greatest economist of the second half of the 20th century. He had more influence on my economic education than any other economist I never met.

6. Book Reports:

a) P. G. Wodehouse: Uncle Fred in the Springtime; Uncle Dynamite

What else can one say about Wodehouse? Every book is exactly the same, and every book is perfect.

b) Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

This was vastly better than I had expected it to be. The chances that I will read *In Cold Blood* in the near future skyrocketed. Capote is an amazing writer; the story was beautifully done. A remarkable portrait.

c) Eliot, The Naming of Cats

I have read these poems before many times, but this was the first time I had the edition with Edward Gorey illustrations—-they are fabulous and add a lot to the poems themselves. Eliot is amazing.

d) Twain, assorted shorter essays and stories

I picked up a copy of one of the Library of America’s Twain collections a few weeks back. [The Library of America books are incredibly good-—great typeset and a wonderful collection of works.] Browsing through the collection was fun—-Twain is a very hit or miss author, but when he hits, he is one-of-a-kind.

7. In the last month, I have checked out copies of books by Roth (Portney’s Complaint) and DeLillo (White Noise). This is all part of my decision to take advantage of being in India and having so much time to read to look into assorted authors whose works I have never read. I quit around page 50 for both of these authors. Now, these are both authors about whom academic critics rave. Both of these novels bored me to tears.

I have read a lot of bad books in my day, but there is something particularly tedious about these works, and it is a quality I have noticed in may other works of contemporary, critically-acclaimed fiction (Updike is a perfect example). I finally put my finger on what it is that annoys me so much about these novels. Their primary quality is Narcissism—it is painfully apparent on every page. And, if I am right about that, it says a lot about what contemporary academic critics like to read about in novels. If anyone can offer up a kind word for any of these author’s, I would be very glad to hear it.

8. Clara was invited to another birthday party yesterday. She is quite the little Party Animal.

Our Reviewers Dine Out [Emma, Lily and Clara]

[Editor's note: All three of the young ones have provided a restaurant review below. It is left as an exercise for you, the Reader, to determine which Child wrote which review. As you will note, this is about as challenging as breathing.]

Reviewer Number 1:
On Sunday my family and I went to a buffet at a restaurant called Oh! Calcutta. It was really good. First there was this mushroom and fish soup that I liked a lot and just didn’t eat the mushrooms. They brought me and my sisters this lime drink that I also liked. At the buffet I had a really good cheese dish in butter sauce. There was fish in this green sauce which was good, and a fish salad. There was a shrimp dish too. I also tried something weird, thinking they were potatoes, but they turned out to be something that I’m not sure what it was, stuffed with something else that I don’t know what it was either. It didn’t really have that much taste, but it was in a good coconut sauce so that’s ok. They brought naan towards the end of the meal. For dessert there was vanilla ice cream, sandesh, and kiwi soufflé. It was a really good lunch.


Reviewer Number 2:
In a big shopping mall called Forum near our house, (this mall is seven stories tall, with escalators and elevators; and millions of shops and a big food court and a movie theater) there is a restaurant called Oh! Calcutta. My parents go there for dinner a lot, and they found out that on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, there are these big lunch buffets. I’d never been to Oh! Calcutta, but my parents had told me about its wonderful food, and Sunday afternoon, we went to the buffet.
Let me tell you, it was SO good! I had this awesome cold fish salad with onions and stuff to start, and then there were these delicious curries made with fish, shrimp, chicken, etc. to put on rice. And there was black pepper popods (which are these fried, crispy thingies, in this case cooked with black pepper in them) and buttery nan (an Indian flatbread). And for dessert, there was sandesh, (a Bengali sweet made of – well, I don’t exactly know what it’s made of, but it’s texture is kind of sandish (no pun intended) and it’s sweet and VERY good) and kiwi soufflé, and payesh, (rice pudding) and vanilla iced cream! Oh, it was heavenly. Next time you’re visiting Kolkata, march right up to the sixth floor (next to the movie theater, which by the way, serves TOMATO popcorn) in Forum, and go to Oh! Calcutta. I’m serious. You WON”T regret it.


Reviewer Number 3:
On Sunday we went to a buffet in Oh! Calcutta. There was shrimp, chicken and there were potatoes too. It was very nice. There was kiwi dessert and also sandesh. I ate a rose petal with it. There was also vanilla ice cream. It was very good.

Giving Thanks [Lily]

Thanksgiving

By Lily Elizabeth Hartley

Thanksgiving is wonderful;

Thanksgiving is great;

A time where I am

In a quite happy state.

Those irresistible smells

Of turkey and stuffing

And warm mash potatoes

Drowned in gravy to your liking.

And orange sweet potatoes

Cooked up in brown sugar

And gross cranberry sauce;

So sour and bitter.

Aromas fill the air

At this beautiful time

Which is pretty much why

I am writing this rhyme.

But in the time of Thanksgiving

It’s not just about food;

It’s about counting your blessings;

And thinking of how good

Your fortune is

Compared to so many others

In this big world of ours;

All those children with mothers

Who can’t afford to have

An expensive dinner

With all that turkey and gravy

Which doesn’t make us any thinner.

So this Thanksgiving;

During all that cooking fuss

Think about our good fortune

And what the Good Lord has given us.

Dinner With Tim [Emma]

On Friday we met Tim Brown. We went out to dinner with him at a really good restaurant called Charcoal. We sat on couches with a really low table next to them. We got this creamy chicken curry that was my favorite thing. There was also vegetables in some sort of brown sauce, naan, rice, and chicken kabobs. It was really good.


[Editor's Note: Let me assure one and all that the dinner with Tim Brown was actually a very enjoyable evening for the other three Hartleys who were there. (I, alas, was in Assam when he was visiting Kolkata (he is spending three months in Bangladesh, but do to visa requirements, he has to leave the country every month. Efficienct, to be sure).) Anyway, Janet, in particular had a lovely time talking with him about South Asia, and if she posts something here (insert laugh), then she can tell everyone about it. ]

Portrait of an Artist [Lily]

Today I learned some more about Vincent Van Gogh, my favorite artist. Many people he was totally whacked. I took a survey (though I only had four people – including myself, Your Humble Narrator Jr., - to ask opinions of) to see what they thought of him. Here are the results:

Emma Rose Hartley: “He was…out there.”

Janet Sue Gilman Hartley: “He was drunk.”

Lily Elizabeth Hartley, or, Your Humble Narrator Jr.: “He was a misunderstood, yet fantastic artist, who thought no one appreciated his artwork; sure, he probably could have made a better choice than to commit suicide, but he was probably overwhelmed with his troubles, such as his struggle to find love and a place where he could fit in and was happy. And if I was there in his time, I would most definitely have bought his painting, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, for $82.5 million.” ( This is judging the fact that I would be an adult at the time, and have zillions of dollars and a mansion with penguins and my cat Zelda living in it, because I’ll be a famous painter/author/sculptor/photographer/interior designer.)

Clara Dahlia Hartley: “I don’t know who Vinfit Vingo is.”

But from now on, I will appreciate Vincent Van Gogh even more, because I am aware of his troubles and hardships he went through.

Pretty and Lovely Stewardesses [Jim]

“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.

How To Buy Clothing [Jim]

Life here in India suddenly became much, much busier. Now, I am not unaware that I said I was busy at work before this, but it seems that my previous state of activity was lethargical compared to what is to come.

Last Monday, the US Consulate (the Official Arm of that Most Beloved Institution, the US State Department) arranged a few lectures for me. Well, they said it was a few. The US State Department’s definition of “few” does not match the definition used by the Rest of Humanity.

On Monday, they told me they had scheduled a talk for me at Globsyn (a local Business School); so I had 48 hours to prepare the talk they wanted me to give—plenty of time, to be sure, but I am not sure how they knew I could put together a talk in such a short time. They also told me on Monday that they had scheduled a visit for me to Assam (in the Northeast part of India). That visit begins on Monday, November 6 and ends on Saturday, November 11.

My schedule for Assam:

Lecture on “U.S. Experiments with Economic Growth: Lessons for India?” at:
1. Gauhati University
2. North Eastern Hill University
3. Indian Council for Social Science Research
4. Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change
5. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
6. Cotton College
7. Assam Management Association

I will also be delivering the keynote address in the session on “WTO and Developing Countries” at the National Seminar on “Global Convergence of Education in Commerce and Management”

I am also scheduled to:
Discuss environment economics with the editor and the publisher of “Grassroots Options”
Participate in a media interview with as of yet unknown media people
Be interviewed by someone from the Assam Tribune
Meet with the executive director of Rashtriya Gramin Vikas Nidhi

All of that between noon on Monday and Friday night. And, there are two 3 hour car trips in the middle of the week to go from Guwahati to Shillong and back.

Even better: They have also scheduled two more trips like that in the next month and a half and assorted events in Kolkata and a few day trips to other places around.

As they said, they scheduled a “few” talks for me.

Now, the strange part is that I only found this out on Monday. The first lecture was scheduled for Wednesday and then I had to prepare for the other lectures/discussions during the week. I am almost ready to go—well, expect for the Power Point presentation—the assistant Public Affairs Officer told me that they always advise speakers going to the remoter parts of India to have something on Power Point for those members of the audience whose English skills are minimal. Most of you can well imagine my reaction to using Power Point; maybe I will get around to preparing something tomorrow.

I also was asked to add in all my talks that I do not speak for the US government, but that I am here as a Private Individual, and my views do not express the Official Position of the US Government. Thus I am Officially Not an Official Spokesman of the US Government. They are, however, paying for my trip (Your Tax Dollars at work).

Now for those of you worrying about the other members of the Hartley Household, Fear not. The US State Department does not neglect Family members. Janet and the Kids are going with me on the trip to Assam—a nice vacation for them, to be sure. And, Fear Not, the Hartley Household is Financing the travel expenses of the Rest of the Household, so Your Tax Dollars are Not At Work here.

Anyway, it has been very busy this week between preparing talks and arranging itineraries and such for three different trips. So, alas, the blog has been neglected.

Other News:
1. Last night we had dinner at the Mittras, the people who own the flat in which we are living. An extremely pleasant evening. One of the other guests was an ex-Policeman, ex-English teacher, and ex-Director for the tram system in Kolkata, who was amazingly talkative with a never ending array of amusing anecdotes.

2. Last Sunday, the kids were cast in roles for the Christmas Play at Church. Clara is going to be a Bell. A Talking Bell. I think she will make an excellent Bell.

3. The exam I gave in the course in the Masters Program in Retail Management was…Fascinating? Disturbing? Revolting? Depressing? I am still not sure. There were 58 students in the room taking the test. I was also in the room, right up front. Had it been a test at Mount Holyoke, 18 of the 58 students would have failed the course on the spot for cheating. I am not kidding. Another 6-10 were also cheating. The difference between the 18 who would have failed and the other 6-10 was that the former were cheating repeatedly throughout the test. This cheating was going on while I was standing there watching them. I was a bit bewildered by the spectacle, and being a mere visitor had no idea what was the normal procedure in a case like this (fail half the class on the spot?) so I went to the department chair and told him what I saw. He was angry and embarrassed—and the whole class is going to be forced to retake the test—not what I would have done, but not my decision to make. I had a nice long lecture for the class the next time I saw them; a good chunk of the class looked rather ashamed—unfortunately, the ones who weren’t cheating looked the most ashamed. I have no idea what conclusions to draw from this episode.

4. Since this trip to Assam has 5 days of public lectures, and I only brought three long sleeve shirts to India with me, I needed to buy two new shirts. I went to a store to get them and was rather bewildered looking around at the shirts. Then it dawned on me. I have Never gone to the store and bought a shirt for myself. Never. I have no idea what I am supposed to be looking at when I look at shirts. How do people pick colors and styles and such? So, I left, and Janet went out and bought me two new shirts this afternoon. Now I can wear them and not think about shirts anymore.

5. Book Reports:
1. McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses
The Crossing
McCarthy is my candidate for the contemporary author whose books are most likely to be Great Books in 100 years. These two books are the first books in his Border Trilogy. They are extraordinary—and, like all Great Books, even more Extraordinary when being read for the second time.

2. Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Holmes is an amazing literary creation; and Doyle’s ability to define an entire genre is incredible. What, after all, is the real difference between a Christie novel and a Sherlock Holmes story?

3. Christie, Parker Pyne Investigates
Many of these stories are more Charming than Mysteries, but they still follow the Holmesian Mold. A good chuck of the book is quite like a story in Chesterton’s The Club of Queer Trades. I had never run into Parker Pyne before, but I am glad to know him.

4. Bond, Paddington Goes to Town
A late entry in the series, and it had a bit of a tired air about it. Even still, our dear Friend from Darkest Peru was quite loveable.

5. Steinbeck, The Red Pony
I am not a real fan of Steinbeck; most of his books make me feel like I am being bludgeoned with a large stick on which it is written “This is the Moral of My Story. It is a Very Important Moral, so I will keep Beating you with it to Make Sure you Understand.” Until now, Cannery Row was the only one of his books I truly liked. The Red Pony now joins Cannery Row.

6. Harford, The Undercover Economist
Another of those econ books for people who know nothing about economics. I read these to pick up interesting anecdotes for lectures. This one had several good anecdotes. It is also one of the better books in this genre, so if you are looking for a book like this, you could do a lot worse.