The image names can tell you the ethnicities. See if you can guess ahead of time.
Continue reading Midjourney v 5 and various Indian ethnicities
Open Thread â 05/14/2023 â Brown Pundits
Finished my Iran sequence, Iran through the ages: civilization’s eternal crossroads, Pre-Persian Iran: from the invention of agriculture to the Aryan onslaught and We are all Zoroastrians: how Persian empires of the mind touched all humanity and One door closes, another opens: the Persian Empireâs end and the rise of the Persianate world.
Major Amin on the current crisis, May 2023
Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we donât have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!
In this episode I talk to Major Amin, well knows to our listeners. Just a short chat about what is going on.
Pakistan Crisis: The Arrest of Imran Khan
Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we donât have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!
In this episode I talk to Maneesh about the latest crisis in Pakistan. We start with a little background and then discuss what is happening right now and what we may expect in the future. Comments welcome.
I promised to link some good articles:
Best summary of how we got to this point: What Imran Khan’s Ascent did to PakistanÂ
Good as always from Dr Mohammed Taqi (@mazdaki on twitter) https://thewire.in/south-asia/imran-khans-arrest-will-exacerbate-pakistans-multi-system-meltdown
Probably the best news and analysis show on Pakistani TV these days (as in well prepared, logical, usually objective) is Shahzeb Khanzada.Â
The corps commander’s peacock
A Sojourn to Swades
For a foreigner, India is an assault on the senses. A land of every extreme you can imagine, every data point you can parse, and every anecdote you can hazard is found in this heterogenous homeland. An opulent ancient structure makes way for decrepit shantytowns which morph into a 21st-century skyscraper. Blaring horns that find a home on every road transform into the blowing of a conch and eternal songs. Pollution stings your nose and strangles your throat until you find refuge in the appetizing aroma of an eatery. Every flavor is expressed in a single bite of a chaat, akin to instruments combining in an orchestra of taste. An omnipresent dust travels across your skin as you hold the hands of a loved one not seen in ages. At this point, I feel a bit like Rupi Kaur narrating a diaspora novella about a visit to the homeland, but Iâm guessing you get the point.
Indian futures
Over at his Substack, Noah Smith has a pretty bullish take on India, Here…comes…INDIA!!!:
The United Nations estimates that India has now surpassed China as the worldâs most populous country â or, as we colloquially say, the worldâs âlargestâ country.
Obviously, crossing this threshold doesnât mean much in practical terms. Being a tiny bit bigger than China doesnât really change anything, and India has just about as many people as it did a year ago. But the flurry of news stories accompanying the event is a wake-up call for the world: India has arrived on the world stage, in a big way.
What does that mean? Well, a whole lot of stuff. More stuff than I can summarize or even mention in a single blog post. There was a quote attributed to Napoleon two centuries ago: âLet China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.â Well, China did wake up, and the world has been shaken. The whole economic landscape of the planet, the geopolitical balance of power, and even the Earthâs environment have been irrevocably changed in the last three decades by the addition of 1.4 billion human beings to the ranks of the (more or less) developed world. Now India brings another 1.4 billion, eager to join those ranks. Get used to seeing a lot more graphs with this basic format…
It’s a long post, but I think the major takeaway from the viewpoint of an economist is agglomeration. The co-location of producers and consumers and resources at such massive scale nations like China, India and the USA, result in a level of synergistic economic growth and power that smaller nations cannot match structurally. This is probably one reason that Britain punches below its weight vis-a-vis the US, it cannot scale.
But Smith is aware of human capital concerns, and this is probably the a signifier of the number one issue: Worthless Degrees Are Creating an Unemployable Generation in India. Fake credentialing just means firms will have to re-train or do their own intake (the obsession with credentialing shows up in funny ways on even on this blog; I don’t care what your credential is if you are a moron, something is common-sense to Americans working in tech).
Another issue that is focused on in the post is that India needs to focus on productivity growth through manufacturing. I actually thought a bit about India when I read this long and excellent piece in Palladium on the century-long failure of the British ruling-class on updating their nation for the 20th century.
Soldier Sahibs-Review
I reviewed this book for the Pakistani magazine “Herald” 22 years ago. We had a podcast about the East India company yeseterday and it reminded me of this book, so I dug up my old review (posted unedited):
Soldier Sahibs is an old-fashioned and unapologetically imperialist book. And writer Charles Allen makes sure you know what you are getting into by giving it the flagrantly politically incorrect subtitle: The Daring Adventurers Who Tamed India’s Northwest Frontier. But imperialist does not necessarily mean inaccurate and Allen has taken a good deal of trouble to get his facts right. The book claims to tell “The astonishing story of a brotherhood of young men who together laid claim to the most notorious frontier in the world, India’s North-West Frontier,
which today forms the volatile boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
The men in question include John Nicholson, Harry Lumsden (founder of the Guides), Herbert Edwardes, William Hodson, James Abbot and Neville Chamberlain. ProtĂ©gĂ©s of Sir Henry Lawrence, these men were responsible for laying the foundations of British rule in the Punjab and the Northwest Frontier. The author’s intent is to tell the story of these young men and through their adventures, give the reader an idea of how the British conquered – or, as he would prefer, “pacified” – the ‘wild’ Northwest Frontier of India.
But while Soldier Sahibs gives a very readable account of the adventures of these (surprisingly) young men, it is not possible to piece together the broader history of those times from his book. Why the British were here in the first place and what were the factors that made a small island in Europe more powerful than any kingdom in India do not form any part of Allen’s concerns. Nor does he waste much time explaining the situation in the Punjab or of the East India Company at that time. In fact, the author does not even provide a map of the vast area over which his protagonists established their rule. If you are totally at sea about those times, then you may have to read a few other books to fully appreciate the goings-on in this one. But if you are one of those enthusiasts who cannot get enough of the Raj, the mutiny and all that jazz, then you will definitely enjoy this book. Its written in authentic ‘Flashman’ style, with wit and verve and loads of ‘local color’. Continue reading Soldier Sahibs-Review
Episode 22 – The British East India Company
Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we donât have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!
In this episode, Shrikant, Gaurav and Omar talk to Maneesh about the beginning, consolidation and end of the British East India rule in India. We end the episode on the 1857 revolt.
References:
The East India Company; the most powerful corporation in the world- Tirthankar Roy
Indian Empire – its People, history and products – William Wilson Hunter
Empire – Niall Ferguson
The Men who ruled India – Philip Mason
The Anarchy – William Dalrymple
1857 revolt – RC Majumdar
The British Empire – Stephen Sears
The European theft of India – Roy Moxhom
The inglorious empire – Shashi Tharoor
The once and future India
A lot of the media is writing about how India’s population is now, or will be any moment, bigger than China. The issue I always have with these narratives is India is a big country; UP has a total fertility rate of around 3, while West Bengal is closer to 1.5. I assembled data on TFR’s in administrative divisions across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. I plotted by population and TFR (the second chart is log-transformed so you can see more of the labels). Click to enlarge.
Also attached the table below.
Major Amin on the Current Crisis in Pakistan
A lot of our regular listeners have been asking for Major Amin’s views on the current crisis in Pakistan. We are fortunate that he shared his views today and gave a short summary of the political history of Pakistan, the current crisis and especially the role of the army and the impact its mishandling has had on its image.
You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we donât have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!
