I feel Vindicated in my infatuation with Keynes

Over a long time, for the last four decades

I feel vindicated, and amply rewarded,

Greatly honored by the Lord,of Universe

My admiration for Keynes,

My measured aggression in

Glorifying Keynesian economics,

When mainstream macro and monetary economics

Was led by Lucas and company

Discreditinig Keynesians , calling them as tellers of fairy tales

Treating it as a matter of

No consequence or significance in policy domain

Classroom on both theoretical and practical planes,

As if it is devoid of all substance and content

Like an illiterate devotee,

Getting blessed by the Lord

For his hard work and good behavior,

Or an affectionate mother handled well by her Son

All my ignorance in econometrics and quantitative tools

And my critical inability to handle

Mathematically, by sheer lack of training,

Have all proved to be a great

Blessing in disguise,

For not getting infected/ affected

By economics rooted in mathematics/Rational expectation scholars.

(From My Dateless Dairy)

An Objective self Assessment (Subjectively?)

Will yesterday’s outburst ( 9.9.2009) be

The last in the act of

My series of

Stupidities and misplaced anger and despair;

I can only pray, to the supreme sleeping in heavens

9.9.2009 will inject more serenity,

Harmony and orderliness, and

Some minimum peace in all

My veins, cells, atomic particles,

All craving for a semblance of peace, and quiet

Two hours of teaching were extremely

Satisfying, refreshing, and more rejuvenating but also more tiring

I know I must moderate ,

My speed in delivery and passion in my subject

I hope, the physical limitations

Will eventually draw limits to my boyish

Feverish and savage enthusiasm

In teaching my subject

While tasting Paul Krugman’s flavor and rigor.

Paul Krugman’s September first week paper,

A Newyork Times Treasure,

Which I will cherish for ever

Is a very great timely reminder ,and

A great moral boaster,

For all the tapas, meditation,

I have practices at a very very early stages of academic life

Operating at a modest muandane level, in a non mathematical way

Assimilating my love, and infatuation with Keynes. (From My Dateless Dairy)

One week is a long time in politics- conscience is consigned to flames.

All over the globe there is a rat race going on for power, position, titles and designations. There are petty minds with pseudo scholarship, soaked in devilish thoughts, aspire for higher positions, demonize and preach sermons. Like pre poll and post poll alliances, in politics, that is politics without any kind of ethics and morality; there are also also different permutations and combinations of groups or rather gangsters in different kinds of institutions- both academic and otherwise. while writing this, a flash news comes that DMK party- the dominant party in Tamilnadu, perturbed over the federal party bullying tactics chosen to quit from the Government but not withdrawing the support, but more sensible and responsible enough to lend issue based support .
One weak is a long time in politics. Seven years honey moon has not sustained marriage .Academics is worse than political relationship. How is life in family or high school, God alone knows them. While editing this piece , the headline appear in the press that the DMK- Congress alliance has been restored and the punctured relationship is repaired . It is clear that the both parties need each other for their survival and one does not know how this fractured relationship will workout on the ground and like any human relationship it will be tested in the next month poll and clearly expose the underlying fragility and vulnerability of the relationship.

If human relationship is so fragile, always based on cost benefit calculus, rooted on ego and self interest inflated ararogance, double speak or multiple speak , we can’t expect the Great Indian subcontinent to render greater good through its educational institutions.
When educated’fellows ( read scholars ) became a real nusenece or threat to the stability of global commons, and get soaked in their personal welfare, not bothering about their real customers, who are their real judges and ambassadors, will their conscience permit them to get good sleep ? it is futile to find answer, when conscience itself has been consigned to flames.

I give a pat on my own shoulder

In my long academic journey of forty years as college/ university teacher I spent nearly a quarter century in different colleges, which of course included four years stay at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics for M.Phil and PhD studies in Pune.That was a wonderful golden period in my academic life. Beyond the narrow confines of Ph.D. project, I had wended into an extensive reading and hence the completion and submission of PhD thesis was delayed for more than a decade.

It was only during the mid 90’s I joined the university environment and after living and laboring here for seventeen years I gave a pat on my own shoulder for having survived thus far, amidst all chaos of office politics/ campus politics; treachery and gross insensitivity towards colleagues

Indeed, a lengthy monograph on this campus politics has been under preparation and almost in a state of suspended animation for too long, given my preoccupation with academic and administrative responsibilities. The book, which is almost a collection of poems- depicting the feelings in free verse was mostly autobiographical and partly fictional and I don’t know where all those sheets are, in my academic godown.They were all written in the 90’s and also in the first half of the first decade of the millennium. At least I must locate the introductory part of that piece and post it in the blog, so that my well wishers and my beloved students would understand in what kind of emotional state, any tortured soul will find himself- be a professor or a banker, a scientist or a bureaucrat. Each sentence in that volume will echo the feeling of any persecuted and tortured soul and all the silent soliloquy that follows that would unravel the untold story of every honest and brave intellectual, locked into any unfavorable work environment but attempting to clean all the dirt and filth in the system. Any institution of higher learning, a bank or a hospital is only a miniature India, where we find petty and mean minded individuals along with some good and nobler souls, bent upon rendering wok ethics, unmindful of all kinds of unpleasant outcomes that might surface on the career graph

Let us stop for a while on the highway to lend a helping hand

Last month after attending a marriage at Erode, I and my friend were going towards Bangalore on a highway in a taxi. The car which was just going before us had hit against a Lorry and I heard only the sound .Fortunately, there was no major injury for the passengers of the Car. The Front portion of the Car was fully smashed .The husband driver had injury on the forehead and hand. The blood was profusely going down. His wife also had some minor injuries on the face and the blood was frozen and settling down like a ‘Tilak’ on her forehead. His father relatively well above the sixties sitting in the back seat was very badly wounded on the head and the arm.

When we stopped the vehicle and rushed back to see the site of accident and render help, that boy was seen quarreling with the driver of the Lorry and kicking him with his leg, unmindful of his own physical suffering and the family. The only consolation was that a small girl aged six or seven was least affected by the accident and was in a state of virtual shock. Nobody bothered about her finer sensibilities. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Car which had gone before the lorry had checked the driver from escaping the scene with his lorry .For quite some time the driver husband was more worried about punishing the driver and noting down the Lorry number and the wife was adding fuel to the fire by saying her husband to go and fetch the key from the lorry .On the highway so many vehicles were speeding up, halting for a while but nobody had the mental makeup to stop , watch and ask whether any help was needed.

We could not bear the utter insensitivity of the driver husband, who was in a world of anger and a kind of delusion. We forced the fellow to put his father in the front seat of our car and he squeezed himself in the backseat along with us. By divine intervention, within a few kilometers of travel there was a toll gate and an ambulance was there. Thereafter, it was their lookout and I don’t know what he did with the driver.

A few days earlier, while I was going towards grocery shop on a small by lane, I heard a deafening sound and I looked back. I saw two individuals, holding on to the respective scooters were shouting at each other. Soon I learnt that a person who was coming towards east on the by lane on heavy speed had hit the stationary scooter, which was held by some person. While hitting not only his vehicle got the beating but he also experienced heavy injury on his left or right foot. Despite my advice to him to go the nearby nursing home and take care of the wound, he was arguing with the other innocent fellow, whose only fault was that he was holding on to this scooter and trying to come towards the road. Soon, the person who hit was noting down the registration number of then scooter of the innocent bystander on the lane.

These two incidents at short time intervals taught me a lesson that, unmindful of the suffering and the injury caused in an accident to either side , there is always a feverish tendency to revolt and find fault with other party without realizing the crude fact that he is also a party to the incident. More particularly, only those who are at fault are the first one to pick up a quarrel and show their muscle power and the more saddening fact is that no one stops at the sight of the accident and stand ready to lend a helping hand. All of us should know that any one has a probability of being met with an accident and our own close friends might pass that way , without knowing that their friend is laying on the pool of blood.

On those moments of joy- few and far between amidst chaos in life

The other day in the class, before beginning to lecture on Central Bank’s intervention in forex market and draw its implications for management of monetary policy, I recalled two episodes (academic), the one- very recent- visit to AVC College, Mayavaram, in connection with rereading of Keynes General Theory Workshop, on the eve of 75^th anniversary of its publication and another, a distant one- an occasion when Prof.Paul Krugman got the Nobel Prize. I just told my audience that how these occasions, made me to float on sea of happiness, a feeling which one can only internalize, but not adequately express.

While writing a lengthy introduction to Keynes General Theory in 2005, Paul Krugman made a confession that, he read that classic as a student, but later he hardly touched it; nevertheless while writing this lengthy introduction, which by itself a classic commentary on a classic work, he read General Theory again and passed on the central message of Keynes, how did he do it, what he missed it and so on, to lesser privileged people like us who have a passionate interest in the subject in general and Keynes work in particular but definitely lacking scholarship his work, but Lack of scholarship to wade through the complex , disorderly and slippery water of Keynes work- A book, definitely not well written , despite the author’s incredible command and mastery over English Prose.

Prof. Neela Kanthan , form Director of Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), now about 75 years old was an ideal and fitting personality to deliver the keynote address, and did full justice to the job assigned to him .His PowerPoint presentation was a great exercise in scholarship by extracting the essentials of Keynes General Theory. Thanks to Prof.Ramgopal of Annamalai University, the co- organizer of the workshop and Dr.Ramaswamy, HOD, Dept of Economics, AVC College, Mayavaram I was also a part of that Keynes club and the philosophical musings on Keynes Monetary Theory in General Theory- the topic given to me for articulation , will ever linger in my green memory. I thankful to the Lord , sleeping in heavens , who really made to recollect , reinvent and rediscover my potentials by revisiting my old Guru, Harry.G.Johnson, about whom, the modern generation of students of Economics may not be knowing much .

In the last few months I have been facing something called betrayal of love from those who do not know the value of life, the meaning of friendship and the purpose of our existence . Like Paul Krugman, when he got the Nobel Prize, John Maynard Keynes Genral Theory’s 75^th anniversary celebration made me happy.

Life has been never fare to the good and the honest. I have written this already in the column. Whatever happens in life we should not abdicate out social responsibility and our inherent tendency to love the fellow human. I am a blessed man on Earth in the sense that I can always romance with my subject in my own way without getting anybody’s applause or approval. Thank God that I am not alone in this world. The subject is always providing me the much needed comfort and peace in life.

The Creator is busy with infinite strategies. Don’t disturb Him

They are tired, frustrated and
Fully desperate.
A clear uneasiness and helplessness
Envelop them like dark clouds
It’s futile to expect
They can wage a war
Or fight against injustice
While they are fully unaware, wherefrom
The next meal would rrive?
The plight of the defeated,
Ordinary people, Orphaned ones,
Is very much heart rendering.
The freedom fight eris so fragile,
Emaciated, weak, depressed
Or shall we say fully shattered
He can hardly think of armed struggle.

Forget the goal of Motherland
The nonexistent Home land for place
They are all deprived of all land
And the Sea, to survive under their Sun
To earn a livelihood, subsist and exist
Till the D day arrives
Reconstruction and rehabilitation work
Would not start by fits and start
For whom? When ? In adequate measure
We don’t know,when
That benevolent act would start?
Chinese presence is visible to the
Naked Eye of the visitor
Will India also compete
To get more projects to make its
Presence felt/ and keep its corporate
In good humor and float on profits

The ruling class will violate
All human rights under the Sun
And strangle Democracy forcefully
You can’t utter a word
The world too, remains as a passive spectator
Rather as a Bystander, unable to stamp out
The cult of violence and sadistic act,
Inflicted on the innocent people
The creator is busy with
His infinite designs and strategies
To save the world?!
Don’t disturb Him.