tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-246257262012-02-16T08:57:28.541-05:00Argument, Debate, ActionAshesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.comBlogger201100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-52478118636012343482011-02-11T20:48:00.005-05:002011-02-11T21:12:28.122-05:00

February 11 should forever be known as Egypt Day. The brave, ingenuous and resilient people of Egypt have overthrown a 30 year old dictatorship after nearly three weeks of sustained and creative protest. Some have contrasted this day with another February 11 (1979), when the Islamic Revolution in Iran was completed. Others have drawn parallels with February 11, 1992, when Nelson Mandela was

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-62917071305790310212011-01-04T03:41:00.019-05:002011-03-01T00:31:16.789-05:00

There are clear benefits to blogging about events long after they occur. While I've love to claim this was deliberate strategy on my part to to offer some kind of meta-analysis, the truth is I was just a bit lazy with my posts. In any case, these were thoughts I shared with friends on email discussions, so I figured I might as well given them their due in this extended post. And oh, Happy New

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-87743883457317901192010-08-09T04:02:00.009-04:002011-01-07T16:55:24.244-05:00

Its been a whirlwind two months in India and this is a post which has been in the pipeline for a while (hence the length). For those unaware of my current research project, I’m working on a study of Microfinance Self-Help Groups in villages near Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh. It is the first time that I have conducted a real survey. Needless to say, it has given me a deep appreciation of the process of

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-40243100117589768542010-05-08T00:14:00.008-04:002011-01-07T16:54:20.931-05:00

For those who don't have the distinct pleasure of being my Facebook friend, you may not have noticed how I recently trumpeted my meeting with my intellectual hero, Amartya Sen. Some of you who do have the distinct pleasure (and have not been rude enough to suggest I merely posed with him!), have asked me what we spoke about. Well, wait no further. So, Prof. Sen had come to Chicago to talk about

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-5240806400280385512010-05-08T00:06:00.008-04:002010-05-08T00:50:04.950-04:00

The failed Times Square car bomb attempt which came to light this weekend is tough to analyze because the investigation is not yet complete and there is still uncertainty about the facts. Gen. Petraeus has recently ruled out Pakistani Taliban’s involvement, describing Faisal Shahzad, the individual arrested for attempting the attack, as a “lone wolf”. At the same time, Pakistani officials have

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-37187704346725745942010-03-23T22:36:00.006-04:002010-03-24T17:42:33.456-04:00

In statistics, you need at least three data points to find the line of best fit. At the risk of future ridicule, I proclaim that with my third blog entry in March, my output is once a month. Which is not prolific by any standards, but is at least a benchmark which creates expectations for you and me!Anyhow, on March 9th, I tore myself from the prep for a Political Economy final to check out a

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-13110333459598503252010-02-19T18:08:00.024-05:002011-03-01T02:28:43.004-05:00

I write this post after 3 weeks of getting clobbered by midterms and shellacked by assignments. The experience was made worse, knowing fully well that my commitment to blogging was becoming less credible by the day. Anyhow, the only vent to my thoughts I managed last week was a response to my friend Dan Michaeli's post about Indian foreign policy. In it, Dan argues that India's domestic politics

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-37201667052751791532010-01-21T18:53:00.003-05:002011-03-01T02:23:06.905-05:00

So, as January nearly comes to an end, I have found my new year resolution – I resolve to blog at least once a week more frequently this year. As you will notice, my previous blogging attempts have come in spurts interspersed by long periods of hibernation. I’ve decided to set the record straight, partly due to peer pressure (some of my friends, Kevin,Andrew, Ali, Dan and Rohit are extremely

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-7892282631712130512010-01-21T02:30:00.003-05:002010-01-21T03:04:04.411-05:00

Last week, Chicago Policy Review, whose editorial team I'm on, unveiled its brand new blog. Happily, I posted one of the first few articles on one of my old bugbears - the Dollar Reserve System. Enjoy!

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-56221380677348786202007-08-14T10:40:00.000-04:002008-12-09T19:16:01.318-05:00

"A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a cricket team, long suppressed, finds utterance."I can almost feel Nehru turning in his grave after my shameless use of his historic 1947 speech to describe a cricket win, but there are times when lofty prose is needed to aptly describe monumental achievements, and

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-54241528563607809432007-01-20T10:07:00.000-05:002008-12-09T19:16:01.680-05:00

My new fangled tendency to theorize about Bollywood seems to have finally caught some attention as I realised when asked to write an article on it for The Beaver, LSE's student newspaper (if you can call the back page trash that regularly appears in it, 'news'). The occasion is India Week, an annual event on the LSE itinerary when everyone who ever had a brown ancestor suddenly discovers their

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-1162856101433360612006-11-06T18:05:00.001-05:002010-01-21T02:59:40.249-05:00

Bollywood movies have a way of creating mass hysteria among the Indian media. Some would claim even 'international' media pointing to Aishwarya's appearance on Oprah and 60 minutes - its another matter that questions asked of her ranged from 'Why cant you kiss in Bollywood movies?' to 'Do you have a boyfriend?', all of which were responded to with the practised coy giggle (no words mind you)

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-1162074741373498842006-10-28T12:31:00.001-04:002010-01-21T03:00:49.802-05:00

Its been a fortnight since Diwali and even by Indian standards of punctuality, I'm fashionably late in writing about it. Yet I will do it in a bid to satisfy the insatiable demand of my enthralled readers. After the 'White Diwalis' in Connecticut in the last two years, I was determined to make this one in London count. Before I could place my shameless self-invitation phone calls to the relatives

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-1160611417144127432006-10-11T18:58:00.001-04:002010-01-21T03:02:00.494-05:00

Sunday night, my flatmate and I were cleaning dishes when I suddenly noticed a red cup with Karl Marx's visage printed on it. "Brendan, are you a Marxist?", I quizzed him. Brendan, wearing a Rage Against the Machine t-shirt replied, "No mate, but I am sort of radical - interested in the revolution, you know. In fact, if you are as well, come by ... there is this huge protest outside the

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-1160593476828427642006-10-11T14:21:00.000-04:002008-12-09T19:16:02.435-05:00

So this Sunday morning, I was taking a random stroll down Bishopsgate. I would love to call it a morning jog, but self deception has its limits and in this particular activity, very precisely mathematical speed limits within which my locomotion did not qualify. Not to digress further (slightly ironic - that phrase - since I am about to describe its exact opposite), I spotted what looked like a

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-1160590838149094082006-10-11T13:52:00.000-04:002006-10-11T17:12:30.300-04:00

Bumming around has an uncanny knack of popping existentialist questions in your head - After wading in the sublime, Who am I? Does my Life have any meaning? I soon found myself gasping for breath with the inane, Will I get into grad school? Do I know if I want to go to grad school? Do I know what I do know is not incorrect information? I decided there have to be better time-killing methods than

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-1148060522475895942006-05-19T13:39:00.001-04:002010-01-21T03:02:40.546-05:00

At the end of an era (kalpa) all creatures disintegrate into my nature and at the beginning of another era I manifest them again. Such it is my nature (prakriti) to follow again and again the pattern of the Infinite manifestations and disintegrations (9,7-8). The Bhagavad Gita can be, and has often been, summarized as God Krishna’s spiritual sermon to the reluctant warrior Arjuna to

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-1146254129375488032006-04-28T15:54:00.000-04:002006-04-28T15:55:29.386-04:00

A little known German lance corporal recounted his traumatic experience of near-blindness caused by mustard gas in World War I - “My eyes were transformed into glowing coals and the world had grown dark around me”. He was to later oversee the Zyklon B gassing of 6 million Jews and the scientific production of the most deadly nerve gases in the world – Sarin and Tabun. Yet, Hitler (if you hadn’t

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-1143226830572132312006-03-24T13:50:00.001-05:002011-02-23T01:24:16.141-05:00

The study of Economics was famously drubbed as a ‘dismal science’ by Thomas Carlyle, and perhaps for good reason. Most of traditional economics is rooted in the idea that markets are the most efficient mechanisms to allocate scarce resources among members of society. It is not difficult to understand that this is a direct critique of the State as a body which could be relied upon to distribute

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24625726.post-1143181911480243972006-03-23T18:55:00.001-05:002011-02-23T01:26:04.466-05:00

Samsara is a perfume, Nirvana was a grunge band from Seattle, the message of the Bodhicaryāvatāra is embedded in the Beastie Boys song “Bodhisattva,” and a recent campaign for iPod rival Zen Micro invoked “the power of Zen” and “the color of Zen”. In Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Jim Carrey does penance, seeking a state of “omnipresent intergalactic oneness” in a Tibetan monastery for having

Ashesh Prasannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07444455329773329263noreply@blogger.com0