Interesting readings

How best to play Finance SEZs by Ajay Shah in Business Standard, February 5, 2018.

Selfies for India: These long-term bonds can fund India’s infrastructure needs and improve retirement security by Robert C Merton and Arun S Muralidhar in The Times of India, February 5, 2018.

Why stop at Hindi? in Business Standard, February 4, 2018. English as lingua franca is a multilateral disarmament treaty.

Budget 2018-19: Reading between the lines by Ajay Shah in Business Standard, February 1, 2018.

How Do We Explain This National Tragedy? This Trump? by T.J. Stiles in Literary Hub, January 31, 2018.

A game of chicken: how India’s poultry farms are spawning global superbugs by Rahul Meesaraganda and Madlen Davies in The Hindu, January 31, 2018.

Resurrection of TPP – A wake-up call for India by Jayanta Roy in Business Standard, January 31, 2018.

The Shallowness of Google Translate by Douglas Hofstadter in The Atlantic, January 30, 2018.

(Not) the way to promote digital payments by Abhishek Balaji on 50p Blog, January 29, 2018. Also see: Subsidies are the last refuge of a failed policy maker by Ajay Shah in Ajay Shah’s Blog, April 16, 2016.

Why E and V bands in telecom can solve a lot of connectivity issues by Surajeet Das Gupta in Business Standard, January 27, 2018.

Elephants Are Very Scared of Bees. That Could Save Their Lives by Karen Weintraub in The New York Times, January 26, 2018.

Do we want to keep the Republic? by Suhas Palshikar in The Indian Express, January 26, 2018.

Privacy shouldn’t be the price of progress. Here’s how to keep your data safe by Angus Hervey in Quartz, January 26, 2018.

Most unhappy people are unhappy for the exact same reason by Jean Twenge in Quartz, January 26, 2018, and Facebook should be ‘regulated like cigarette industry’, says tech CEO by Alex Hern in The Guardian, January 24, 2018, and This Is Serious: Facebook Begins Its Downward Spiral by Nick Bilton in Vanity Fair, January 23, 2018. Elite flight will make facebook and twitter uncool; it will be like cigarette smoking.

An interesting debate about the opacity of statistical algorithms and the opacity of human experts: Artificial Intelligence’s ‘Black Box’ Is Nothing to Fear by Vijay Pande in The New York Times, January 25, 2018,

Optimization over Explanation by David Weinberger in Medium, January 28, 2018.

Is Bay of Bengal the next BRICS? by Sourajit Aiyer in NIPFP YouTube Channel, January 25, 2018.