Ajit Balakrishnan, founder and CEO, Rediff.com, is the author of The Wave Rider, A Chronicle of the Information Age. You can e-mail the author at ajitb@rediffmail.com
When we have 30,000-plus colleges and scores of research labs, why is it that we do not produce a steady stream of Nobel Prize winners?
True sustainable growth can come only through an increase in productivity, and such increases can happen only through innovations, technical and organisational, in all sectors of the economy - industry, services and agriculture, writes Ajit Balakrishnan.
The causes for and solutions to India's manufacturing angst may not lie in high land costs, excessively labour-friendly laws or excessive taxes.
Characters that populate his novels, preoccupations they have, ambitions they nurse and obstacles they encounter are all endearingly those of today's real-life India, says Ajit Balakrishnan
'The new Information Technology Act with the requisite power to allow the Indian State to deal with Information Age challenges was passed by Parliament, without debate, within a month of the Taj crisis.' An exclusive excerpt from The Wave Rider: A Chronicle of the Information Age, one of the most important books published in India this year.
Unstated assumption is that the job applicant is in some way responsible for his employability problem, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
Today we use statistical methods for purposes as computing GDP & planning healthcare & education, but statistical methods originated with much darker motives.
After all, he had already, in the short three years that he had worked for us, in the middle of a punishing schedule of writing algorithms crucial for our business, found the time and energy to write two articles for international peer-reviewed journals and co-author with me a chapter in a book of readings on collective intelligence edited by a prominent US academic.
You work hard and take on more than your share of work, yet your boss favours those who flatter him.
You work hard and take on more than your share of work, yet your boss favours those who flatter him.
A financially successful business may be described as a good role model for its management practices -- whereas its financial success may have almost nothing to do with these practices.
An FTC discussion paper proposes radical measures such as tightening copyright laws to prevent search engines from showing news search results without paying the newspaper concerned, and enabling news organisations to jointly rect 'paywalls' that force consumers to pay for news consumption on the Internet, and asks if it's time to reinvent the business of journalism, writes Ajit Balakrishnan
B-schools may "no longer be able to provide guaranteed access" to secure well-paying jobs in fields like finance, writes Ajit Balakrishnan
Internet businesses, including cybercafes, now stand protected because Section 79 classifies them as 'intermediaries' -- not holding them responsible for what people view and upload.
Barclays had been found guilty of submitting false information that had the effect of manipulating the calculation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, which is the interest rate at which banks are ready to lend to other banks.
It is staggering how the Indian social system subverts well-intentioned policy steps. Girl students from working-class families are not charged a fee from Class V onwards -- a great step to encourage them to stay on in school. But they are then socially pressured into paying tuition fees that take up 30 to 40 per cent of their parents' income.
Last week, as I was driving to work past Gowalia Tank Maidan in Mumbai, I could not help but wonder what the gentlemen assembled there on August 8, 1942 would have made of some recent events. The call they had issued that day to the British Raj government to "Quit India" resulted five years later in the Indian nation-state, one whose edicts within its geographic borders would be absolute and unchallenged.
Advertising in India today is a Rs 30,000-crore industry.
SC's upholding of the RTE Act could merely be the start of a battle, judging by the passionate voices being raised for and against it
Education is much more than just learning about things, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
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