India Archives - Page 2 of 2 - A Central Banker's Miscellany

Are we Goodhart-ed? Some questions for pandemic times

In monetary theory, Goodhart’s Law states that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” That is because people, and even governments and other organizations start gaming the target. Named after Charles Goodhart, Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics, and a former Chief Adviser and External Member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England, who had propounded it, Goodhart’s Law was originally formulated in the context of monetary policy during the Thatcher years. But its utility goes beyond monetary policy in explaining various phenomena where targets are met, but underlying performance is poor. Continue reading “Are we Goodhart-ed? Some questions for pandemic times”

Srinivasa Ramanujan: A Life in Infinity

Opened in 1901, the Victoria Students Hostel in Triplicane, Chennai, is an Indo-Saracenic structure designed in the style of residences at Oxford and Cambridge by Henry Irwin, Consulting Architect for the Madras Presidency. It was built in memory of Pundi Runganadha Mudaliar, Professor of Mathematics at Presidency College, who had died at the age of 45. The hostel housed students of Presidency College, and nearby colleges including the College of Engineering. Continue reading “Srinivasa Ramanujan: A Life in Infinity”

Forgotten musicians: Mysore B.S. Raja Iyengar

My earliest recollection of listening to a music concert was sometime in 1966 or 1967. I was about five or six years old. The occasion was the inauguration of a temple built by FACT, which was set up in 1943 and is the oldest fertilizer company in India. My father was there on deputation for a second term, this time to set up the Ambalamedu Division of the company, near Kochi. When the land was acquired, one or two villages were displaced, which became the subject of a famous short story, Sakshi, by T. Padmanabhan, celebrated Malayalam celebrated short story writer, who wrote the story after six years of enigmatic silence. Continue reading “Forgotten musicians: Mysore B.S. Raja Iyengar”

The Nobel Week

I spent five days from 7 to 11 December 2019 at Stockholm, attending the Nobel Prize events. An article on my experience at these events was published in the OPEN magazine. A link is given below:

https://openthemagazine.com/features/five-days-abhijit-esther-stockholm/ Continue reading “The Nobel Week”

A Tale of Two Menons

Against the background of two recent biographies, of V.K. Krishna Menon by Jairam Ramesh (A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon, Penguin, 2019) and of V.P. Menon by Narayani Basu, I wrote an article in OPEN magazine titled “A Tale of Two Menons”. See here. An earlier version is below: Continue reading “A Tale of Two Menons”