Interesting readings

A nice pair on UIDAI from the Economist: The magic number and Reform by numbers.

Trampling on the individual in India: Akshaya Mishra on Firstpost.

Devangshu Datta in the Business Standard.

Ila Patnaik, in the Indian Express looks at Italy and worries about India.

Kanika Datta in the Business Standard on the Bombay Club.

Authoritarian India at its worst.

Ila Patnaik in the Indian Express worries about the economic consequences of NREGA.

Ila Patnaik in the Indian Express on RBI's thinking about new entry by private banks.

A great article on India's energy-fiscal mess by Urjit Patel, a rare person who understands both.

Tamal Bandyopadhyay in Mint, and Ila Patnaik in the Indian Express, on RBI's use of capital controls to combat rupee depreciation.

In the Indian Express, Ila Patnaik reminds us to avoid adventurism in the use of reserves for buying natural resources.

Shahan Mufti has a great article in Business Week on the supply chain problems that the US faces in Afghanistan.

I have often worried that we are not as bright as we used to be. Mark Pagel has an argument about why that might be.

Fundamental progress on payments by Russ Jones. I'm not a lawyer, but it's a fair guess that Square will be banned in India.

I just re-read James Buchanan's 1986 Nobel prize speech.

Once the public goods of a strong statistical system are in place, the real challenge becomes the brainpower that is deployed into thinking about the data. In India, we don't have half decent maps data in the public domain. But once high quality maps data becomes freely available, things change. Seth Stevenson on Slate tells a story of a beautiful design for a humble problem: a map.