Interesting readings

Indian historical linguistics in the Economist.

A lecture by Lant Pritchett titled Folk and the formula - Pathways to capable states.

Anil Padmanabhan on Myanmar in Mint.

A great travel story from Nagaland.

Trampling on the individual in India: Saurav Datta in the EPW, and Spicy IP, on the attack on a blogger by the Times of India.

I was in Los Angeles when the Rodney King incident took place, and I thought to myself that when video cameras become ubiquitous in India, it will really make a difference to the behaviour of the police. One is seeing some examples of this, and the exponential rise of video-capable phones will help. In Canada, some are carrying this further: mounting a camera on every policeman. Also see Tarun Wadhwa in Forbes.

Who will audit the RBI? by K. P. Krishnan.

N. Sundaresha Subramanian in the Business Standard about what the independent directors of Ranbaxy were thinking and doing in 2004.

Regulation that is attacking something that is not a market failure: Tarun Shukla in Mint on forced hiring of domestic pilots.

Somasekhar Sundaresan on what SEBI should do on its 25th birthday.

Ila Patnaik on the messy issues of defining FDI, portfolio investment and foreign control.

Ellen Barry in the New York Times tells the story of the flight of a key figure in Russian economics: Sergei Guriev. A country that cannot keep its intellectuals safe has no future. Also see.

Mohammed Hanif has a great piece in the Guardian looking back at the elections in Pakistan.

China's economic empire by Heriberto Araujo and Juan Pablo Cardenal in the New York Times.

A group of musicians in Lahore have an original take on Everybody hurts by R.E.M. Video.

A true war story by Simone Gorrindo.