Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Tyler Cowen, an American professor, make some interesting points about the criticism of Modi. Like many, he doesn’t favour “replacing India’s secular democracy with “Hindu nation” as a ruling principle”. First, he points out Indian democracy was never liberal: “National voting has so much to do with religion, caste, and other particularistic principles that Indian democracy never enforced superior practical performance as it should have.” Then a slew of factors lined up: Modi himself, India’s economic growth, higher expectations from the state, global terrorism and Islam being at the center of it. He says Modi’s critics focus on either his failures or the policies they dislike but ignore the positive actions he has also brought about: “The positive and negative sides of the story here may be more closely related than is comfortable to contemplate.” Cowen then draws a parallel to the Renaissance! “The picture reminds me a bit of how parts of Renaissance Europe wer...

I’ve never cared about critics, whether of books, art or movies. It’s just that (one) guy’s view, isn’t it? Who cares what he thinks? To be fair, well known critics (by that, I mean the ones whose names get published in the papers) run a risk: criticize an SRK movie and the poor guy may be out of a job. And would any well known critic ever call Dan Brown’s next novel crap knowing that it will sell a few million copies anyway? Ok then, how about anonymous critics? Like the ones on the Internet. Are they any better? Well sure, they could be more honest than well known critics. But it turns out that an analysis by Google shows that after the first few reviewers, the next set either conform to what the first set said or end up responding to the first reviews rather than voicing their own view. Which sort of skews the whole collective opinion rating we see online (puts that 4.5 out of 5 rating in a whole new light, doesn’t it?). Was Seth Godin right when he wrote: “For me, the o...