Distraction by history

Since I have been distracted to from finishing a certain promised blog it's my turn to distract with a few quirks (or was it not-so quacks) from history.

In 1978 who wrote?

"Today the consequences of such an educational emphasis are already apparent, and while it may once have served helpfully to boost battered post-colonial egos, against this must be set the fact that it has sharpened the communal hostilities between Sinhalese and Tamils, has intensified the spirit of linguistic chauvinism, and in its generally anti-rational character has encouraged the development of a society, already astrologically obsessed, which allows itself to be ordered by planetary conjunctions and a whole calendar of endlessly pored-over auspicious dates and times."

Roger Sandall writing in 1979 about Sri Lanka's sticky future

Now that Libertarians are popping up all over the lastnnodes of the sub-continent, who was the Indian economist influenced by Hayek and the Austrian School of economics?

"After teaching in Ceylon and India, he joined the Reserve Bank of India. He was sent to Washington as the Indian representative for the World Bank and the IMF from 1951 to 1953. He could have become the governor of the RBI but he couldn't stand it anymore. So he took a cut of half his salary and went back into academic teaching. They made the mistake of leaving him on a panel of economists for the planning commission. In an appended dissenting report issued in the early 1950s, he predicted that if the Nehru plan went into effect, India would face a foreign-exchange crisis and inflation and there would have to be cuts. Nehru got very upset."

B.R.Shenoy is discussed in an interview with his economist daughter Sudha Shenoy.

A conversation thread

A blog commentator named Ashanthi, who first turned up in nittewa, has the habit of carrying out unrelated conversations across multiple blog entries. So I opened this thread for the conversation here.

Escape from New Orleans

Watching Snake Plissken in Escape from LA I could never have imagined such a scenario occurring in the US. At least not in 2005.

A few days before cyclone Katrina visited the shores of the southern US states I was watching a detailed news briefing outlining the expected fall out from the hurricane, the measures taken to safeguard the city, the emergency planning and disaster preparedness. The 3D animations were very detailed, the scenario had been war-gamed previously and the news conference oozed with the confidence of technocrats. So where did it all go wrong?

Chaos and gunfire hampered efforts to evacuate the Superdome, and, Superintendent P. Edward Compass III of the New Orleans Police Department said, armed thugs have taken control of the secondary makeshift shelter at the convention center. Superintendent Compass said that the thugs repelled eight squads of 11 officers each he had sent to secure the place and that rapes and assaults were occurring unimpeded in the neighboring streets as criminals "preyed upon" passers-by, including stranded tourists [via dailykos]

It is sometimes said that the mark of progress is how a nation reacts in times of disaster. The US is the worlds most advanced country and the current sole superpower. If so how did they allow for the currently unfolding, unmitigated disaster that is New Orleans? I am baffled by the mistakes and un(der) preparedness. Even in the aftermath of the much more disastrous SE Asian Tsunami there didn't appear to be the near anarchy, chaos and lawlessness as what appears to have gripped some areas of New Orleans.

A few questions I can think of .....

• Is this the end of small-government talk in the US for a while?
• Why wasn't there any support structure at the convention centre?
• What happened to the disaster preparedness and management plans?
• Did the looters and gangs easily access guns and firearms from abandoned shops (i.e. gun control)?
• Would this bring more focus on the plight of the US poor?
• Is the US heading to a recession?
• What is the impact on the world economy and how does it cope with shocks to the US economy?
• Have the republicans lost the next election?
  

John Quiggin has been looking at the economic fallout following the storm damage. Follow Hurricane Watch where they are covering the ongoing situation.

If history is any guide, knowing the human condition, it's not surprising to see such behaviour in light of food and water shortages. What has become of Homo economicus ?

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Update:

• An adequate CAT5 defence for New Orleans was atleast 25 years away.
• Excellent on the ground blogging at The Interdictor - via the1truecoolguy