This week’s links: The Web is reborn: from Technology Review. On how HTML5 is going to change things. Best Business Books of 2010: from strategy+business. Employee Equity: Insights by Fred Wilson. “How much equity should you grant when you make a hire?” HR as a core competency: by Seth Levine. ” They key is the … Continue reading Weekend Reading
I wrote an essay for India Knowledge@Wharton. From the introduction: “The telecom scam that recently forced the resignation of telecom minister A. Raja defrauded the country to the tune of nearly US$40 billion. Since telecom is an industry that links backward and forward to several others, the total economic cost could well be hundreds of … Continue reading India’s Telecom Scam: How Can a Corrupt System Be Cleaned? – Part 1
Although wrong-doing was alleged immediately after the sale in 2008, it was only in November this year that Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, forced Raja to resign. The telecom minister’s position became untenable after the Supreme Court intervened, and several potentially damaging phone recordings involving a high-powered lobbyist and prominent journalists were leaked. Besides forcing … Continue reading India’s Telecom Scam: How Can a Corrupt System Be Cleaned? – Part 2
Corruption has unfortunately become an all-encompassing feature of India. Indians are all too familiar with it. For citizens dealing with all levels of government, routine abuse of power has lost its ability to shock or even to evoke comment. Most people accept corruption as a fact of life. What should truly disturb us is corruption … Continue reading India’s Telecom Scam: How Can a Corrupt System Be Cleaned? – Part 3
To explain how deeply corruption has penetrated Indian society, let me narrate a few stories I have heard from friends and business associates. It is only when one hears these true stories that one realizes how flawed our system is. A large company won a contract for a waste management project in a global tender. … Continue reading India’s Telecom Scam: How Can a Corrupt System Be Cleaned? – Part 4
The trouble with corruption is that it erodes trust. It limits welfare-improving trades that are so central to the economic efficiency of any system, capitalist or socialist. It also leads to inefficiency of resource allocation. The telecom spectrum sale scam is a stark example of that. As it happens, some of the corporations that obtained … Continue reading India’s Telecom Scam: How Can a Corrupt System Be Cleaned? – Part 5
The opportunity to amass phenomenal wealth that political power affords is the main driver for people with neither aptitude nor desire for governing to go to enormous lengths to enter politics. Over time, this leads to the erosion of public morality and ethics. The results of the recent assembly elections in Bihar illustrate this reality. In … Continue reading India’s Telecom Scam: How Can a Corrupt System Be Cleaned? – Part 6
India is a democracy. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, the country has a “government of the people, for the people, and by the people.” But Indians have to understand that most of India’s maladies are a consequence of their abdication of the responsibility that necessarily accompanies the rights Indians have in a democratic system. … Continue reading India’s Telecom Scam: How Can a Corrupt System Be Cleaned? – Part 7
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