Mises Search

An acquaintance of mine has recently accepted a job in New Delhi to work for a top newspaper company at the salary of about $200 per month. He will work from 12 in the afternoon until 3 in the night. He will work at least six days a week. He can be laid off at the end of any month without compensation, at a two-week notice. He has a university

When I once went to visit a public sector electricity-generation plant in New Delhi, one of their top officers told me this: I dump the ash (the residue from burning coal) in the river, I do not pay the railways for delivery of the coal, I do not pay the coal company, and I will keep running it this way.  Forget about the so-called charitable

Less than a year after a Tsunami killed approximately 275,000 people in the poorer part of Asia,  another 80,000 have died in Pakistan and India from an earthquake that hit on 8 October 2005.  An estimated 3.3 million are now homeless in the harsh winter of the region. Close to a million are still sleeping in the open — all at risk of dying —

Several provinces in India have recently banned sale of Coca Cola and Pepsi. The reason: they are claimed to contain a higher level of pesticides than is acceptable in Europe. It is as if the cola companies have been adding pesticides to poison Indians.  Here is the story. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a top non-governmental

According to a recent news item , the Indian government will start offering a “dowry” of INR50,000 (about US$1,100) to anyone who marries someone from a lower caste. This money is more than 1.5 years of Indian per-capita GDP. As per-capita GDP is an average, it is easy to imagine that this money is much more than what the majority of Indians will

Recently , in India, a woman committed sati (voluntarily dying, by burning on her husband’s funeral pyre). The villagers want to build a temple to commemorate the event. The state arrested some people. And it is trying to stop construction of the temple. It will fail. Also, two people observed santhara (voluntarily dying, by fasting) in full view

I am in Bhopal, visiting India after almost three years. I arrived very early in the morning of 27 January 2007. I took the train from Delhi to Bhopal. At Delhi train station, I stood at the front of the counter in the middle of the cold night for 1.5 hours to buy my ticket; the seller was there all this time, chatting away and drinking tea with