Two Great Pieces

.
Steve Jobs passed away yesterday at 5:00AM. Amidst the cacophony of tributes that was let loose by the audio-visual media, the one I liked best was a short, crisp piece by K. Venugopal in the Business Line:

• Steve Jobs and His Company (BL, 7 Oct., 2011)

The second piece was a scathing critique of the Planning Commission by Bhanu Pratap Mehta in the Indian Express:

• Errors of Commission (IE, 6 Oct., 2011)

Excerpts:

"...The Planning Commission has long been a victim of its own name. It has this illusion that it can neatly order India's economy. It does so, but often as a kind of conjuring trick, where real credible objectives disappear under a set of entrenched assumptions."

"...the  commission is still not reconciled the fact that that the very scale at which it plans militates against innovation. And by not giving ministries, state governments, local governments enough space or ownership, it dooms proposals to failure."

"The commission has taken in a dazzling array of talent and sucked them into this illusory world of its own making. Thought leaders who should have been at the cutting edge of thinking about growth, or a new welfare architecture, or new data, have now become the object of easy scorn."

--------------------------------------------------
More Articles by K. Venugopal:

ENERGY: Furnishing much less than what people need (The Hindu, 15 Aug., 2007)


Pro-farmer or pro-consumer: Govt would like to be both, but can it? (BL, 8 Jul., 2006)

Tributes to Steve Jobs:

Steve P Jobs: His Live, His Companies, His Products (NYT, 5 Oct 2011); http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/05/business/20111005jobs-life-timeline.html?smid=fb-nytimes&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB