Commentary on Planning commision and its demise
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Daily Archives: January 13, 2015
Invisible hand of the state
Again was going through the Ankit’s blog. Hit upon this wonder full entry. This one is by Ajit Balakrishnan in BS.
Internet, touchscreen, GPS all are one way or other the govt sponsered projects.
Even in India the software industry can say thanks to govt for kick-starting by mean of computerisation of Indian banks and Railway system.
Most intresting excerpt:
You need to peer really hard to detect this kind of invisible hand of the state. Mariana Mazzucato, professor of science and technology at the University of Sussex and the author of The Entrepreneurial State – Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, did just that and uncovered the role of the American state behind what is generally seen as the ultimate artifact of entrepreneurial vision, the Apple iPhone. “What actually makes the iPhone a smartphone, instead of a stupid phone?” she asks in a recent TED talk. And answers that it is the internet; the Global Positioning System (GPS), which detects your geographic location; the touchscreen display that makes it also a really easy-to-use phone. She points out that “the very smart, revolutionary bits about the iPhone, are … all government-funded … the Internet was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States. The GPS was funded by the [United States] military’s Navstar program … the touchscreen display was funded by two public grants by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and the US National Science Foundation”, and in the American pharmaceutical industry, “a full 75 percent of the new molecular entities with priority rating are actually funded in boring, Kafkian [United States government] public sector labs”.
My Notes on Economics 