THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

I was at a small Newari town in the Kathmandu Valley at the beginning of the New Year. The hotel where I stayed at was perched on top of a hillock, and as the cold wind blew through the Himalayas I nestled up to the fire which an elderly woman was feeding with corn cobs. People in Kathmandu these days chuck wood frames painted with synthetic paints and inhale this dangerous fumes without a thought, so I was glad this woman, who turned out to the be the wife of the hotelier, still had some corn cobs to feed her fire. “How much corn did you plant this year?” I asked. The woman, who was in her sixties, shook her head. “Its no longer worth it,” she said. “I’m going to let it fallow next year.” She picked up a cob, about a feet long, and showed it to me. “To produce this cob, we need to spend about thirty rupees on seeds, pesticides and fertilizers. Otherwise it won’t grow. Its getting too expensive. My son wants to turn the land into a fish pond and farm fish.” Even till ...

Bill Gates may be the second (or is he now the third?) richest man in the world.   But despite his wealth, something tells me he may not be the happiest man in the world at the present moment. Primarily because about 7 billion people--minus the 50,000 who are hacking into computers and networks--are all looking at him and wondering: why on earth did we trust this college dropout? Granted, the story was cool. College dropout starts amazing technological innovation (wait, I think that was Steve Jobs, but never mind) and becomes richest man in the world. Lets revise that-college dropout markets tech toy invented by another college dropout, and become a global force in marketing. Transforms everything, from education to banking to medicine to every known interaction mankind makes with each other. Cool. Awesome, in fact. Unfortunately, anything that gets described as “awesome” should have been taken with a grain of salt. But somehow humanity forgot to do it ...

A number of anxious, paranoid articles recently written by Americans suggesting “we don’t need to worry about China, we’re still the biggest and the best,” made me wonder: are we still in the American century? Christopher Matthews “ China’s Economy Could be bigger than America’s ,” in TIME.com, is an anxious look at this theme, along with this “let’s be good losers” consolation:   “ The upshot is that the Chinese economy  could already be bigger than our own.  Does this knowledge make you feel any different? No? Well, it shouldn’t. That’s because, fortunately, economics isn’t about competition. It’s about collaboration.  Americans should hope for the Chinese economy to grow because that means there will be a larger market for the goods and services we create here in the U.S.” Of course, half the articles that come up on the Internet is propaganda for one country or another, each suggesting their economy is doing fabulously well, and the other one’s ec...