Carl Conrad

I’ve discovered the TED conferences last summer and have to admit I’m quite fund of them. The variety of subjects and the quality of the lecturers make these talks mostly interesting.

I’ve recently stumbled across some highly interesting talks dealing with India and I wanted to shared them.

Here they are:

• Devdutt Pattanaik: East vs. West – the myths that mystify – Devdutt Pattanaik takes an eye-opening look at the myths of India and of the West and shows how these two fundamentally different sets of beliefs about God, death and heaven help us consistently misunderstand one another.
• Shashi Tharoor: Why nations should pursue “soft” power – India is fast becoming a superpower, says Shashi Tharoor, not just through trade and politics, but through “soft” power, its ability to share its culture with the world through food, music, technology, Bollywood. He argues that in the long run it’s not the size of the army that matters as much as a country’s ability to influence the world’s hearts and minds.
• Hans Rosling: Asia’s rise – how and when – Hans Rosling was a young guest student in India when he first realized that Asia had all the capacities to reclaim its place as the world’s dominant economic force. At TEDIndia in November 2009, Hans, managing to coment statistics as a horse race,  graphs global economic growth since 1858 and predicts the exact date that India and China will outstrip the US with a nice comment about the health care system in the US.

Some eye-opening talks about the so called sub-continent (what a dreadful word)…