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My Friend Sancho

My first book, My Friend Sancho, was published in May 2009, and went on to become the biggest selling debut novel released that year in India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and had earlier been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.


If you're interested, do join the Facebook group for My Friend Sancho


Click here for more about my publisher, Hachette India.


My posts on India Uncut about My Friend Sancho can be found here.


Bastiat Prize 2007 Winner

Recent entries

Elephant in Kerala

So it’s about 10.45pm, and we’re headed in a tourist taxi to Siena Village, a resort a few kilometres…

‘The Businessman Panicked’

I don’t know why, but I find this kind of funny. And what’s with the quote marks in that…

III = III + III

Jonah Lehrer writes in Wired: Here’s a brain teaser: Your task is to move a single line so that…

‘An Offer They Could Not Refuse’

So while everyone’s celebrating the arrival of Akhilesh Yadav and how he’s revitalised the Samajwadi Party and UP Politics,…

Good Old Dravid…

... is done. The next time India walk out to play a Test match, my favourite sportsman of all…

18 July, 2008

Freeze The Prices!

Bloomberg reports:

Pakistan investors stormed out of the Karachi Stock Exchange, smashed windows and cursed regulators after the benchmark index fell for a 15th day, the worst losing streak in at least 18 years.

“I have lost my life savings in the last 15 days and no one in the government or regulators came to help us,’’ said Imran Inayat, 45, a protester and a former banker who retired early and said he lost 300,000 rupees ($4,175) on the market.

The article does not elaborate on who put a gun to Inayat’s head and forced him to invest his money in the stock market. Instead of calling on others to help him, the man should accept responsibility for his own actions. Did he really think the stock market is some kind of giant safe deposit box?

But the most WTF moment of the pieces comes towards the end:

“We demand that all stock prices be frozen at current levels,’’ said Kauser Javed, who heads the Small Investors Association.

Sigh. Prices, of course, are determined by supply and demand, by what people are willing to pay. If stock prices are falling and the government fixes them at an artificially high level, it will simply mean that those stocks will have no buyers, and their value will effectively be equal to zero. That will no doubt give Javed more cause to protest, and the gent might then demand that the government put together a rescue package for the small investor. Such fun all this is.

(Link via email from skthewimp.)

Posted by Amit Varma in Economics | News | WTF

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