Via Sepia Mutiny, I came across Suketu Mehta's NYT piece on outsourcing. I'm reading, and very impressed with, his Maximum City, so was utterly disappointed with this muddled rant:

Of course I feel a loyalty to America: it gave my parents a new life and my sons were born here. I have a vested interest in seeing America prosper. But I am here because the country of my ancestors didn't understand the changing world; it couldn't change its technology and its philosophy and its notions of social mobility fast enough to fight off the European colonists, who won not so much with the might of advanced weaponry as with the clear logical philosophy of the Enlightenment. Their systems of thinking conquered our own.

Huh? I wonder if he mistakenly submitted for publishing notes of some random thoughts that he might've been working on. How else can you explain these unsupported, unexplained claims, seemingly trying to be provocative, and the following baseless Pollyannish conclusion?

But we have a resource of incalculable worth right here to help us compete: the immigrants who've been given a new life in America. There are many more Indians in the United States than there are Americans in India. Indian-Americans will help America understand India, trade with it to our mutual benefit. Just as Arab-Americans can help us fight Al Qaeda, Indian-Americans can help us deal with the emerging economic superpower that is India. This is the return of the gift of citizenship.

He does with economics and policy what he does with history: make glib assertions without bothering to explain their bases.

[Suketu Mehta | outsourcing | India | colonialism | offshoring]

1:19:39 PM