Chhaunk (Abhijit Bannerjee, Illustrations by Cheyenne Olivier)

 

In India, one popular airline’s slogan is: Come for the flights, stay for the hotels.

Something similar captures my one-line summary of Chhaunk: Come for Abhijit’s economic insights and food recipes; stay back for Cheyenne’s artworks.

I got curious about the book even before it was published. Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, an Economics Nobel laureate, started writing a column in The Sunday Times of India. Each article blended a kitchen recipe with related (or not so related) economics insights. The illustrations accompanying the column were done by a French illustrator, Cheyenne Olivier.

The prose was attractive, the illustrations superb. Abhijit, being a Marathi-Bengali cross product (Marathi mom, Bengali dad), has some decent Marathi and Bengali food recipes. The recipes are drawn from all corners of the globe, though. It is not limited to Maharashtra/Bengal or India.

The economics felt good too, especially on the days when my views matched those of Abhijit. I knew that the columns would become a book someday, and I knew I would be buying one for myself.

The book came out in 2024. I bought it in 2025. Finished reading it in February 2026. I loved the drawings by Cheyenne Olivier, liked some topics while learning some fun stuff, and heartily disagreed with quite a few views. Let me organise my review sections accordingly.

Illustrations by Cheyenne Olivier

She has a distinctive drawing style which I love. Apart from that, there are lots of painstaking details in each drawing, which I love to find out.

Look at the one introducing the chapter titled “women and work”. Lots of detail that I loved to discover:

1. The lady in the middle with six hands. Giving a many-handed goddess vibe.
2. Hand#1 is putting clothes to dry. Hand#2 is feeding a bird (sparrow?). Hand#3 is sweeping the floor with a broom. Hand#4 is holding a baby in her lap. Hand#5 is cooking. I’m confused about hand #6, though. Is it holding up the roof?
3. The clips to attach the clothes to the drying line are shown meticulously.
4. Some sort of veggies are growing on the roof.
5. Two kids are peeking from behind their mum.
6. The lady is shown dressed up for work on the right side of the picture. The listless wisp of hair has been carefully made up into a thicker strand; the saree is covering the back of her head. This was exactly the style of Bengali office-goer ladies in the second half of the twentieth century.

On a different note, page 197 is an intriguing illustration. It shows three seated gentlemen. I couldn’t understand the relevance of this picture to its chapter titled “Landscapes and Foodscapes”. Are the three gentlemen representing three different culinary cultures? The leftmost is Chinese? Is the middle gentleman Indian? Which nationality is the gentleman on the right? He is not even eating.

Learnings and fun stuff courtesy Abhijit

Page xii: In the introductory author note, Abhijit writes "we hope the reading will inspire you to cook, and the cooking to read further." That’s a smart line.

Page 114: A breed of free-market economists from Chicago used to call themselves free-market-marxists. That’s hilarious! Let me not break the mystery of why they assumed such a split-personality identity.

Page 176: The political complexities and difficulties, along with culinary variation within different parts of China, are nicely explained.

Page 185-188 “The paradox of cake 🧁”: This is one nice and happy chapter. Somehow this chapter made me feel Abhijit wrote this with a smile on his lips and mind. I myself broke into medium-loud laughter a couple of times. The enigma remains. Why does the PLAAM cake cost one rupee more than the CHRISHMASH cake?

Disagreements

Page 6, 52: Affirmative action: A government or an institute’s job is to be the best at what is their primary role. Not to erase inequality. Even if there is a cultural-capital gap in kids growing up, and that gap bothers you, then volunteer to provide the same ‘cultural capital’ for disadvantaged kids. And reduce the gap. Don’t hamper the institute from seeking its full potential. If Harvard’s focus is to be best in academics, then it should not be tasked with erasing inequality in society by doing positive discrimination.

Abhijit professes his support for affirmative action and seems to de-emphasise merit as a selection criterion. It need not be an either-or. There can be solutions where neither merit nor culture-capital-induced disadvantage is compromised. I could not clearly understand what steps Abhijit means to take for affirmative action.

Page 103: Abhijit refers to the Russia-Ukraine war as Putin’s war. This is controversial. Putin believes NATO forced his hand. By that PoV, the war should be called a NATO war.

Page 134: He talks about the importance of a mutual support system to prevent extreme hunger. He writes about how hunger paralyses us mentally. And does not want to leave hunger management to free markets. I agree. I would leave it to society, i.e. voluntary charity. Abhijit doesn’t want to leave such a dire hunger situation to charity and wants government intervention. I cannot agree with this amount of trust in governments whose spending paradigm is “someone else’s money for someone else’s benefit”.

Page 172: The topic touches on the economic downfall of Kolkata leading to the exodus of the Chinese community from Kolkata to upcoming economic powerhouses of Southeast Asia like Singapore. While discussing the downfall, Abhijit, I suspect, avoids laying the blame on the communist government and the harmful leftist policies. He uses the weasel term “industrial strife”, which doesn’t explain who/what caused that strife. I suspect he does this because he is himself a leftist and doesn’t have the humility to question his own biases in the search for truth.

Page 213: A juvenile dig at Elon Musk. I am shocked that Abhijit is indeed this ignorant about the stock-based wealth of the billionaires. Or is he trying to rile people up like the left-leaning politicians? This was extremely disappointing.

Page 301: Philanthropy is not enough for poverty alleviation. Government may have to kick in. That is the theme of this chapter. This runs against my bias. But it seems Abhijit is not even trying to debate the topic in this chapter. He is dancing around the subject, dropping important data points and hitting the best humour one can find in the book. An immensely entertaining chapter despite my disagreement.

All in all, an interesting book. I recommend it for the drawings and the fun economic digressions, while remaining deeply sceptical of Abhijit’s leftist leanings.

Rights I have, Rights I don't

 

I do have a right NOT to be murdered.
But I do not have a right to life. I cannot demand that someone richer than me support my survival.

I have a right to grow, earn, and prepare food.
But I do not have a right to be provided food rations by looting someone else's effort as tax money.

I do have a right to wear clothes if I so desire.
But I do not have the right to force a factory, or a weaver to provide clothes for free to me.

I do have a right to build a house for me, or commission a builder within my budget.
But I do not have a right to ask the government to prepare a house for me using taxes.

I do have a right to seek healthcare that fits my budget.
But I do not have a right to force doctors and hospitals to serve me at my dictated rate.

I do have a right to learn provided I can afford the study materials and teacher's remuneration.
But I do not have the right to loot others (using taxes) and ask them to provide for my education. Or force the teacher to prepare materials and classes for me.

I do have a right to seek employment as per my capability.
But I do not have the right to demand that an employer MUST give me a job. Any job must be a voluntary contract.

None of these - life-sustenance, food, clothes, house, healthcare, education or guaranteed-employment - are freely available in nature. Someone spends effort to create those. I do not have a right to that effort. No matter how poor or needy I might be.

Excellent JEE coaching centres vs Majority Indian Voter

Many Indian voters seem to be against the JEE coaching centres. They believe these centres are costly, unethical, and harm the long-term development of students.

I believe they are all mistaken.

Cost: Many JEE coaching centres have superb management. Thankfully, these are not constrained by the harmful provisions of the RTE Act (yet). As a result, these centres can set extremely reasonable prices. The quality-to-cost ratio is very high.

Ethics: Contrary to popular opinion, their teaching standards are out of this world. GenX and GenY never got to see such quality teachers in such large numbers. Attributing the success of coaching centre students just to leaked-papers is a lazy (and often wrong) shortcut.

Long-term effect on students: I believe much of India's success in corporate circles, both abroad and within India, is due to the 11th and 12th JEE prep. These two years nurture and enrich the mind. The Indian JEE prep, the Chinese Gaokao, South Korean Suneung are assets for these nations. My apprehension is that India will walk back from this direction.

My other discussions on this topic:

1. August 2026 discussion and debate with Suman Joshi at OpenTakshashila. Here.
2. August 2026 Twitter discussion thread with Pavan Kumar and Rajesh Balasubramanian. Here.
3. My earlier writings on education and privatization. Here and here.

AI help taken in this writing:

Grammar and spelling check done at Grammarly.

Missing In Action (Pranay Kotasthane and RSJ)

I received this book as Rakhi gift in 2023. Due to work and other commitments, I could finish it only now. A brilliant brilliant book!! 

I already got an interesting teaser-trailer, even before laying my hands on the book, when the authors (Pranay Kotasthane and RSJ) appeared in 'The Seen and The Unseen' podcast. Pranay and RSJ both have deep wisdom, a dispassionate attitude and a lucid writing-style.

As I went through the book, I could classify my thoughts about the book in four groups:

1. Highlights: I learnt many entertaining and educative facts, two of which stood out. 
2. Doubts: In couple of places, I had doubts where I could not exactly understand the meaning of the words/context. 
3. Feedback: I guess there are a couple of places where there is a scope for improving the clarity. 
4. Disagreements: There are a few disagreements as well. 

I wish to detail all the four points in this book review.

Highlights:

The book in its entirety can be considered as highlight. So many concepts, studies, incidents… Two stood out for me.

1. The interesting story of Naya Daur and how the movie ran against the Nehruvian ideal of reforming the ills of the society with top-down government diktats. I am now looking forward to watch Naya Daur.
2. The fascinating story of an exchange economy (based on cigarettes as currency) popping-up spontaneously in a PoW jail, was both informative and entertaining. I had read references of this cigarette-based-jail-currency in quite a few policy related blog/podcasts. But now, I know the exact story that unfolded. 

Doubts:

1. On page 27 there is a statement citing Political Economy. The exact sentence being “The other problem is the political economy of India’s sedition law”. What exactly does the term political-economy mean? Does it mean political expediency? Does it mean serving one's narrow selfish gains while following the letter of the law, but breaking the spirit-of-law?
2. On page 38, there is a mention of saving forests by community initiatives in Elinor Ostrom’s work. But I just can’t understand how society can save/maintain forests without use of force. And use of lawful force can only be done with the involvement of government. So how can forest-conservation be done by society alone? I would love to get some details here.  

Feedback:

1. From page# ix to xx, the authors intended to list eight myths of public policy. But on page xvii, in the topic titled Belief7, the authors have listed the correct PoV rather than the myth. I guess the Belief7 should have been titled “There ARE good and bad policies” rather than “There’s no good and bad policies; Only better or worse outcomes”.  I guess, by mistake, the authors wrote the truth instead of the myth.
2. Confusing numbering: On page 242, the sudden mention of option 1, 2 and 3 threw me off balance. It took an extra reading of page 240 and 241 to figure out the three options. The options (and their numbering) have been written implicitly. I would have preferred a more explicit numbering/indication at the places where the options are described.  

Disagreements:

1. On page 42 and 57, education and healthcare have been positioned as government responsibility. I disagree with this line of thought. Despite the huge positive externalities created by educated and healthy citizens, I do NOT consider individual healthcare and education as a government’s tax funded responsibility. I have detailed thoughts on this at  https://oshantomon.blogspot.com/2023/12/education-healthcare-and-free-markets.html?m=1  .
2. In Chapter-24, the authors attempted to explain two contradictory thoughts about India’s approach to secularism. It seems the authors wished to treat both approaches in a non-partisan manner. But I suspect that Nehruvian-secularism angle received slightly more preferential treatment. Many people think that India, wrongly, deviated to a path of appeasing-pseudo secularism under Nehru after independence. I would have liked some more text about this appeasement-critical PoV as well.  

Net net, reading this book was a joy, the couple of difference of opinions notwithstanding. I strongly recommend this book.  

 

Understanding Money

Why is "understanding money" of interest to me:

• I have a lot of curiosity about something as important as money.
• I want to understand the concepts about cryptocurrency. My gut-feel is that crypto-currency is more 'ethical' than fiat currency issued by the government. But gut-feel is all I have, no deeper knowledge. I understand a little about the technology (concepts of distributed-ledger, proof-of-work, etc). But I understand almost nothing about the philosophy of money.
• I have a gut feel that the governments around the world are lying to their citizens. They ban cryptocurrencies under the pretext of criminal usage of these cryptocurrencies. But that is just a pretext. The real reason is that by allowing cryptocurrency they will forego their power to hide inefficiencies (and/or corruption) by printing money out of thin air. They do not want to let go of that power.

One of the effective ways to understand something is to write about it. Hence this attempt to note down what I understand and what I DONT understand about money. 

I understand:

• Destroying cash currency (by burning, or tearing it down) is a help to the government (the currency issuer). Satyanveshi Byomkesh Bakshi burnt bundles of cash in Aadim Ripu. Why does the government punish currency-destroyers then? Possibly in mock anger. Nobody in their right mind will destroy money(instead of buying stuff). And if people do destroy some currency-notes, the government treasury should be very happy about it as they got rid of liability.
• Underlying trust in "currency issuers capability to deliver stuffs" against currency matters. Mr Jana (Jana-da in Bengali sambodhan) ran a stationery supply shop during my engineering years at Shibpur Bengal Engineering College. If Jana-da did not have change, he used to issue a handwritten paper piece with his signature/stamp and the amount outstanding written in his handwriting. Jana-da's notes were honoured widely because you could always get notebooks, pens, and stationery from his store which we students always needed. Students sometimes settled their transactions among themselves using Jana-da-notes. If I had issued handwritten notes, nobody would have bothered to accept it. I had no credibility in delivering 'stuffs' as opposed to Jana-da.
• Printing extra currency notes by the government amounts to stealing real stuff/wealth from the owners. Stuff/wealth owners are coerced (through legal force) into honouring the printed currency.

I don't understand clearly:

• Assume there is an ideal phone network in a country where everyone has a cellphone and they have a UPI system which never fails. In such a scenario, does the government need to print any currency at all? Or inject currency in non paper electronic format in some way? For the sake of transaction, surely printing is not required because every transaction can happen through UPI, i.e. direct bank to bank. Is there any other need for the government to 'inject' money in such a system? If yes, what is that reason? 
• If the answer is yes to above question, how shall the government do that? Somebody's account needs to be loaded with extra money. Whose account shall the government choose?
• When the government prints/creates money, how does it send it into circulation? Paying government employee's salary? Repaying debt to creditors with the newly printed-out-of-thin-air money?
• If the wealth of a nation rises (because of its citizen's labour) shall there be a proportional increase in the amount of money (fiat currency) going around?
• If wealth rises, say with industrial revolution, without a proportionate increase in money supply, deflation may occur where price of goods and services reduces. Deflation is considered bad. How exactly? And if deflation is bad, bitcoin is a bad currency as well. Because bitcoin's fixed supply of 21-million is not going to increase in proportion to the wealth increase of the world. Is this understanding correct?
• If I ignore legality and focus only on ethics/morality, is the government printing extra currency and a forger printing paper money, equally immoral vis-a-vis stealing real stuff from producers?
• Why do some Americans (like Elon/Vivek) worry about their ever-increasing national debt? Is it just their morality? Or is there any repercussion they may face in their future? With the dollar being the world's reserve currency (due to military threats or otherwise), the US can simply print cash and steal from all the nations in the world.
• What was great about having a gold standard for money? After all, gold's worth is also an assumption of humanity. Gold, by itself, has very little use in everyday life. Gold is not rice.
• Need confirmation: Bitcoin-mining is a different phenomenon from Bitcoin-usage. If I plan to use Bitcoin for buying/selling stuffs, I need not bother about knowing the details of Bitcoin-mining (as long as mining restrictions remain in place to maintain currency-scarcity).
• Need confirmation: In medieval times, Cowrie shells were effective currency in Bengal even though cowries were possibly abundant, lying on seashores, in Maldives. In Bengal, cowries were still effective because it took significant effort for any Bengali to gather a ship, sail to the Maldives and get the cowries back. This difficulty was necessary and created the condition for currency-scarcity. The increasing difficulty of crypto-mining is designed to mimic the difficulty similar to that involved in "sailing-from-Bengal-to-Maldives-for-cowries".
• Many libertarians consider Central-Bank-Digital-Currency (CBDC) a bad thing. I do not understand why. Vis-a-vis money privacy, why is CBDC any worse than UPI transactions in India? I have seen advertisements to the contrary vis-a-vis privacy/anonymity. It says that e₹ based wallets enable anonymous transfer. I am assuming that e₹ is CBDC for India.

References that may help:

• CBDC privacy: https://maxdesalle.com/mastering-zcash/
• When the government prints/creates money, how does it send it into circulation: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-cantillion-effect
• https://x.com/SPilaye/status/2074138952353591575?s=20
• https://x.com/SPilaye/status/2074135996128489702?s=20
• https://clearthinkingonhealthcare.com/2022/07/26/the-theory-of-money-part-1/
• https://thebitcoingambit.substack.com/p/chapter-5-money-mechanics-and-the