Your columnist, and you might not have known this about him, is an economics professor by day. I teach courses on economics, statistics and finance to students in Pune in order to earn my daily bread and butter.
Now, I’m painfully aware of the fact that most people who are reading this column will probably approach classes in economics with the same amount of enthusiasm as they do a colonoscopy, and my students are drawn from the same population. The first class of every new semester is filled with students who wouldn’t look out of place in a train headed for a particularly remote gulag in Siberia.
But these woe-is-me expressions change fairly rapidly into one of wonder, amazement and eager curiosity, and it usually takes about fifteen minutes or so for the change to take effect. Now, I would love to at this point do a little formal bow and take credit for this magical transformation, but the undersigned is nothing if not brutally honest. This transition from despair to hope has nothing at all to do with my magical abilities to teach, and everything to do with a simple website: gapminder.org/world
If you clicked on that particular link, I thank you in all sincerity for choosing to come back here, and if you haven’t clicked on that link just yet, I beg you to avoid temptation until you are done reading this column, for that website is just the most magical resource ever for understanding what makes our world look the way it does.
Gapminder is a heady concoction, consisting of equal parts of data, visual depiction, thoroughness and genius, allowing anybody with a browser and an internet connection to understand the world in a way that simply would not have been possible before it existed. I am not, I assure you, given to hyperbole – once you visit the link above and take a look for yourself, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Gapminder has, for years on end, helped me make economics relevant for practically anybody who studies it, and I remain deeply grateful for its continued existence -and that, ladies and gentlemen, in the raison d’etre of today’s blog post.
The person most responsible for bringing Gapminder into the world, Professor Hans Rosling, passed away recently after a battle with pancreatic cancer. I never had the honour of meeting Professor Rosling in person, but I have used Gapminder numerous times, and shared TED talks given by Professor Rosling with as many people as possible. He was a warm, passionate, innately likeable speaker who did his utmost to help people see the world as he saw it: as a place that was getting consistently better over time, and was likely to continue to do so for many years to come.
He was, in other words, an all too rare combination of capability, perseverance and optimism, topped up with a generous dash of cheerful passion. I assure you, I am not exaggerating.
When I read about Professor Rosling having passed away, I was overcome with sadness, and not just because I feel such a sense of gratitude for all that he has done over the years. It was also because it was clear to anybody who has seen his talks that Professor Rosling was a fundamentally good, cheerful human being – and that species is, I assure you, going the way of the dodo. And that kind of loss, of a good, kind, man who had done all that he had is especially hard to bear.
But there can be no better way of paying tribute to him than to popularize the website that he worked so hard to create. And so do please visit gapminder.org, and share it far and wide on social media – it would, I’m sure, have made him very happy.
Rest in peace, Professor; and thank you so much.
He doesn't expect the paradox to be resolved in his lifetime
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