500 pages a day make a billionaire.

Warren Buffet, the third richest man in the world, according to the Forbes list of billionaires, and known as the Oracle of Omaha, was once asked by someone as to how to become as smart as he is. Buffet apparently held up a stack of papers and said," Read 500 pages like this everyday. That's how knowledge builds up, like compound interest." Presumably he meant reading annual reports of companies, forward guidance by the Federal Reserve or new laws passed by the Congress, and not Fifty Shades of Grey. But most people would find such literature mind-numbingly dull because they would not understand what was written. Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity because he was relaxing under an apple tree but ' lost a bundle ' on the South Sea bubble of 1720. The progress of human society is based on specialisation. English surnames, which are common today, were derived from the professions of people in the past. A blacksmith or a carpenter would not have been able to read but without them to build carriages trade would have come to a standstill. Warren Buffet also said," What we learn from history is that people don't learn from history." It is the responsibility of historians and journalists to teach us about our history and Constitution and warn us of mistakes made in the past but what we get is a lot of noise, based on the political bias of who you listen to. The sweeping victory of the Aam Aadmi Party in the recent assembly elections in Delhi is a typical example. They won by promising a whole list of freebies which can only be achieved by destroying Delhi's budget or a huge increase in taxes. From the disintegration of the Soviet Union to the double digit inflation of the Congress handouts it has been proven without any doubt that socialism increases poverty but not one journalist warned the people of Delhi. Instead there was euphoria that the Hindu-loving Modi has been defeated. We may say that most people are not very intelligent or educated but most politicians are and yet they continue with the same stupid policies, guaranteed to fail. The invasion of Iraq led to the growth of Al Qaeda and has now given rise to the dreaded Islamic State but they made it much worse by attacking Libya. Having resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands they were not satisfied. They engineered an armed coup in Ukraine which has led to the death of at least 5,000 people and displacement of many thousands more. They celebrate the victory in World War II but not the lessons from it. There has been much howling about freedom of speech in India recently but freedom of speech does not mean freedom to deceive. Perhaps there should be a Hippocratic oath for journalists too.