A series of high-profile acquisitions, including Jaguar Land Rover and Corus Steel, together with the launch of the Nano (the world’s first Rs. 1 Lakh/ below US$ 2500 car), is set to change our perception of India’: on the threshold of becoming a truly global brand.*s oldest and most respected corporate brand. With a major international presence, in a variety of areas including steel, tea, chemicals, communications and software, Tata now stands 65th in the world brand valuation league. But what is the Tata brand all about? What are its values? How do people perceive it, in India and around the world? In this absorbing and informed book Morgen Witzel digs into the heart of the Tata enterprise, describes its origins, how Tata’s reputation and image evolved, and how the group has worked to transform that image into a powerful and valuable brand. Tata: The Evolution of a Corporate Brand goes to the core of the Tata ethos to explore the unique relationship between the Tata group and the Indian people, a relationship that goes beyond the achievements of a successful business to its social contributions for its employees and the society at large. Finally it asks how that reputation will be perceived and understood as Tata moves into global markets. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a manager, a marketer, or an interested Tata loyalist this book will help you understand the durability of the brand and inspire you with the values it holds onto in the global economy.
Catagory: Non Fiction
non fiction main category
Arranged Love
The Green Rose
To be a lesbian is to be different.
It’s to be like the green rose amongst the red.
Growing in the posh confines of south Delhi, the beautiful and accomplished Charu is a coveted match. However, all the matchmaking seems to fail when no dream marriage with a ‘foreign-posted’ groom seems to materialize—much to the amazement of speculating, fat Punjabi aunties of her neighbourhood and of her middle-class Bengali parents. Only Charu knows the reason. A reason which till now she’s hidden from everyone, even herself—that she’s a lesbian.
But one lesson in love from the lady in the neighbourhood, and Charu knows there is no turning back on the truth. Not even when she wishes things were different, for her parents’ sake.
A story of unmet desires and passion, The Green Rose explores the pains of coming out of the closet gay experience.
Womanwriting=manreading?
‘[Devika] brings to the reader the delight of reading a book rich in concepts and sources’ Contributions to Indian SociologyThe Malayalam literary public is one of the most vibrant in India, and thrives on the long history of widespread literacy in the state of Kerala. It is well described as the ‘beating heart’ of Kerala’s publiclife. Historically, it has been the space in which entrenched power structures encountered their earliest challenges. Not surprisingly, then, critiques of patriarchy in twentieth-century Kerala were first heard and continued to be raised there, even when they had become muffled in wider public discussion.Womanwriting = Manreading? is a provocative take on some of the raging debates in Malayalam literature, which surely resonate elsewhere. But it also raises the important question: can we tell the story of women’s anti-patriarchal writing in Malayalam in a way that highlights the force and drama of their confrontations with the male-dominated literary establishment?
Time Present And Time Past
‘An exceptionally well-written book’ Ian Talbot
In over three decades as a police officer, Kirpal Dhillon handled some of the most challenging assignments in independent India, from anti-dacoity operations in Madhya Pradesh to revamping a demoralized force as police chief of Punjab in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star. These memoirs describe his experiences in fascinating detail, and present vivid portraits of a range of people, including sadhus and swindlers, maharajas and brigands, scheming politicians and back-stabbing colleagues.
There are evocative descriptions of his village in Punjab, of Partition, and of the leaders he worked with, such as Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai. He writes with insight and expertise about terrorism, law-and-order problems, the training of administrators and policemen, and what can be done to ensure that they function with greater autonomy, accountability and humanity.
The Ex Files
Ex-Files is the story of a woman, who despite her best efforts to save her marriage, finds herself facing a divorce petition. But instead of wallowing in self-pity, Vandana picked up the pieces of her shattered life and moved straight on. She not only finds a job and becomes self-sufficient, she also starts India’s first divorce support group, and deals inappropriate and hurtful remarks with grace and equanimity.
While being true to both the pain and challenges of divorce, Vandana’s personal stories reveal the hardships and joys of moving through emotional upheaval and emerging stronger with her positive thinking and humour intact. The book also deals with the legal and social aspects of a divorce which are so often overlooked while women are dealing with the emotional upheaval of divorce.
At once funny, tragic and uncompromisingly honest, this memoir will resonate with anyone who has endured the end of a marriage and come out changed.
Punjabi Parmesan
In 2009, after several years in China, journalist Pallavi Aiyar moved to Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, to discover a Europe plagued by a financial crisis, and unsure of its place in a world where new Asian challengers are eroding its old and comfortable certainties. With a lively mix of memoir, reportage and analysis, Aiyar takes the reader on a romp across the continent as she meets workaholic Indian diamond merchants in Antwerp, upstart Chinese wine barons in Bordeaux, Sikh farmhands in the Italian countryside, and Indian engineers running offshore energy turbines in Belgium. In the Europe of today everything is in a flux, as she discovers through conversations with Muslim immigrants struggling to define their identities, the austere bosses of Germany’s worldbeating companies, and bewildered Eurocrats struggling to save the EU from splitting apart. Examining the diverse challenges the continent faces today-among them, bloated welfare states, the accommodation of Islam, the European ambitions of Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs, and the fissures that threaten to break up this union of diverse nations-Punjabi Parmesan takes a panoramic look at Europe’s firstworld crisis from a unique India-China perspective.
Inside Chhattisgarh
A rare portrait of Chhattisgarh, its people and its development
For thirty years, until his conviction in 2010 by the High Court, pediatrician Binayak Sen and his sociologist wife Ilina worked among people in Chhattisgarh’s tribal heartland. They came here seeking fresh ideas for change-and stayed on.
This fascinating memoir illuminates their journey and how their world imploded. Ilina vividly describes their years at the trade union CMSS, led by the iconic Shankar Guha Niyogi, where Binayak and three doctors started a hospital, and she organized workers’ education, joined the feisty women mineworkers’ struggles, and discovered the rich local history and cultural and farming traditions. These experiences later found expression in Rupantar, their own NGO, and when the new state’s government sought their advice for its women’s policy and for Mitanan, a precursor of the National Rural Health Mission.
Candid and deeply felt, the book celebrates Chhattisgarh but also laments the lost opportunity for its inclusive and violence-free development.
Partition
The dark legacies of partition have cast a long shadow on the lives of people of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The borders that were drawn in 1947, and redrawn in 1971, divided not only nations and histories but also families and friends.
The essays in this volume explore new ground in Partition research, looking into areas such as art, literature, migration, and notions of ‘foreignness’ and ‘belonging’. It brings focus to hitherto unaddressed areas of partition such as the northeast and Ladakh.
An Unfinished Agenda
From his birth in a village in Andhra to founding and running Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, now one of India’s largest pharmaceutical enterprises, Dr K. Anji Reddy’s journey makes for an inspiring story. That story is told rivetingly in his own words in his memoir, An Unfinished Agenda.
Dr Anji Reddy became an entrepreneur at a time when India was woefully short of technology to manufacture many basic medicines. Then, in barely three decades, the Indian pharmaceutical industry had grown to the point that India not only became self-sufficient in medicine, but also a supplier of affordable generic medicines to the world. Dr Anji Reddy provides a ringside view of this remarkable transformation, with fascinating anecdotes about those who made it happen.
The history of modern medicine is a gripping story of triumphs and failures. An Unfinished Agenda takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the science of medicine over the last hundred years and reminds us of the stark challenges that remain.