With 750 million people living in villages, India has the largest rural population in the world. Based on his Indian experience, Dr Kalam recommends a sustainable and inclusive development system called PURA—Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas—to uplift the rural masses not by subsidies but through entrepreneurship with community participation. To make his case, Dr Kalam cites the examples of individuals and institutions, in India and from across the world, who, with an entrepreneurial spirit and a burning desire to make a difference, have successfully generated and tapped into the potential of the rural masses.
Fabio Luiz de Oliveira Rosa changed the face of the rural district of Palmares, Brazil, by acquiring for the farmers access to electricity and water, which effect combined with better agricultural methods led to an increase in prosperity and stemmed the migration to the cities
The 123-strong Magar clan owned Magarpatta, a 430-acre plot on the outskirts of Pune, Maharashtra. In the 1990s, they organized and set up the Magarpatta city which is now home to over 35,000 residents and a working population of 65,000, and boasts of an IT park.
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance and bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.
Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles—and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.
Vikram Chandra has been a computer programmer for almost as long
as he has been a novelist. In this extraordinary book he returns to his
early days as a writer, when he was beginning Red Earth and Pouring
Rain, and looks at the connections between these two worlds of art
and technology. Coders are obsessed with elegance and style just as
writers are but do the words mean the same thing to both? And is it a
coincidence that Chandra is drawn to two seemingly opposing ways of
thinking? To answer his questions, Chandra delves into the writings of
Abhinavagupta, the tenth- and eleventh-century Kashmiri thinker, and
creates an idiosyncratic history of coding. Part literary theory, part tech
story and part memoir, Mirrored Mind is a book of sweeping ideas. It is a
heady and utterly original work.
Unleashing Nepal tells the story of Nepal’s changing economy, from the time of unification to a remittance economy driven by the labour of Nepal’s diaspora. Acclaimed columnist and business leader Sujeev Shakya examines not only the squandered opportunities of the past but also what Nepali citizens need to do to escape from a feudal history of dependence and powerlessness. Here is a Nepal that could be an Asian Tiger. Here are resourceful village communities who manage their own electricity, aspirational Nepali youth, energetic migrant workers, and driven foreign-aid workers, who can make this dream a reality. Compelling and eminently readable, this updated and enriched version brings the country alive with its acute business understanding, humour and local colour.
On 1 July 2017, Goods and Services Tax (GST) became a reality. The government hailed it as the biggest tax reform of independent India which would herald a new freedom for the nation and unify it with ‘One Nation One Tax’. Some of the claims made by the government were that GST would bring about ease of doing business; increase tax collection; lower inflation; increase GDP growth by 1-2 per cent; and check the black economy.
More than a year later, we have more questions than answers.
Why did the economy slow down?
Is the government likely to collect more taxes?
Why have prices continued to rise?
Why has Malaysia withdrawn GST?
Turns out that problems with GST are both transitional and structural. To correct for these there have been a few hundred notifications and orders from the government which have added to the confusion.
In this book, well-known economist Arun Kumar explains the reality behind GST. Known for not pulling any punches, the author explains why GST is a double-edged sword for the common man, why it will increase inequality across sectors and regions, why it will hurt small businesses-everything the government does not want you to know.
From schools of excellence to brilliant improvement in the board examinations and state-of-the-art facilities, government schools in Delhi rock. The implementation of innovative concepts like ‘happiness curriculum’ and ‘entrepreneurship mindset programme’ in Delhi government schools has brought about revolutionary change in the public school education system in the national capital of India.
Manish Sisodia, Delhi’s deputy chief minister and education minister, is the visionary instrumental in ushering in such a transformation. Recounting his experiences and experiments as an education minister, this book offers blow-by-blow account of this amazing success story. Shiksha, a book of hope and possibilities, will inspire everyone who is poised to make a difference in society through education.
India Unbound is the riveting story of a nation’s rise from poverty to prosperity and the clash of ideas that occurred along the way. Gurcharan Das examines the highs and lows of independent India through the prism of history, his own experiences and those of numerous others he has met-from young people in sleepy UP villages to chiefs of software companies in Bangalore. Defining and exploring the new mindset of the nation, India Unbound is the perfect introduction to contemporary India.
The first-ever English translation of the living legend ‘Artist’ Namboodiri’s memoir, Sketches features his eloquent line drawings interspersed with vivid portrayals of the people and places-both ordinary and significant-that he grew up with. Opening a window into the esoteric and forgotten world of twentieth-century rural Kerala, Namboodiri describes how certain family homes and community spaces were the centre of creativity, cultural exchange and mutual regard. With a sprinkling of light humour, he writes about a self-proclaimed doctor who sought out patients, the most famous temple festival that he could not witness, a neighbourhood elephant’s encounter with a deaf man, among other amusing vignettes. Through the chronicles of his time at art school, his job as an illustrator for a leading Malayalam magazine, his novel experience of making a film with an actor who didn’t want to be paid, Namboodiri offers an exclusive glimpse of the world of art and literature. Among other renowned names, K.C.S. Panicker and Vaikom Muhammad Basheer make an appearance.
Vast in sweep, endlessly engaging and infused with Namboodiri’s charming wit, Sketches is a visual and literary delight.
Returning to his long-time home in Japan after a sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office, watching the maples begin to blaze, engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. As he does so, he starts to unfold a meditation on changelessness that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and he and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away.
After his first year in Japan, almost thirty years ago, Iyer gave us a springtime romance for the ages, The Lady and the Monk; now, half a lifetime later, he shows us a more seasoned place-and observer-looking for what lasts in a life that feels ever more fragile.
Pico Iyer-one of the most compelling and profoundly provocative travel writers-invites us to accompany him on an array of exotic explorations, from L.A. to Yemen to Haiti and Ethiopia, from a Bolivian prison to a hidden monastery in Tibet. He goes to Cambodia, where the main tourist attraction is a collection of skulls from the Khmer Rouge killing fields, and travels through southern Arabia in the weeks before 11 September 2001. He practices meditation with Leonard Cohen and discusses geopolitics with the Dalai Lama, travels to Easter Island and through the imaginative terrains of W.G. Sebald and Kazuo Ishiguro, weaving physical and psychological challenges together into a seamless narrative.
Throughout his travels, the familiar thrill of adventure is haunted by the unsettling questions that arise for Iyer everywhere he goes: How do we reconcile suffering with the sunlight often found around it? How does the foreign instruct the traveler, precisely by discomfiting him? And, how does travel take us more deeply into reality, both within us and without? Intensely affecting, Iyer’s explorations are a road map of thinking in new ways about our changing world.
