Who do we laugh at and who do we laugh with? Avay Shukla, an ‘unserious’ writer, has a clear vision of what has been going off-track in India in the past decade. And he says it all with clarity and a biting humour. Here is an excerpt from his book PolyTicks, DeMoKrazy & Mumbo Jumbo: Babus, Mantris and Netas (Un)Making Our Nation.
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I belong to a generation that was weaned on the Reader’s Di- gest feature “Laughter, the best medicine”, MAD comics, PUNCH magazine, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Groucho Marx and quotations from a mysterious “Confucius” (“a man who be both a fool and an arsehole is an ignoranus”) who bears no resemblance to the original sage. Armed with the understanding of human character acquired from these astute observers I have gone through life realising that humour is the ultimate gift of expression that relieves, criticises, elevates, weeps, embraces. But most important, it always teaches, whether it be by the understatement, the mimicry, the pun, the satire, the suggestio falsi, the paraprosdokian or even the humble limerick. There is no more effective (but civilised) commentary on the times, and no more perceptive (but amiable) assessment of individuals. Societies and civilisations which espouse humour are tolerant. sensitive to public opinion, unbigoted and open-minded. By the same definition, those which seek to curb humour, either by legal fiat or street violence, are just the opposite, destined either for fascism or anarchy.
PolyTicks, DeMoKrazy & Mumbo Jumbo||Avay Shukla
India today seems to be headed in this latter direction. Powerful groups – both state and non-state actors, to use a preferred phrase – who brook no criticism, and mis-guided bleeding hearts or seekers of the two minute fame appear to have launched a war against all forms of humour in this country under the specious banner of “political correctness.” It began with Sashi Tharoor’s “cattle class” comment: in the ensuing din it is still not clear who was more offended – the champions of the poor who did not like the poor being “bovined”, as it were; or the Hindutva brigade who resented the disparaging reference to the cow.
Then came the arrest in Mumbai of the cartoonist Aseem Trivedi who dared to publish a caricatured version of the Ashoka Pillar, in order to show how our polity had been debased, distorted and corrupted over time. Cases were slapped against him for sedition and under the provisions of the Information Technology Act and Prevention of Insult to National Honours Act. One could be forgiven for thinking that he is a member of ISIS! Some time later a once-glamorous member of Parliament complained in the House how lawmakers were being made fun of in the media, and demand- ed steps to curb this tendency – she received a bi-partisan support that has not been seen since. Thereafter the Information and Broad- casting Ministry wrote to all TV channels not to make light of the Prime Minister’s sombre image, and to show more respect for his position. Last year this intolerance continued as criminal cases were registered against the entire team of AIB (All India Bakchod) and the presenters for staging the “Roast” show. There was even a demand to rope in some of the more prominent members of the audience. And this when everybody who watched the show had a rollicking good time and no one had complained!
And things are getting worse. Just yesterday a comedian, Kiku Sharda (a regular on the Kapil Sharma show) was arrested and sent to jail for mimicking – hold your breath – Baba Ram Rahim Insan of Sachha Sauda fame! The charge? (Hold your breath again) – hurting the religious feelings of his followers! (Sec. 295A of the IPC). It’s bad enough when this antiquated law is applied to any of the 33 crore Gods in the Hindu pantheon; now it is being used to protect even so called God men. Asa Ram’s lawyers must be watching these developments keenly – maybe the same argument can be used to spring him from jail.
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Avay Shukla is a much-needed contemporary voice. His book tackles difficult topics with nuance and an acerbic sharpness.
The decade leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic witnessed the rise of platform business models as they drove stock market gains and extended their influence across economic and political activity. The pandemic has accelerated these platforms further.
Platform Scalefor a Post-Pandemic World by Sangeet Paul Choudary explains the inner workings of platform business models and their ability to scale rapidly. Here is an excerpt from the book that illustrates the same.
Scene One: The Pandemic
In August 2020, Apple became the first company to reach a $2 trillion market cap. That same month, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos became the first man to reach a personal net worth of $200 billion.
Even as most companies struggle to cope with the realities of a post- pandemic world, the platform firms—Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook—have performed exceptionally well. Relatively smaller firms like Netflix and Shopify have also generated significant shareholder value.
The impact of platform firms during the pandemic has extended far beyond gains in the stock market alone. Google and Apple have joined forces to launch the Google–Apple contact tracing (GACT) platform, which uses application programming interfaces (APIs), Bluetooth technology and operating system (OS) level changes to assist in contact tracing.
While most supply chains reeled under the effect of the pandemic, Amazon and Alibaba came to the rescue. Even as the US–China trade war heats up, Alibaba’s Electronic World Trade Platform initiative is working with countries like Rwanda, Malaysia and Belgium to create a new infrastructure for global trade.
China’s platform economy leaders—Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent— have also been developing AI-driven solutions for COVID-19 diagnosis, vaccine development, contact tracing and risk assessment. Alibaba’s epidemic prediction solution model is trained on public data gathered from across China and predicts the trajectory of a coronavirus outbreak in a specific region with 98 per cent prediction accuracy. Meanwhile, the Alibaba Cloud hosts a virus genome sequencing application to diagnose new COVID-19 cases and has opened up its computing resources to research groups working on vaccine development around the world.
The pandemic has also highlighted the role of platforms as arbiters of discourse. Amazon took down books that it determined carried medical disinformation from its marketplace. Facebook, Twitter, Medium, Reddit and Pinterest have performed similar judge-jury- executioner roles, limiting search results for certain terms or entirely removing content deemed as misinformation.
Platform regulation was on the rise over the second half of the 2010s, and 2020 was supposed to be the year when Big Government would seize power away from Big Tech. Instead, what we’re seeing is quite the opposite.
The pandemic has accelerated the very grounds on which Big Tech was supposed to be regulated. Data access, privacy and usage laws are being revisited to counter the pandemic through contact tracing and other surveillance mechanisms.
As a final testament to the pervasiveness of the platform economy, platforms have started taking over governmental functions during the pandemic. This sounds dramatic but isn’t without precedent. During times of crisis, private firms often step in and take over activities which governments fail to perform. Platforms, as market mediators, are even more likely to take on such roles. Amazon’s directive to stop accepting non-essential products from third-party sellers who use its warehouses is an example of a private firm stepping in as a market regulator.
The pandemic has reinforced the importance of the platform economy. In the 2020s, we will see the platform economy gain further strength as the post-pandemic world uncovers new value pools for platforms to exploit.
Scene Two: The Post-Pandemic World
As we emerge into a post-pandemic world, we are already beginning to see the first signs of massive value migration.
More broadly, the post-pandemic world will see shifts in power across value chain actors. Platform scale and the ability to aggregate large and engaged user bases in order to attract other actors around your business will play a pivotal role. As an example, consider the rise in demand for online streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video during lockdown. These two brands may not use an open ecosystem of producers as other platforms do, but they benefit from many of the same drivers of platform scale that we explore subsequently in this book.
One might argue that things will return to normal post-lockdown. But it’s quite likely that they won’t. This seemingly transient shift in demand-side behaviour is driving a shift in negotiation power in the value chain.
With the pandemic-induced closure of major theatre chains, studios are breaking what’s known in the industry as the ‘window’— the three-month period between when a movie hits the big screen and when it’s offered for rentals or streaming. This window protects theatre revenues.
But with the pandemic, studios have been launching their films directly on streaming channels, eroding the window. Universal, with Trolls World Tour, announced that it will make movies available at home on the same day as their global theatrical release. In response, AMC Studios barred Universal from ever launching a movie in their theatres. Meanwhile, with AMC Theatres struggling, Amazon was looking to acquire its assets as of June 2020, further driving the consolidation we see during such periods of value migration.
In India, Amazon secured rights to premiere Bollywood movies, originally scheduled for a theatrical release, directly on Prime Video. Pre-pandemic, Amazon was getting into online sales of movie tickets to gain bargaining power over movie theatres and possibly negotiate the release window. With the pandemic, this balance is likely to further tilt in Amazon’s favour.
The post-pandemic world will also see new revenue models emerge. China’s Huanxi Media partnered with Douyin, a streaming platform by ByteDance, to launch its movies and TV shows direct to streaming on a new business model involving a combination of a licensing deal and a share of the advertising revenues. As studios like Huanxi Media test the success of releases on streaming platforms, they will likely use that data to negotiate with theatres post-lockdown. Theatres won’t go away, but their bargaining power may decrease. The combination of demand migration and a shift in bargaining power will likely create a permanent shift in power towards Amazon and Netflix. The longer the pandemic- induced changes last, and the greater the number of hit films and shows released direct to streaming, the more likely such a shift becomes.
The pandemic has induced a similar shift in the food retail value chain. With many countries moving into lockdown during the pandemic, there’s been a significant shift towards e-commerce in food retail. This is further reinforced by the disruption of food supply chains, a supply- side effect. A combination of these demand-side and supply-side effects has driven value towards online grocery platforms that can best harness these shifts. Demand has been increasingly centralized, with a few large online grocery platforms that can use centralized demand data to better predict demand patterns, improve stocking of fulfilment centres and better inform their supply chains. Post-pandemic, supply chain inspections and quality control requirements are likely to increase, and this will again favour larger players. This combination of demand- and supply-side effects will strengthen large grocery platforms.
In the post-pandemic world, we will increasingly see aggregation of demand with a few large players. With centralized and aggregated demand as a control point, large platform firms will be able to effectively orchestrate the entire ecosystem to deliver value to consumers and will be best positioned to harness value in these new value pools. As this book illustrates, leveraging technology—often commoditized—to orchestrate connected users towards new and efficient value-creating interactions holds the key to the business models of the future.
Platform Scale for a Post-Pandemic World serves as a maker’s manual, helping executives design and build platforms, and provides a lens to analyse the shifts currently underway and their implications for future platform-scale businesses.
The world today is facing a looming crisis in leadership. Ruchira Chaudhary’s book Coaching: The Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership makes the crucial distinction between controlling from a position of power and coaching from one, which often make the all the difference between success and failure. Here is an excerpt:
‘You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal . . . You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line.’
A visibly emotional Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist, berated and excoriated world leaders for their inertia over the climate crisis. Her speech at the United Nations summit became symbolic of her generation’s demand for a better world. She has constantly provoked world leadership, demanding ‘how dare’ they not do more for the environment and for the future generations.
Would we—the current leadership of the business world— have to be similarly answerable to our younger colleagues one day for leaving the corporate world bereft of good leadership?
There is a massive leadership shortage in the world today even though there is enough talent, according to leadership gurus James Kouzes and Barry Posner. There are potential leaders out there who have a lot of talent. People who are eager, passionate and keen to succeed. And yet, we find ourselves in the midst of a leadership crisis when looking to steer the organizations (and nations) of tomorrow.
By 2025, 75 per cent of the workforce will comprise of millennials. Yet organizations around the world do not feel they have an ample leadership pipeline for current and future needs. About 86 per cent of the respondents to the latest World Economic Forum Survey (WEF) corroborate the view that we are indeed experiencing a leadership crisis. Companies believe they do not have enough leadership bench strength and the demographic shifts are creating more demand for exemplary leadership than the supply.
They go on to ask that if the need for leaders is so high—why aren’t we developing enough leaders? Why is the pipeline so bare, despite the knowledge that having the right leadership is critical to thriving and surviving in the future?
What holds true with the environment can also hold true for business.
Building sustainable leadership for the future is complex and unfortunately not enough of a priority, yet it is critical to the vitality of future businesses. As with the environment, the choice to act rests with us. We can bridge the leadership gap by nurturing and coaching our teams and our emerging leaders now, creating a much stronger pipeline of future leaders, ready to hold the rudder of the economy, when the time comes.
According to leadership scholar Jack Zenger’s research on the topic—this shortfall is fuelled by inadequate preparation. Potential leaders are simply not ready to lead others and most leaders are not getting adequate training. Not surprising, considering that the average age of a manager who goes through any leadership programme was forty-two!5
Just as you would not seek medical treatment from an untrained physician or allow an untrained mechanic to fix your new car—why would you let untrained, unprepared leaders steer your organization?
Why then aren’t we building enough leaders especially in light of such alarming statistics? Why aren’t organizations, educational establishments and governments spending more time, effort, energy and resources in developing this next line of leaders?
That’s because our approach to building leaders isn’t working!
Organizations (societies and nations) are often run according to ‘the superchicken model’, where the value is placed on star employees who outperform others. The model refers to ‘interactions among chickens’ observed in a study by Purdue University evolutionary biologist, William Muir, and explained later in this section.
As we saw in the case of Dr Big, Sachin and Travis—we are instantly drawn to our best performers, our stars, and there is a natural assumption that these superstars will morph into superstar leaders.
We’ve assumed that success is achieved by picking the superstars, the brightest men, or occasionally women, in the room, and giving them all the resources and all the power. The reality however can be very different says Margaret Heffernan.
The idea that top performers can be selected for desirable characteristics has a long pedigree. Charles Darwin, himself, relied upon animal breeding practices to explain how nature plays the same role as the farmer. During Darwin’s time in the mid-19th century, it was widely assumed that creating a better society was a matter of selecting the most able individuals.
This was the basis of an experiment conducted in the 1990s by Dr William M. Muir, professor of animal sciences at Purdue University. The purpose of the experiment was to increase the egg-laying productivity of hens. The most productive hen from each flock was selected to breed the next generation of hens, and so on and so forth, inevitably resulting in a flock of high-productivity chickens. In this model, scientists at Purdue University set out to build a flock of successful chickens by selectively breeding the best of the flock.
According to a Forbes article, ‘Muir left the chickens alone for six generations, expecting to see the super chicken flock turn into a breed of productivity thoroughbreds. But that’s not exactly what he found. The first group—the average chickens—were the same as before . . .’ These were plump, well feathered, healthy and actually producing more eggs than they were at the start of the experiment. ‘The super chickens, on the other hand, weren’t exactly fat and happy. All but three were dead. The individual superstars had pecked their kin to death.’
What should have amounted to a breed of ‘superchickens’ ended up producing a strain of hyper-aggressive hens that incessantly attacked each other.
Muir’s chicken experiment has become legendary among social scientists because it’s a kind of a parable—window into human behaviour and the way we work, and maybe also a lesson on how we could do better. It is not a surprise that these superflocks seem like an apt comparison to organizations of today. As Margaret Heffernan shares in her TED Talk, ‘Forget the Pecking Order at Work’, superchickens in the workplace can cause super problems.
…The superchicken model tells us many things about teamwork, collaboration and, most importantly, that being a star performer or being naturally gifted at your craft is sometimes not enough. These performers need to be nurtured and their craft honed if we want them to lead with the same panache and excellence.
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Coaching: The Secret Code to Uncommon Leadership is a must-read for leaders, aspiring leaders and especially those that wish to transition from being just good leaders to extraordinary ones.
With the Union Budget under discussion, it is a good time to visit some essential reads that examine the socioeconomic landscape of the country. Here is a list of critical reads to keep things in perspective this Budget season:
Economics Without Tears||Ashok Sanjay Guha
Economics without Tears
by Ashok Sanjay Guha
If you are a layman wondering what economics is all about or a freshman student of the subject, this is a book you cannot afford to miss. Starting from the first principles and stripped of mathematics and almost all jargon, it introduces you to all the basic concepts of economic theory as well as to some of its more surprising depths.
Economics pervades every aspect of our lives and our world. This book shows how anyone can acquire an understanding of its key principles while finding the exercise not only an exciting intellectual adventure but also great fun.
Day to Day Economics||Satish Y. Deodha
Day to Day Economics
by Satish Y. Deodhar
The economy isn’t just for the economists to debate on. All of us are affected by its ups and downs—global recession, rise in interest rates, or hike in food prices. But do we understand the principles at work and how and why they really affect us? Day to Day Economics is an enjoyable, accessible, and extremely user-friendly book that explains the modern day Indian economy to the layperson. In this relevant book, Professor Deodhar explains the role of the government and its involvement in different aspects of the economy; the need for the RBI and its functions; and how taxes, stock markets, and recessions work. Day to Day Economics will help you go beyond the facts and figures in the budget and connect the trends to your daily life. As with all IIMA Business Books, it comes illustrated with numerous Indian examples and case studies making this the ultimate rookie’s guide to the Indian economy.
Coffee Can Investing||Saurabh Mukherjea, Rakshit Ranjan, Pranab Uniyal
Coffee Can Investing
by Saurabh Mukherjea, Rakshit Ranjan and Pranab Uniyal
Most people invest in the usual assets: real estate, gold, mutual funds, fixed deposits and stock markets. It’s always the same four or five instruments. All they end up making is a measly 8 to 12 per cent per annum. Those who are exceptionally unfortunate get stuck in the middle of a crash and end up losing a lot of money.
What if there was another way? What if you could make not 10 not 15 but 20 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) on your investments? What if there was a way to grow your money four to five times whilst taking half the risk compared to the overall market?
Bestselling author of Gurus of Chaos and The Unusual Billionaires, Saurabh Mukherjea puts his money where his mouth is. Saurabh follows the Coffee Can approach to high-quality, low-risk investing. His firm, Ambit Capital, is one the largest wealth managers in India which invests with this approach and delivers stupendous returns. In Coffee Can Investing, Saurabh will show you how to go about low-risk investments that generate great returns.
Demonetization and the Black Economy||Arun Kumar
Demonetization and the Black Economy
by Arun Kumar
On 8 November 2016, the prime minister announced the immediate cancellation of all Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denomination notes, wiping out 86 per cent of the currency in circulation. This move, it was claimed, was made to wipe out corruption, deter the generation of black
money, weed out fake Indian currency notes and curb terrorism. India’s well-functioning economy went into a tailspin. Businesses, especially in the unorganized sectors, came to a grinding halt. India continues to grapple with the effects of this move. The black economy has not been dented; counterfeiting and terrorism continue; the credibility of the RBI, banks and currency is damaged; the accountability of the Parliament and the prime minister has been eroded; and the social divide has widened. There have been many arguments and counter-arguments from both sides, but they have missed the complete picture. Demonetization and the Black Economy lucidly explains the story of demonetization along with its effects on the economy.
Reviving Jobs||Santosh Mehrotra
Reviving Jobs
by Santosh Mehrotra
Every country in the world experiences the benefits of its demographic dividend, a period that comes but once in the life of a nation-when the share of the working-age population is larger than the non-working-age share. It has the potential to make a country progress towards higher incomes and development. But it can also become a nightmare if there aren’t enough jobs.
Since 2012, the number of youth entrants into the labour force has increased at an accelerating pace, while the number of jobs created has decreased. This situation might become graver between 2020 and 2030 as the labour force swells further. Reviving Jobs, the third volume in the Rethinking India series, offers suggestions on how India can make the best use of the remaining period of its demographic dividend-any failure to do so will cause millions to suffer in poverty for decades to come.
Leapfrogging to Pole-vaulting||RA Mashelkar and Ravi Pandit
Leapfrogging to Pole-vaulting
by RA Mashelkar and Ravi Pandit
An exhilarating manifesto for the future, this book convinces readers to make the shift from reactive leapfrogging to proactive pole-vaulting through radical transformation. The unique ‘3-4-7 framework’ demonstrates how a paralysing mass of problems can be brought down to a formidable formula, thus making every problem solvable, no matter how big and complex. The book is dotted with inspiring case studies that can instil confidence in people from across the world to put this framework into practice for assured success.
Dr Mashelkar and Mr Pandit ably show in this must-read book that-as an interplay of global issues constantly raise the bar for innovation today-there has never been a better time to use our learnings to pole-vault over those bars into a new future!
Some Sizes Fit All||Akhil Gupta
Some Sizes Fit All
by Akhil Gupta
An oft-repeated dictum every time a company fails to replicate its past successes when introducing a new product or entering a new market is that one size does not fit all. Business gurus advise that every new situation, market and environment calls for a fresh approach and requires ‘unlearning’ what one might have learnt elsewhere, even if that had met with great success. While this statement may appear to be obvious, it is often quoted out of context. The fact is that certain fundamentals of business-irrespective of line of business, geography or scale-are universally applicable. Some Sizes Fit All is an attempt to explain these fundamental pillars for any kind of business. An authentic and lucid presentation of management concepts and practices-which Akhil Gupta has tried and tested first hand through his illustrious career-this is a must-read for anyone trying to build a robust and financially sound business.
India Unbound||Gurcharan Das
India Unbound
by Gurcharan Das
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.
It is 2030. India is among the world’s top three economies. All Indians use advanced technology to either do their job or get their job done. All Indians have access to quality jobs, better healthcare and skill-based education. Technology and human beings coexist in a mutually beneficial ecosystem. This reality is possible. It is within reach. With Bridgital. In this ground-breaking book, N. Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, presents a powerful vision for the future. To the coming disruption of artificial intelligence, he proposes an ingenious solution, where India is perfectly positioned to pave a unique path from the rest of the world. Instead of accepting technology as an inevitable replacement for human labour, India can use it as an aid; instead of taking them away, AI can generate jobs.
India Grows At Night||Gurcharan Das
India Grows At Night
by Gurcharan Das
Indians wryly admit that ‘India grows at night’. But that is only half the saying: the full expression is: India grows at night . . . when the government sleeps’, suggesting that the nation may be rising despite the state. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if India also grew during the day — in other words, if public policy supported private enterprise? What India needs is a strong liberal state, but, says Das, achieving this will not be easy, because India has historically had a weak state and a strong society.
Of Counsel||Arvind Subramanian
Of Counsel
by Arvind Subramanian
For nearly four years, Arvind Subramanian stood at the centre of economic policymaking in India. Through the communication of big ideas and the publication of accessible Economic Surveys, he gained a reputation as an innovator. Through honest pronouncements that avoided spin, he became a figure of public trust. What does it entail to serve at the helm of the world’s fastest-growing economy, where decision-making affects a population of more than a billion people?
In Of Counsel: The Challenges of the Modi-Jaitley Economy, Arvind Subramanian provides an inside account of his rollercoaster journey as the chief economic advisor to the Government of India from 2014-18, succeeding Raghuram Rajan as captain of the ship. With an illustrious cast of characters, Subramanian’s part-memoir, part-analytical writings candidly reveal the numerous triumphs and challenges of policymaking at the zenith, while appraising India’s economic potential, health and future through comprehensive research and original hypotheses.
Beyond 2020||A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Yagnaswami Sundara Rajan
Beyond 2020
by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Yagnaswami Sundara Rajan
India 2020 is about to become a reality. Are we ready?
In 1998, Dr Kalam and Y.S. Rajan published the now iconic India 2020, a vision document for the new millennium that charted how India could become one of the top five economic powers in the world by 2020. Now, it is time to take stock of how much India has achieved and what lies ahead. In many ways, India’s growth story in the twenty-first century has been hamstrung by missed opportunities and slowdowns in project execution; but it has also been marked by new opportunities and emerging technologies that make faster and more inclusive growth viable. A renewed policy focus is now needed for agriculture, manufacturing, mining, the chemicals industry, health care and infrastructure to invigorate these sectors and boost economic growth, argue Kalam and Rajan. Alongside, education, job creation, emerging technologies, biodiversity, waste management, national security and the knowledge economy are some of the other vital areas that we need to build now that we have arrived beyond 2020.
Emerging India||Bimal Jalan
Emerging India
by Bimal Jalan
Bimal Jalan has closely followed the path of India’s economic policies across its changing trajectories, from before the time the economy was liberalized to the present. The pieces in Emerging India study the relationship between political and economic reforms and inclusive and incremental growth.
How to Read Amartya Sen||Lawrence Hamilton
How to Read Amartya Sen
by Lawrence Hamilton
This book offers a much-needed introduction to Amartya Sen’s extraordinary variety of ideas. Lawrence Hamilton provides an excellent, accessible guide to the full range of Sen’s writings, contextualizing his ideas and summarizing the associated debates. Hamilton reconstructs Sen’s critiques of the major philosophies of his time, assesses his now famous concern for capabilities as an alternative for thinking about poverty, inequality, gender discrimination, development, democracy and justice, and unearths some overlooked gems. Throughout, these major theoretical and philosophical achievements are subjected to rigorous scrutiny. How to Read Amartya Sen is a major work on one of the most influential economists and philosophers of the last few centuries. It will be illuminating for readers keen to understand the breadth of Sen’s vision, and an invaluable resource for scholars, policy makers and global activists.
The Indian Rennaissance||Sanjeev Sanyal
The Indian Rennaissance
by Sanjeev Sanyal
One thousand years ago, India was at the height of its power, influencing the world with its ideas and trade. Now, ten centuries later, India’s recent economic performance is once again attracting world attention as the country re-awakens not just as an economy but as a civilization.
In The Indian Renaissance: India’s Rise after a Thousand Years of Decline, Sanjeev Sanyal looks at the processes that led to ten centuries of decline. He also examines the powerful economic and social forces that are working together to transform India beyond recognition. These range from demographic shifts to rising literacy levels and, the most important revolution, the opening of minds and changed attitude towards innovation and risk-fundamental, if India is to take advantage of the twenty-first century.
In Service of the Republic||Vijay Kelkar, Ajay Shah
In Service of the Republic
by Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah
As a $3-trillion economy, India is on her way to becoming an economic superpower. Between 1991 and 2011, the period of our best growth, there was also a substantial decline in the number of people below the poverty line. Since 2011, however, there has been a marked retreat in the high growth performance of the previous two decades. What happened to the promise? Where have we faltered? How do we change course? How do we overcome the ever-present dangers of the middle-income trap, and get rich before we grow old? And one question above all else: What do we need to do to make our tryst with destiny?
As professional economists as well as former civil servants, Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah have spent most of their lives thinking about and working on these questions. The result: In Service of the Republic, a meticulously researched work that stands at the intersection of economics, political philosophy and public administration. This highly readable book lays out the art and the science of the policymaking that we need, from the high ideas to the gritty practicalities that go into building the Republic.
India’s Long Road||Vijay Joshi
India’s Long Road
by Vijay Joshi
India has been the subject of many extravagant predictions and hopes. In this powerful and wide-ranging book, distinguished economist Vijay Joshi argues that the foundations of rapid, durable and inclusive economic growth in India are distinctly shaky. He lays out a penetrating analysis of the country’s recent faltering performance, set against the backdrop of its political economy, and charts the course it should follow to achieve widely shared prosperity.
Joshi argues that for India to realize its huge potential, the relation among the state, the market and the private sector must be comprehensively realigned. Deeper liberalization is very necessary but far from sufficient. The state needs to perform much more effectively many core tasks that belong squarely in its domain. His radical reform model includes a fiscally affordable scheme to provide a regular ‘basic income’ for all citizens that would speedily abolish extreme poverty.
An authoritative work of tremendous scope and depth, India’s Long Road is essential reading for anyone who wants to know where India is today, where it is headed, and what it should do to attain its ambitious goals.
February may be the shortest month, but that doesn’t mean our list of new reads won’t be long! Here are some brand-new delights to make this month fabulous for you and the little ones:
Gopal’s Gully||Zarin Virji
Gopal’s Gully
by Zarin Virji
When Gopal’s mother dies, his uncle brings him to Mumbai to get a job because he has few prospects as a Dalit boy in a UP village. Gopal is cast into the unfamiliar world of Squatters Colony, where he has no family or friends. He gets his first job at the bicycle shop owned by the sage Chacha and rapidly makes friends with the strange and diverse people who live in the community – Chacha’s friendly daughter-in-law, the neighbourhood thug Raja, the three-legged Tiger and beautiful Ayesha. And he learns that when disaster strikes and lives fall apart, he too has a family in the gully.
Eeks Series
by Arthy Muthanna Singh & Mamta Nainy
Eeks I saw an ant||Arthy Muthanna Singh, Mamta Nainy
Eeks! I Saw an Ant!
Ants are small but that’s not all! Enter the jaw-dropping world of ants and explore some fascinating facts about one of the most hard-working critters of the insect kingdom!
Eeks I Saw a Cockroach||Arthy Muthanna Singh, Mamta Nainy
Eeks! I Saw a Cockroach!
Whether cockroaches fill you with dread or wide-eyed wonder, there’s no denying the fact that they are some of the most amazing creatures of the insect universe. So, dash right into their wonderful world, find out everything about them and be prepared to be super surprised!
Eeks I Saw a Bee||Arthy Muthanna Singh, Mamta Nainy
Eeks! I Saw a Bee!
What’s the buzz about bees? What do they do all day? Why are they important? Find out everything about bees in this buzzing book and discover the big ways in which these little insects contribute to our environment.
Eeks I Saw a Mosquito||Arthy Muthanna Singh, Mamta Nainy
Eeks! I Saw a Mosquito!
Mosquitoes are mostly known as tiny troublemakers. But there are lots of interesting facts about these delicate insects. Read this book to find out about their many species, sizes, diets, homes and-most importantly-why they bite!
The Very Glum Life of Tootoolu Toop||Stuti Agarwal
The Very Glum Life Of Tootoolu Toop
by Stuti Agarwal
‘To every witch, wizard and glum, I’m Tootoolu Toop, a ten-year-old, fully trained witch of the Oonoodiwaga tribe from the Darjeeling mountains. Like every other ordinary human who wants to live a life of magic, us witches and wizards want to experience the non-magical world too (I do for sure). For me, the ‘ordinary’ world is nothing short of an adventure. So I have left my tribe to live life as a glum.
This is my story.’
Tootoolu is on the run. From her mundane life of stirring grasshopper’s legs into potions and her underground home where her tribe has been in hiding for 569 years. Will Tootoolu find what she’s looking for-best friends, books and a chance to be who she truly is?
The Snow Leopard Adventure||Deepak Dalal
A Vikram–Aditya Story: Snow Leopard Adventure
by Deepak Dalal
Vikram and Aditya are back in magnificent Ladakh. Having finally freed their young friend Tsering from the hands of dangerous men, they’ve set themselves up for an even great challenge: to locate the the grey ghost of the Himalayas, the snow leopard. The boys join a team of ecologists and explorers in their search for this immensely rare and beautiful creature of the wild. But high up in the Himalayas, amidst daunting mountains and dark valleys, everyone has just one question on their mind: how do you study an animal you cannot find? Journey in search of the elusive Snow Leopard with an enthralling tale set in one of India’s most splendid destinations.
A Vikram–Aditya Story: Lakshadweep Adventure||Deepak Dalal
A Vikram–Aditya Story: Lakshadweep Adventure
by Deepak Dalal
Far out in the Arabian Sea, where the waters plunge many thousands of metres to the ocean floor, lie a chain of bewitching coral atolls-the Lakshadweep Islands. Vikram and Aditya dive into lagoons with crystal-clear water and reefs that are deep and shrouded in mystery. But when they stumble upon a devious kidnapping plot, their idyllic holiday turns into a desperate struggle for survival. Forced out into the sea in the eye of a raging storm, they endure a shipwreck, only to be marooned on a remote coral island. Journey through these breathtaking islands with a tale of scuba diving and sabotage, set in one of India’s most splendid destinations.
The Desolations of Devil’s Acre||Ransom Riggs
The Desolations of Devil’s Acre
by Ransom Riggs
The last thing Jacob Portman saw before the world went dark was a terrible, familiar face.
Suddenly, he and Noor are back in the place where everything began – his grandfather’s house. Jacob doesn’t know how they escaped from V’s loop to find themselves in Florida. But he does know one thing for certain: Caul has returned. After a narrow getaway from a blood-thirsty hollow, Jacob and Noor reunite with Miss Peregrine and the peculiar children in Devil’s Acre. The Acre is being plagued by desolations – weather fronts of ash and blood and bone – a terrible portent of Caul’s amassing army.
Risen from the Library of Souls and more powerful than ever, Caul and his apocalyptic agenda seem unstoppable. Only one hope remains – deliver Noor to the meeting place of the seven prophesied ones. If they can decipher its secret location. Jacob and his friends will face deadly enemies and race through history’s most dangerous loops in this thrilling page-turner, the final adventure in the beloved Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series.
How To Change Everything||Naomi Klein
How To Change Everything
by Naomi Klein
‘Young people are not just part of the climate change movement. They are
leading the way. Will you be one of them?’
Forget everything you think you know about climate change. Klein presents her urgent message about saving the environment by asking three simple questions: Where are we? How did we get here? What happens next? From the Great Barrier Reef to Hurricane Katrina to school environmental policies to Greta Thunberg – climate change impacts every aspect of the world you live in. How to Change Everything will provide readers with clear information about how our planet is changing, but also, more importantly, with inspiration, ideas, and tools for action. Because young people can help build a better future. Young people can help change everything.
The Hatmakers||Tamzin Merchant
The Hatmakers
by Tamzin Merchant
Cordelia comes from a long line of magical milliners, who weave alchemy and enchantment into every hat. In Cordelia’s world, Making – crafting items such as hats, cloaks, watches, boots and gloves from magical ingredients – is a rare and ancient skill, and only a few special Maker families remain. When Cordelia’s father Prospero and his ship, the Jolly Bonnet, are lost at sea during a mission to collect hat ingredients, Cordelia is determined to find him. But Uncle Tiberius and Aunt Ariadne have no time to help the littlest Hatmaker, for an ancient rivalry between the Maker families is threatening to surface. Worse, someone seems to be using Maker magic to start a war. It’s up to Cordelia to find out who, and why.
Darklands||Arnav Das Sharma
Darklands
by Arnav Das Sharma
India is reeling from an environmental catastrophe-water has replaced oil as the most valuable commodity and our cities have become nightmarish places infested with gangs, secretive corporations and powerful religious figures. An advanced form of technology enables the manufacture of humans in laboratories. In this dystopia, Haksh, born in a lab, does what he shouldn’t have: he falls in love with a human.
Darklands is a coming-of-age novel about violence and transgression, and above all, love: both all-consuming and redemptive. Dark and bleak, it heralds journalist Arnav Das Sharma as a major new voice in Indian YA fiction.
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Revamp those bookshelves! It’s going to be an exciting month for the young ones (and the older ones!)
In India 2030, thought leaders from twenty diverse fields, ranging from politics, economics and foreign policy to health care and energy, predict what 2030 will look like for India and how the nation will evolve in this decade. The book can be seen as a handbook for citizens, a road map for policymakers and a guide for scholars. Its collection of essays capture the many aspects of a future that will see India becoming the world’s third-largest economy and a regional power before the decade gets over.
Here’s an excerpt from the book on how technology will revolutionise the way we mete out justice in the 2020s.
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The biggest change in justice in the coming decade will be the use of technology in courts. Artificial intelligence will not only help organize cases, it will also bring references into the judgment at a speed not seen so far. Technology will ensure that those who do not have access to justice due to distance will not be excluded anymore. Appointments of judges to the higher judiciary, the high courts and the Supreme Court, will see a change in the 2020s. The collegium system has exposed its weaknesses; its critics say that the system has degenerated into cronyism and is arbitrary, with merit as a mere sideshow. Again, technology will ensure that by the end of the decade, this system is revamped and rationalized towards objective criteria. When India enters the 2030s, it will do so with a more robust, transparent and credible system.
The law and justice system operates to touch our lives in two ways. First, in the sphere of transactional events in our daily lives. Second, in the sphere of litigation: of lawyers, judges and the various fora for resolution of conflicts and disputes. Indubitably, there need be to be, and will be, drastic changes at both levels. The decade ahead will ensure these constitutional aspirations are fulfilled. Besides, citizens need to be educated generally, and in particular about their basic human rights. They need to be empowered to demand the satisfaction of these basic rights by society. They also need education on the means by which society can be compelled to accord to them the basic necessities of life. These too will expand in the 2030s.
Democracy, Constitution and Justice
These changes will not be easy to make. In a democracy based on adult franchise and wedded to the rule of law, like India, this could be a herculean task. While India has a brilliantly worded constitutional document, there are millions who are unaware of the true nature of the Constitution. There is a crying need to educate the people on their fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution and the Directive Principles of State Policy declared in Part IV, which determine the path of governance for the state.
India 2030 || Gautam Chikermane
Access to information through low-priced telecommunications infrastructure will multiply the speed with which people will be able to learn and exercise their rights. When there is holistic awareness about the rights and the means of exercising those rights, the scene will shift to the legal arena. If the rights are required to be satisfied by the state, and if the state is deficient, the rights can only be enforced by resort to legal machinery and judicial fora. As people understand their rights and access to justice improves, litigation will rise.
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Technology as a Change Agent
The extended lockdown in the wake of COVID-19 radically changed the lifestyles of all players in the field of justice— litigants, lawyers and judges—forcing them to resort to online resolution of disputes. It has also taught citizens the need for increased use of digitization. That would necessarily entail massive investment in the hardware and software required for effectively running virtual courts in the country. Though feeble attempts were made in the past for e-filing of petitions in the Supreme Court, they turned out to be mostly photo ops. Now there is an opportunity to test the verisimilitude of the words of the bard of Avon, ‘sweet are the uses of adversity’. And the Supreme Court has grabbed this opportunity with both hands and set the stage for speedy and more efficient delivery of justice in the decade ahead.
In May 2020, the Supreme Court introduced a new system of e-filing as a process tool and artificial intelligence as reference support infrastructure, both of which are characterized by efficiency, transparency and access to court- delivery services for every user. Effectively, India’s courts have ushered in a new and future-ready justice dispensation system that is not only in tune with the coming decade, but will also ensure it becomes the base for justice delivery in twenty-first- century India. The four key components of this system—24/7 filing, online communication of defects and scrutiny of matters, e-payment of court fees and digital signature for filing-related conversations—will speed up the court process. These process reforms stand on the infrastructure provided using artificial intelligence, and will play a big role in the organization of courts, categorization of matters and process automation. It will also enable extraction of information from court documents at the rate of one million words per minute and can be used by judges to decide a case. In the middle of COVID-19, these experiments in virtual courts have delivered success. Going forward, they will become the norm.
Once the use of artificial intelligence becomes a judicial standard, it will percolate and fix another problem: the continuing vacancies in judicial posts. Presently, 25–45 per cent of judicial posts remain vacant for unduly long periods, which puts a disproportionately large burden on the incumbents of other posts. This is a problem whose genesis is more in a lack of will than in a lack of resources. With appropriate artificial intelligence solutions, it will be easy to draw up a reserve list of judicial officers that can be kept updated, so that the proper person can be identified and promptly placed in the appropriate vacancy without loss of time. The 2020s will see this being implemented, and a major portion of the judicial pendency issue will be tackled effectively and resolved.
Still Life, by Anoushka Khan is an experiment with visual storytelling, using pictures and words to create a world that is both unsettling and extraordinary. Part road trip, part existential thriller ,it seeks new ways to look at love, isolation, memory and loss, asking what connects us to each other and to the natural world, and how we are governed by impulse we barely understand.
Today we have a chat with the Anoushka to understand how she worked on this masterpiece, and her inputs!
Still Life || Anoushka Khan
When did the idea for this book first come to you?
I was doing the washing up a few years ago and I suddenly thought, I’ll do a novel with paintings! I’d seen that paintings with words scrawled on had the power to move me, as did children’s picture books, and I wanted to recreate that simplicity and intensity.
What is your writer-(and illustrative) routine?
I’m lucky enough to have a home office; I shut the door, look at the artwork I’ve already made as a run-up, and then dive in. I only really get snatched hours here and there.
Was there a different element or zone you had to bring yourself to whenever you’d get down to work on this book?
The only way I can work is with my headphones on playing music—it shines a mental spotlight on the work and makes everything else disappear. I feel like music made this book, it’s far and away the biggest influence on my work.
What was the most challenging, and was the most rewarding experience of this project?
The most challenging aspect was probably my relative ineptitude with technology; I don’t know how many hours I spent trying to figure out how to lasso images in Photoshop or compress PDFs or whatnot. The most rewarding? A couple of people I know nearly cried when they read the book. I was so happy that it made a mark.
What is one thing you would, and one thing you wouldn’t recommend to anyone wanting to work on a book?
Enjoy getting lost in the process, rather than looking to the horizon. Try not to compare your work to others.
How difficult was it to illustrate such dark and complex emotions?
It’s really useful to be able to deploy words as well as images to convey mood or tone, and in some ways you can use one to balance out the other. And you can make it cinematic: focus on the character’s feet or a bowl of fruit while a particularly disturbing train of thought or difficult conversation is taking place. There is a darkness that permeates the book, but it’s from melancholy and mystery rather than bleakness—I think that would be much more difficult to sustain.
Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib was born in Agra in the closing years of the eighteenth century. A precocious child, he began composing verses at an early age and gained recognition while he was still very young. He wrote in both Urdu and Persian and was also a great prose stylist. He was a careful, even strict, editor of his work who took to publishing long before his peers.
Ghalib’s voice presents us with a double bind, a linguistic paradox. Exploring his life, works and philosophy, Ghalib is an authoritative critical biography of Ghalib and opens a window to many shades of India and the subcontinent’s cultural and literary tradition.
Here is an excerpt from the text by Mehr Afshan Farooqi:
One day, my heart like a paper kite,
Took off on freedom’s string,
And began to shy away from me,
Became so wayward, it pestered me.
Ghalib, from an early composition
To tell the truth – for to hide the truth is not the way of a man free in spirit – I am no more than half a Muslim, for I am free from the bonds of convention and religion and have liberated my soul from the fear of men’s tongues.
Ghalib, in Dastanbuy
Ghalib || Mehr Afshan Farooqi
‘Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, known as Mirza Naushah, titled Najmuddaulah Dabir ul-Mulk Asadullah Khan Bahadur Nizam Jang, with the nom de plume Ghalib for Persian, and Asad for Rekhtah (Urdu), was born on the eve of 8th of Rajab 1212 hijri (27 December 1797) in the city of Agra.’ Thus begins Maulana Altaf Husain Hali’s important biographical account, Yadgar-e-Ghalib.
Indeed, Hali’s critical, path-breaking memoir of his great ustad reconstructs the poet’s life story in a thrilling narrative woven with anecdotes, letters, personal trivia, first-hand observations and, most importantly, a penetrating analysis of Ghalib’s poetry and prose. Ghalib’s colourful personality shines in Hali’s lucid prose. It is hard to imagine how much or how little we would have known of Ghalib without Hali’s seminal work. There were Ghalib’s letters – volumes of them, a vital source of information – but the inspiration and direction that Hali’s work provided to generations of scholars remains undeniable.
In his youth, Ghalib was counted among the most handsome men in the city, be it Agra or Delhi. He was tall, with broad shoulders; his hands and feet were noticeably strong. Even in old age, when Hali first saw him, the signs of beauty were apparent on his face and demeanour. He was married on the 7th of Rajab, 1225 hijri (1810 ce) to Umrao Begam, the daughter of Navab Mirza Ilahi Bakhsh Khan Ma’ruf. Ghalib was thirteen years old at the time, and his bride eleven. Some years after his marriage, Ghalib moved to Delhi. It appears that he lived in Delhi for the next fifty years, till the end of his life. According to Altaf Husain Hali, in this long period, he never bought a house. He chose to live in rented houses; when he got tired of one house, he moved to another, but always remained in the same neighbourhood: Gali Qasim Jan, or Habsh Khan ka Phatak, or a place nearby.
Ghalib became an orphan at the impressionable age of five, when his father, Mirza Abdullah Beg Khan, was killed by a stray bullet in Rajgarh, Rajasthan, where he had gone with a force from Alwar to quell a rebellion. He was buried in Rajgarh. Raja Bakhtawar Singh of Alwar fixed a generous allowance for Ghalib and his siblings – his older sister, known as Chhoti Begam, and his younger brother, Mirza Yusuf. The children and their mother had always lived at the maternal home in Agra. In fact, Ghalib was born in the grand mansion of his maternal grandfather, Khwaja Ghulam Husain Khan Kamidan. Khwaja Ghulam Husain, a military commander (kamidan in colloquial speech) in the province of Meerut, was among the leading elite of Agra. His estate included numerous villages, and he owned many properties in the town itself. Ghalib’s mother, Izzatun Nisa Begam, was literate. Because Ghalib’s father lived with his in-laws, he was fondly known as Mirza Dulha, or Mister Bridegroom. Ghalib himself was known as Mirza Naushah, which, too, means Mister Bridegroom. Such nicknames were terms of affection used for males living with their in-laws. Presumably, Ghalib’s father died in 1801 (although Ghulam Rasul Mehr gives 1803 as the date), because we know that his paternal uncle, Mirza Nasrullah Beg Khan, died some five years later, in 1806, because of the injuries he suffered after accidentally falling off his elephant. Although Ghalib recorded his uncle’s death as an important event in his life, there is no evidence that he was close to his uncle; however, he and his siblings did become entitled to a pension because they were among Mirza Nasrullah Beg’s dependents.
Bike Ambulance Dada, the authorised biography of Padma Shri awardee Karimul Hak, is the most inspiring and heart-warming biography you will read this year. Written by Biswajit Jha, it documents the extraordinary journey of a tea-garden worker who saved thousands of lives by starting a free bike-ambulance service from his village to the nearest hospital. The book is a must-read today as it will inspire us to do and be better in our lives.
In this interview, we talk to the author to understand his personal journey with the book and it’s story.
Where did you come across Karimul Hak’s story?
After I quit my job and came back from Delhi in 2013 to work for the people of my area in the northern parts of West Bengal. I first read about Karimul Hak in a local newspaper and came to know the amazing story of this tea garden worker who carried critically ill patients to the hospital on his motorbike – free of cost.
What inspired you to share this story with the world?
In 2015 when a friend of mine told me that she personally knew Karimul Hak, I felt an urge to meet this person. One day, I, along with my friend, went to meet Karimul Hak in his village much before he received the Padma Shri and much before he became a well-known figure. But I, at once, got hooked to this simple man who does such great work for the people. What amazed me is that despite being a tea garden labourer, he does such incredible work to help his fellow villagers without thinking much about his own family.
After that I started working with him to serve the poor. I made him the brand ambassador of my school which I started in 2017.
I felt people all over the world should know the story of Karimul Hak, who is living proof that you don’t have to be an extraordinary person to do extraordinary work. You can be ordinary and still do outstanding work for people. His life is an inspiration for all of us. When a tea garden labourer with a meagre monthly salary can undertake such a path-breaking journey, we all are capable of doing wonders.
Your own father was very particular about helping others. Can you share some incidents that stuck with you?
My father, from whom I got my first lesson to serve others unconditionally, was a primary school teacher and has always led a simple and honest life. From my childhood I saw my father helping others despite the fact that he was not a rich person.
Bike Ambulance Dada||Biswajit Jha
So, the lesson about doing things for others and sacrificing your own comfort for someone less fortunate than you, I got from my father who, despite being not very well-off, did everything he could in his entire life for the betterment of society. He took on a frontal role in establishing three charitable schools in our village and also worked tirelessly to improve education in and around our village. It is due to his tireless effort that we got the first English medium school in our area. I did not have to go outside my own home to find inspiration to help others.
One incident that stuck with me the most, which I also shared in the book, is a story of a sanyasi. It was a sultry summer noon in the early nineties. Hungry and exhausted, an old sanyasi came to our doorstep. My father ushered him into the puja room. After my mother fed him, the sanyasi expressed his wish to rest inside the puja room. But the room did not have a ceiling fan as we couldn’t afford one in every room. Realizing the old man might not feel comfortable without a fan, my father got the ceiling fan uninstalled from his own room and fixed it inside the puja room so that the sanyasi could sleep well.
The second incident which I remember vividly is that every year there used to take place a fair in our village. Though thousands of people would come to the fair, in those days there was no facility for drinking water in and around the fair. People would suffer due to this. Seeing the sufferings of the people, my father started to carry water in big jars from our home to the fair and started distributing drinking water along with jaggery to the people for free. I was very small at that time but my brother and I also used to go with my father and distribute water to the people. After that he made it a routine of conducting this ‘water camp’ every year. This is another lesson I learnt from my father that whenever you see people suffering, you should come up with some sort of solutions in your capacity.
What was the book-writing experience for you? Particularly knowing you’ve always wanted to write?
I always wanted to write a book. But I did not know when that would actually happen. As I am a social entrepreneur and not a full-time author, writing a book was very challenging. Taking out time from my busy schedule was a challenge. After quitting journalism, I stopped writing for almost two years. That actually helped me. My urge for writing increased manifold during these two years.
When I had started working with Karimul Hak, I felt an urge to take this story to the people all over the world and inspire them. When you have such a mission to accomplish, no job in world seems a challenging. Rather, I enjoyed writing this story. I enjoyed knowing Karimul Hak more closely while researching for this book, talking to him and interacting with people of his close quarters. I was so engrossed with the struggles of his life that I cried several times while writing his story.
What was the biggest challenge in this project?
There were many challenges I faced while writing this book. The biggest challenge was to make Karimul sit and talk. Since he can’t sit for more than 10/15 minutes in a single place, listening to the stories of his life from him was a challenging task. Apart from that he does not remember many incidents of his life. He would keep on telling me only 5/6 stories of his life which were not enough to write a book. Getting information about Karimul’s childhood days was also a challenge. Apart from that I had to write within certain parameters while writing a biography or a real life story. But I wanted this book to be interesting to the readers also so that it does not become monotonous. So, writing a non-fiction in a fictional way was a challenge but I tried to keep that ‘tension’ alive throughout the book.
What made you switch professions, from a journalist to a social entrepreneur?
Like Karimul, I was also born and brought up in a humble family of a small village in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal. I struggled my way into becoming a national level journalist. I hardly got any support while I grew up. But I wanted that no one should face the same ordeal which I faced in my childhood.
With this thought in mind, me and my wife both quit our jobs and well-settled life in Delhi and came back to my roots in the northern parts of West Bengal which is considered to be the backward area of the state. After that we started serving the poor and helpless people. I basically wanted to be a part of the difficult but successful stories of many struggling men like Karimul.
Apart from many other social activities I am involved in right now, writing this book on this unsung hero is one of my ways of giving back to the society.
How satisfying has the change been and what changes have you experienced in yourself after this switch?
Initially, it was very challenging. To start everything all over again was very tough. I had many sleepless nights. But I kept on doing good for the others in my tough days. That, I think, helped me overcome my personal troubles. When I found that there were thousands of people who did not have basic things like food, clothes and shelter, my problems seemed much lesser compared to theirs.
While working for the others, I became a much better person. I found my true meaning of life. I felt happy within. And when you start to feel happy within, everything around you becomes beautiful. That’s why in my second book, which is a fiction and will be published after my debut book Bike Ambulance Dada, I wrote that the only way to get happiness is to serve others unconditionally.
The first ever translation of a Bhojpuri novel into English, Phoolsunghi transports readers to a forgotten world filled with mujras and mehfils, court cases and counterfeit currency, and the crashing waves of the River Saryu. Today we have a chat with the translator, Gautam Chouby to get his take on working on the book, what this means for the community, the challenges he faced and more!
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1. This is the first Bhojpuri to English translation—what does this mean for the community?
There are about 200 million Bhojpuri speakers in the world and the history of Bhojpuri literature in print in nearly 150 years old. The oral songs and the tradition of folk theatre are older still, dating, in a few instances, to the early 15th century. Yet, Bhojpuri literature has suffered neglect and anonymity. And Bhojpuri culture has been subjected to gross misinterpretation. This book—as is evident from the overwhelming response from readers, scholars and reviewers—has opened up the possibility of a fair reappraisal, connecting the language and its literature with readers everywhere. Since it cannot be adequately emphasised, I will simply say this: Bhojpuri people are thrilled.
2. What inspired you to work on this book?
Phoolsunghiisa sweet story of love, music, friendship and forgiveness thatmakes the finest traditions of Bhojpuri literature visible, in ways perhaps few other book could. It brings two of the best known Bhojpuri figure together: one is the subject of the novel, the other is its author. Besides Phoolsunghialso contests flawed discourses about the Bhojpuri world—notions which, at times, even people from within the region are reluctant to confront and address. At its very core, it is not a culture that glorifies violence and sexual misdemeanours; it is humane, sophisticated world with its own codes of honour and chivalry. It is a sweet world of melody, music and hard-working individuals.The novel brings these aspects to the fore. For example, it celebrates the miraculous rise of a courtesan in a culture that is often considered doggedly patriarchal.
Even though it was written during the days of Emergency and it depicts a colonial world in turmoil—that moves between Banaras to the west and Calcutta to the east—it celebrates gestures of reconciliation, forgiveness and assimilation. Its social alchemy allows the unlikeliest of camaraderies to flourish, in ways that might seem impossible today even in the most cosmopolitan of spaces, let alone Bihar. It is a world where courtesans, musicians, thugs, robbers, zamindars and British sahibs interact uninhibitedly, sharing life values and moral imperatives.
Phoolsunghi || Pandey Kapil
3. What were some of the challenges you faced on your journey?
I grew up speaking Bhojpuri with my mother and till a few years ago, believed that I knew the language pretty well. However, when I started reading its literature, I realised that Bhojpuri in print is somewhat different from the spoken form, as is perhaps the case with all other languages. To begin with, the visual impression of Bhojpuri words, although written in the script that I was all too familiar with, was a little disorienting; for me Devanagari and Hindi were interchangeable, and I could not fathom the script being mobilised by another language. Further, since there is no ‘standardised’ Bhojpuri, there are multiple registers within the language, causing words to have different meanings across different spaces and regions. The proverbial wisdom about language variation in India—‘kos kos pe badle pani, char kos pe bani’ (water tastes different every mile, language sounds different, every four) is true of this case, too. This pushed me to connect with Bhojpuri scholars, writers and people in my village. In a sense, a larger community of Bhojpuri enthusiasts came together for this book.
4. What was your first interaction with Bhojpuri?
I grew up in a Bhojpuri-speaking literary family: my maternal grandfather, Chandradhar Pandey, was a well-known Bhojpuri writer. Understandably, I was somewhat familiar with figures like Mahendra Misir, Bhikhari Thakur, Rameshawar Singh Kashyap, and to some extent, even Pandey Kapil. Besides, the fascinating story of Mahendra Misir and Dhelabai—filled with mujra, music, dacoity, sahibs, zamindars, crime, compassion, court-cases and a Devdas-like central character—is a local legend and a much-harvested theme, explored across three other novels. However, it was only in late 2017, having completed my Ph.D. from the English Department at Delhi University that I turned to Bhojpuri. That too at the behest of a senior colleague. A year later, when I finally Phoolsunghi, I was quite smitten by the story and moved by the sentiments it invokes, in ways I hadn’t experienced earlier; I came to realise the emotive force of feelings expressed in one’s mother tongue. After this chance discovery of a literary gem, and based on my family’s very personal relationship with Bhojpuri literature, I felt duty-bound to share it with the world at large.
5. What do you most look forward to with this book and it’s publication?
What excites me the most is the hope that with the success of this first translation, other scholars and translators would undertake similar projects, making many more literary specimens available to the larger reading public. Equally encouraging—thanks to Penguin Random House India’s unflinching support for Phoolsunghi and the extensive media coverage the book has garnered—is the possibility that other publishers, too, hereafter, are likely to show interest in Bhojpuri books. We are, in a nutshell, looking at quite an upbeat prospect for Bhojpuri literature. That, to me, is a wholesome objective, comprehensively set and partially achieved, through this book.
