Books of the Week - Saturday, 26 March, 2022

The Maverick Effect
by - Harish Mehta

About the Book
Harish Mehta, in this exceptionally written book, provides his unique insights on the tireless efforts it took to set up NASSCOM, which played a pivotal role in enhancing the IT sector's global brand image and in helping create the great Indian middle class. I particularly liked how he quotes 'nothing is possible without men, but nothing lasts without institutions' and uses it as an allegory to talk about NASSCOM.
In this engrossing book, Harish Mehta deftly interleaves his personal memoirs with the rise of India's software industry. Most importantly, he presents the untold tale of NASSCOM, where fierce competitors worked collaboratively together to shape the future of an industry that created millions of jobs, solved the foreign exchange crisis and put Indian enterprise and technology on the world stage.
About the Author
Harish S. Mehta is the founding member and the first Chairman of NASSCOM and brought the TiE network to India in the late-90s. He is also the Founder and Executive Chairman of Onward Technologies Ltd. and the co-founder of Infinity venture fund, 2001, India's first corporatized venture fund.
*********************************************************************
********************************************************************
Our mail order service ships books in India and Overseas
Email: sales@ebd.in, Phone: +91 135 2655192

Books of the Week - Saturday, 19th March, 2022

JNU: Nationalism and India’s Uncivil War
by - Makarand R. Paranjape

About the Book
9 February 2016: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) erupted with ‘anti-national’ slogans. Arrests of student leaders, the shutdown of the university, a lecture series on ‘What the Nation Needs to Know’, a student’s disappearance, another’s suicide and a number of even more disruptive protests ensued. JNU: Nationalism and India’s Uncivil War, by a long-standing JNU professor, is a ringside account of what happened. Delicately and incisively crafted, it is an empathetic insider’s account of JNU’s problems from an expert in the field of higher education. Through this book, the author makes an impassioned plea to transform rather than destroy JNU, as also reform higher education. But more than that, this book is also a history of our times, of India’s ongoing transformation, the story of the changing selfapprehension of a nation. Examining the multiple meanings of nationalism in our time, Paranjape delves deeply into what it means to be an Indian today. He gives his perception and understanding of the new India that is fast emerging as India enters its 75th year of Independence.

About the Author
During JNU’s ‘tukde tukde’ phase, Makarand R. Paranjape, professor of English, was one of the few who stood up to the ‘anti-national’ lobby. Formerly director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, Makarand was educated at St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he got his master’s and PhD in English. Author/editor of over 50 books, in addition to hundreds of academic papers and articles, he is also a well-known poet and public intellectual. His latest books include Swami Vivekananda: Hinduism and India’s Road to Modernity (2020), New Perspectives in Indian Science and Civilization (2020), and The Death & Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi (2015). Makarand has been professor of English in JNU since 1999.
************************************************************************
************************************************************************
Our mail order service ships books in India and Overseas
Email: sales@ebd.in, Phone: +91 135 2655192

BOOKS OF THE WEEK - 12Th MARCH, 2022

Planning Democracy: 
How a Professor, an Institute, and an Idea Shaped India
by - Nikhil Menon

About the Book
India's Five-Year Plans were one of the developing world's most ambitious experiments. After nearly two centuries of colonial rule, planning the economy was meant to be independent of India's route from poverty to prosperity. Planning Democracy explores how India married liberal democracy to a socialist economy. Planning not only built India's data systems, it even shaped the nature of its democracy. The Five-Year Plans loomed so large that they linked surprisingly far-flung contexts-from computers to Bollywood to Hindutva.
In this compelling history, Nikhil Menon brings the world of planning to life through the intriguing story of a gifted scientist known as the Professor, a trail-blazing research institute in Calcutta, and the alluring idea of 'democratic planning'. Set amidst global conflicts and international debates, Menon reveals how India walked a tightrope between capitalism and communism. Planning Democracy recasts our understanding of the Indian republic, uncovering how planning came to define the nation and revealing the ways in which it continues to shape our world today

About the Author
Nikhil Menon is assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. He grew up in Chennai and studied at Delhi University as well as Jawaharlal Nehru University. His PhD in history is from Princeton University. He lives in South Bend, Indiana.
------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----
------*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----
www.ebdbooks.com
Our mail order service ships books in India and Overseas
Email: sales@ebd.in, Phone: +91 135 2655192

Books of the Week - Saturday, 06th March, 2022

The Commissioner For Lost Causes
by - Arun Shourie

About the Book
The work done by Arun Shourie and his colleagues rocked institutions and governments: the freeing of 40,000 undertrials; revealing the Bhagalpur blindings; purchasing Kamla; dislodging a 'Sultan'; foiling 'strikes'; controverting Judges; battling privilege motions; courting contempt of court charges; nailing corruption, forgeries, lies, and the opportunism of rulers; uncovering suppressed reports... What lay behind these and the consequences that followed?
A comprehensive account of dramatic incidents like getting governments to swallow legislation against the press, unseating of chief ministers, a prime minister unspooling himself even as manoeuvres to unseat him are scotched, a deputy prime minister trying to dislodge colleagues with fabricated documents, people's movements ending up as rivulets in the sand, The Commissioner for Lost Causes discusses Shourie's innings, the calumny hurled at him, his dismissal, and his being recalled and removed again.
Delicious tales of characters from the noble to the colourful to the short-sighted to outright bounders: from JP, to a president, to prime ministers, a deputy prime minister, chief ministers, a conman, indignant editors, and of course a great warrior, the press baron, feature in this honest retelling of the life of Arun Shourie, the writer, former editor and minister who was acclaimed as one of the fifty 'World Press Freedom Heroes'.

About the Author
Scholar, author, former editor and minister, Arun Shourie has, for the last four decades, been one of the most prominent voices in our country's public affairs and discourse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.ebdbooks.com
Our mail order service ships books in India and Overseas
Email: sales@ebd.in, Phone: +91 135 2655192