Thursday, April 9, 2009

Three tales to tango-Outliers- Tiger -Ideas

Well, we have just passed three months in the year 2009 and now the spring has come once again. Many are thinking how the “Green shoots of spring are all very appealing but will they really spread and grow into a solid recovery?” (Spring fever). 

I had good time to read books that was published in 2008. Two are from Indian authors one went to win The Man Booker Prize. 

Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century by Nandan M. Nilekani, and 

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga 

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell 

All three are well written with consciences.   

Nandan’s book is well searched and thought out book especially I enjoyed his lucid coverage of language issues in India

For me the Adiga book is a great history of Indian Economic Thought as he rightly emphasised the brutalism of the great Indian Socialist darkness India and emergence of lights. As Freakonomics author STEPHEN J. DUBNER says if your read White Tiger “you learn a great deal about modern India”. 

Gladwell’s book is a full of insights with paradise of imagination. It thrills me like when I traveled first time in plane from New Delhi to Srinagar for an international conference. 

DAVID BROOKS said in his review in NYT “It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. A common story among entrepreneurs is that people told them they were too stupid to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.

It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew. 

Gladwell’s social determinism is a useful corrective to the Homo economicus view of human nature.”

All three has a significant common focus on ‘entrepreneurship’ which is a industry born with human intuition or ethics. 

I will shortly post my reviews. But first I wanted to post a serious of posts on The White Tiger as he has covered a great amount of The Great Indian Socialist Darkness.

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