Reflections

Book Review : The Wisdom of Ants A Short History Of Economics By Shankar Jaganathan The Wisdom of Ants makes an ambitious attempt : tracing the roots and development of Economics and Economic Thought right from its origins in the mists of time, going back all the way to Chanakya and Aristotle. While this may seem appealing only to the academician, it is in reality a riveting account, full of learnings and deep insights, as well as thought-provoking facts and arguments. The book traces the entire history in a relatively short 300-odd pages with consummate skill, making for a fast read, yet packed with powerful content. From The Beginnings To 1776 The beginning is with an examination of the politico-economic thoughts of ancient thinkers in trade, commerce – like Chanakya, Aristotle and Lord Shang. This is the only section that has a jarring aspect; given that the rest of the book is beyond reproach, let me first document the only negative I could find. In trac...

Gurugram! Yet again, another day, another point for controversy. This most recent event has again attracted comments, thankfully muted; while one side sees it as justified, the other side sees it as excessive, or needless, or incorrect. Good point is that the response is muted – though it could be that the event is also small in scale. But you can notice the comments and observations by the nay-sayers, who for once I don’t agree with. Indeed, some see a Hindutva agenda in this; while others find the downmarket, some others worry about Business. How can a name create dissonance is what I would like to know, for starters. Arent we seeing too much when we say this? How can a name of a city impact business its prospects? One article even carried a comment from a Westerner that this name will defeat them! Do we do business with city names, or on business fundamentals? Some people stated “ Gurgaon had acquired a global and high-end cache despite being a "vernacular" name...

STORM THE NORM UNTOLD STORIES OF 20 BRANDS THAT DID IT BEST By Anisha Motwani BACKGROUND TO THE REVIEW This book is yet another milestone in Indian writing on our internal marketing and business success stories; for way too long we have been fed Western success stories in our marketing books and cases, virtually 100% of which have little direct applicability in India and consequently learnings from them. There is precious little literature on our own stories, of which we have examples aplenty. The complete lack of quality research on and writing on Indian cases is a major lacuna we face; one that is now being slowly bridged. I recall reading only 3 books so far – one a book on Positioning giving Indian case studies, another a more recent book by Anuradha Goyal on Ecommerce companies, and this – the third one. And sadly, not one of these is available on book stores prominently; while I can spot an entire series of books by Western authors, Harvard and what no...

The most common misconception is that The Indian Independence Struggle started with The Mahatma, or with The Lokamanya, or indeed with Gopal Krishn Gokhale; a rising stream of thought credits Netaji, with another stream adamant on crediting The Mahatma; nothing could be more simplistic; and nothing could a more incomplete picture of the true story . The events leading upto and of 1857 were integrally connected with the Independence Struggle in the latter period of 1900-1947, and deserve equal credit. Furthermore, crediting any one single event or source is also not advisable. Such an attempt assumes history to be a standstill pond – rather than the river it is in reality. Let us look at the full picture in a relative short panoramic and simplified view, focussing on key factors that will hopefully place the entire scenario in front of everyone’s eyes FACT NO 1 : THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS   {Let us first settle this, as it is at the center of the current debate}...