THE PRIMACY OF ECONOMICS - REVIEW OF LIONEL SHRIVER'S "THE MANDIBLES"

Some novels bring out the truth better than most nonfiction books do. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (1957), for instance, showed how a nation could collapse if the correct economic policies were not followed. I read it 25 years ago as an engineering undergraduate and I was so profoundly impacted by it that I became a capitalist for life. This was the book that readily came to my mind when I read Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047 (2016) recently.

CAPITALISM REBOOTED - REVIEW OF MACKEY AND SISODIA'S "CONSCIOUS CAPITALISM"

In 1970, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman wrote an essay in the New York Times entitled "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits". In this article Friedman criticized businessmen who make employees, communities and the environment their concern. He said, "Businessmen that take seriously their responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution...are preaching pure and unadulterated socialism."

THE EMERGING TRIAD - REVIEW OF RAGHAV BAHL'S "SUPERECONOMIES"

Raghav Bahl, founder of the media company Network18 which he headed until 2014, has written an interesting book entitled SuperEconomies: America, India, China & the Future of the World (2015). The twentieth century after the Second World War was a story of two Superpowers: USA and USSR. After the collapse of the USSR, the USA remained the sole Superpower throughout the 1990s. But with the dawn of the twenty-first century we have been ushered into the realm of SuperEconomies where America has to make room for the BRICS nations (especially China and India) not as "political or military challengers but as economic and diplomatic 'frenemies'". This is the book's central thesis.