A MASTERPLAN FOR INDIA - REVIEW OF NILEKANI AND SHAH'S "REBOOTING INDIA"

I remember reading Nandan Nilekani's Imagining India (2010) a few years ago with feverish excitement. Here at last was a sane voice amongst a welter of socialist noises - talking about how technology can be used to aid free markets and to cure India's ills. But Imagining India was essentially a proposal with no hard evidence to back it up. Can technology actually accomplish all that Nilekani promised it would? I was skeptical.

In Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations (2015), Nandan Nilekani and Viral Shah show the proof of concept of just how technology can go a long way in aiding governance. One of the goals that the authors focus on (among a basket of varied goals) and which I will describe below is reducing graft and streamlining subsidies.

A TREK THOUGH PHYSICS - REVIEW OF HAWKING AND MLODINOW'S "THE GRAND DESIGN"

About a year ago, I tried reading Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos (2004). While it started off well, it soon seemed quite a tedious read. Of course, Greene is recognized the world over as a master expositor of science, so I accept I am solely to blame if I couldn't enjoy the book. I was rather distressed that I was unable to digest a book that was at the cutting edge of physics.

Then I read somewhere that Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life (2011) was as profound as Greene's book though much shorter. When I chanced upon this book in my University library I felt that I had been granted a second chance. And this book, boy, could I digest!

TEN YEARS FROM NOW - REVIEW OF ALEC ROSS'S "INDUSTRIES OF THE FUTURE"

In his book Industries of the Future: How the Next 10 Years of Innovation will Transform Our Lives at Work and Home (2016), innovation expert Alec Ross provides a future vision not just of the industries but of the entire digital age.

Ross takes a look at the industries which will dominate a decade from now - robotics, advanced life sciences, the "code-fication of money", cybersecurity and big data. He believes that all these data-driven industries will play a major role in the evolving Information Revolution.

SCIENCE AND BRAHMAN - REVIEW OF MANI BHAUMIK'S "CODE NAME GOD"

I am glad I read this book. Mani Bhaumik's Code Name God: The Spiritual Odyssey of a Man of Science (2005) has an astonishing central thesis: Modern day physics has aligned itself startlingly close to a position that is identified in the Vedas as Brahman - the One Source that created the universe and pervades all through it. Let me summarize his arguments.

THE FUTURE OF JOBS - REVIEW OF MARTIN FORD'S "THE RISE OF THE ROBOTS"

This is possibly the scariest non-fiction book I've ever read. Martin Ford's The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment (2015) won the FT-McKinsey & Company Business Book of the Year 2015 Award (until 2013 called the FT-Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award). It talks of how businesses are automating jobs right, left and centre causing unemployment in the millions.

SURVIVING THE FUTURE - REVIEW OF ROBERT T KIYOSAKI'S "SECOND CHANCE"

In Second Chance: For Your Money, Your Life and Our World (2015), Robert T Kiyosaki of Rich Dad, Poor Dad (1997) fame takes a look at how the world has changed after the 2008 crisis.

Kiyosaki reiterates what he has consistently stated in all of his other books: the rich do not work for money, they work to build assets that yield cash flows that endure whether they continue to work or not. In Rich Dad, Poor Dad , Kiyosaki had made some controversial claims: "Your house is not an asset" and "Savers are losers". These claims got validated when the housing market collapsed in the US in the Great Recession and the Fed responded by slashing interest rates to zero.

THE OTHER FACE OF WINSTON CHURCHILL - REVIEW OF MADHUSHREE MUKERJEE'S "CHURCHILL'S SECRET WAR"

Winston Churchill is hailed as one of the greatest statesmen of the last century. A fiery and inspiring orator and a vehement hater of Nazism, he lead his country to victory in World War II. While Churchill's disdain for India and Indians is well known, it will come as a shock to many that he was largely responsible for the death of close to three million Indians in the 1940s. This unknown side of Churchill and his colleagues is brilliantly brought out in journalist Madhushree Mukerjee's Churchill's Secret War (2010).