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!