Book Review: Shades of Saffron: From Vajpayee to Modi by Saba Naqvi

‘When a writer writes a book on a certain event or phenomenon; he is not just airing his opinion but judging it.’

Journalists have the privilege to access information that is often not available easily or is not completely in the public domain. This privilege of the journalists often makes them to be better at psephology not just in predicting the election results but also what the people of a country or geography are thinking or where the tide is headed to. For this ability is also very conditional. To have a clear view one needs to have little or no prejudice and should not be furthering a specific goal or agenda. Prejudiced writers often focused on certain specific issues more while ignoring a large part of the event or phenomenon to prove their theory. When a journalist turned writer has prejudices or agenda to further, it is reflected in her/his writings. Their skill and magic with the words opens the slits wide.

The criticism of any phenomenon or event along with the detailing is necessary to judge the relevance and importance of that phenomenon or the event and help the future generations to make proper amendments so that the positive values created by the phenomenon or the event is gracefully put forth while the negative values are criticized so those who pursue or follow such goals have some ideas about how to navigate or opine and none commits the same mistakes which had been committed earlier. Such criticism helps in building a better society; so the nation. So it's a very important task at the hand of the critic at her/his disposal.

Book Review: Be Social: Building Brand You Online by Karthik Srinivasan

Can social media be useful for a common man? There would be very few who will have an affirmative answer to this peculiar question (I guess). At first, it is completely a weird question for most of the people as they know social media as a way to just spend time. Not just to spend but perhaps kill the time! According to most of the people, they simply are addicted for no fruitful purpose. Still it is a kind of lifeline and keeps them engaged and relieves them from FOMO (fear of missing out). They truthfully accept. No excuses!

Although, there is almost a consensus among most of the people that social media has no real value to life and is hardly of any use! At least I believed so for sure. It can be a useful tool in one’s endeavours, was simply a question outside the syllabi before I got into the pages of this book!

Book Review: Broken Bangles: A Literary Corpus by Vaidehi Sharma

It is small story book consisting three stories namely ‘Literature Kotha’, ‘Perfume’ and ‘The House of Widows’. The first story ‘Literature Kotha’ is about a prostitute who loves to read English literature. This story has a very large canvas but the story ends perhaps earlier. However it is able reflect the mental trauma that protagonist ‘Meina Jaan’ had to undergo when she was forced in the business of prostitution by her friend ‘Zeinat’.

The second story ‘Perfume’ is story of family which is about an unspoken truth which destroyed a family as foundation of trust was shaken and in the end ‘Sudesh’ and ‘Nisha’ end up losing their son ‘Chinmay’ and ‘Priya’ her brother.

Book Review: On Entrepreneurship and Impact - Desh Deshpande

Entrepreneurship is an adventure which attracts so many but very few could actually commit themselves to it because of the uncertainty associated. There is an ocean of books on entrepreneurship by professors and many successful entrepreneurs on this subject with real life experiences and wisdom. So it is a question how this book is useful and stands in the ocean!

Desh Deshpande is a serial entrepreneur having founded many successful start-ups. In this book summarizes those experiences by keeping the needs of the entrepreneurs in mind than academics. So the language is simple and the words have been used wisely to communicate the very subject very clearly but don’t offer a ready-made solution anything but advice as how to tread the water. It explains how and why a social entrepreneur needs to ensure the engagement with the general public and local participation for creating sustainable solutions as well as sustainable organizations.