*Books' use in Essays

Book Author Central Idea

Sapiens Yuval Noah

Harari Why Humans evolved to be the smartest ones? Evolution of man.
Becoz man can communicate, cooperate and live in large
numbers. The real strength of man lies in his collectiveness. 1 v 1
encounter with any big animal, human stands no change.
With coordination and cooperation plus collective intelligence
and ways to communicate, we can tackle any other species with
ease.
Language is a very important factor for this dominance.
Humans live on emotions more than rationality.
African Savannah mindset vs modern life in the age of robots and AI

Kadvi Hawa Movie | UN Raised the issue of Climate Change and its on ground effects and how
supported farmers perish in this times of despair.

Do we care? India’s Sujata Rao Raises serious flaws in the health system of India.
Health System Former Health She says “Now it is the opportune time to ‘Politicise Health’ in India”
 Secretary of “Political leadership should now opt for zero-tolerance policy for laxity in healthcare.”
#AES2019 India

I Am Malala Malala Yousafzai About Terrorism | Women Empowerment | Education for Girls

Homo Deus Yuval Noah Threat of AI and all technology | “useless class of citizens”
Harari Is ‘free-will’ really free? Whatever we feel are driven by the hormones and
chemicals inside our body. If using biotech someone can manipulate them,
they can very well control our ‘free-will’.
Terminator (Skynet) Man thinks in stories, not on facts or figures — thus giving them a ‘grand
stories’ to believe will help to manipulate their free will. This is what
politicians do.
Machines voting on our behalf in elections will make a much better system
than present, because a machine analysis things on facts — of last 4-5 years,
not just the emotions and ’stories’ created just before the elections.

21 Lessons for 21st Yuval Noah How we should use technology with restraint. How technology and new
Century Harari thought are changing the concept of liberty, democracy, religions.

Protect humans, not jobs. Make them skilful.

There is just one civilisation in the world — Humanity
Global problems need global solutions.
Big Data is watching you. (1984)
Never underestimate human stupidity. (War)
Our sense of justice might be out of race.
 You know less than you think. (Ignorance)
Change is the only constant. (Education)

The People Vs. Jamie Bartlett How technology and internet is killing the democracy.
Tech
World is now essentially a global village — without a genuine head. |
Headed by the IT guys.
Driverless Democracy
2016 Trump’s Election campaign || Targeted ads and promises
Big Data + ML + AI = exploring new ways to play with the
‘emotions’ of the gullible people.
Crypto-Anarchy — in the age of cryptocurrencies | no accountability

Factfulness Hans Rosling

World is much better than we think it is. Global level of poverty,
homelessness, crime is going down statistically.
This is THE MOST SAFE period of human history where more
people are dying of lifestyle diseases than in war or epidemics.
We humans have come up a long way and we should acknowledge
and appreciate this collective endeavour.
Our biases towards paying more attention to bad news. “Daily 1000s
of airplanes land safely and on time, but that doesn’t become a news, when one in a
million flight goes missing or crashes, it becomes a breaking news.” News
 channels are supposed to portray all the BAD things in the world.
10 Reasons why we are wrong about the world — and why
things are better than you think.
The story of “the secret silent miracle of
human progress.”

The Burden of Pratap Bhanu Reminds us what a bold experiment was to bring democracy to a largely
Democracy Mehta illiterate and unpropertied India. Sphere of politics has truly created
opportunities for the people who participate in the society.
At the same time he also raises flags where this whole idea of democracy has
now lost its way and is under threat wrt ideas of majoritarianism, persistent
social inequality etc.

The Tipping Point Malcolm How little things can make a BIG differences. Butterfly effect.
Gladwell

Outliers Malcolm The Story of Success | Why some people achieve success while other don’t despite of
Gladwell similar conditions? | There are many ’not so visible’ factors which play a major role.

The 10,000-hours rule

Bill Gates right time to born in this world
We often ignores the little things that matter even though they had played a major
role in determining the outcome — success or otherwise
The Rise and Fall Ruchir Sharma
of Nations Rules of change in the post-crisis (2008) world.
Good Billionaire v/s Bad Billionaire
Bad times make good policies. Never let a crisis go waste.
How natural factors — climate, geographic location can play a major
role in determining the success of any nation — provided that we have
the right set of leaders and will of people to capitalise the advantage.
Debt is not a problem for any nation, sharp rate of rise in debt is the
problem.
Technocrats are tricky. Use them with caution.
How government meddling can be good, but only if done in limit.
Excessive meddling can and is counter-productive.
Too small a government is also a cause of worry. State will go
haywire.

An Uncertain Amartya Sen India and its contradictions.

Glory
Education is most important — Japan was a shell — Meiji Restoration
focussed a lot on education and transformed the destiny of Japan
Instead of finding a ‘New India’, contribute in making one.
Privatise public healthcare, but only after strengthening it first.
India is booming — but for whom? | Social-inequality | Minority rights?
“There has been major failures both to foster participatory growth
 and to make good use of public resources to enhance the general level
of living.”
This book not just pictures a gloomy picture of Indian society rugged
by social inequality, deprivations, but also argues for the possibility and
plausibility of change through democratic practice.

Why Nations Fail James Robinson How throughout human history, nations/societies reached prosperity and
why others haven’t?

Creative Disruption | Eng vs. France — Printing press case

Critical Junctures | Black Death (Plague) of England — 1348 — how
it transformed the social setup. Sort of Natural Selection.
Institution are THE MOST important determining factors of success.
Sound Political Institutions are muse for a sound Economical
Institutions. Polity drives Economics and economics provides a positive
feedback to politics.
So close and yet so far || City of Nogales in US and Mexico border,
on both side, startling differences becoz of institutions || China-
Tajikistan border differences in agriculture level
European colonised is responsible in a big way why many of the
present day economies are in such despair — Africa, South America,
South Asia
1688 Glorious Revolution — how it wrote the destiny of Britain as
biggest colonial power. Creative Disruptions → Industrial
 Revolution → Expansion

I do what I do Dr. Raghuram

Rajan Banking Reforms in India | AQR
MPC — the need and success of it
How systemic failures led to the massive TBS and NPA problems?
Why we need to privatise more and more banks?
Why we need few, but strong banks — infra needs ($4.5 trillion) |
shock absorber.
Why we need diversified and targeted banking — payment banks,
banking correspondents — Take banking to the people, not banks.
Inflation control should be THE most important target of any central
bank.
We need to deepen and diversify our securities market | give more
options for investment | Masala bonds are important.
Trust your lenders and borrowers | trust your citizens
Bring in the behavioural change towards the whole idea of debt. Debt
and credit is not bad, inefficient management of them, is.

Predictably Dan Ariely The hidden forces which shapes our decisions
Irrational How the whole idea of ‘man is a rational animal’ is wrong. There are
numerous times where we can and we do make irrational decisions, going
with the flow.
 Companies and Service Providers (Google, FB, Insta, The Economists etc)
have capitalised over this fundamental flaw with us humans. With the use of
big data and technology they can really predict our ‘irrational’ decisions.
They carve out their pricing scheme, marketing strategies to manipulate our
though process.

Pax Indica Shashi Tharoor

Focus on India’s diplomacy and foreign policy.
Tharoor argues that we now need to look to the new millennium.
He calls for restructuring out ’soft-power’ status and proposes thoughts
for the new ‘grand-strategy’ for the nation.

The Land of Sanjeev Sanyal

Seven Rivers A elaborated and fascinating work at Indian history and civilisation.
How India’s history & culture was shaped by its Geography, Geology.
How cities and civilisations flourished alongside rivers and how the
river changes resulted in change in civilisation — Saraswati “the lost
river”.

1984 George Orwell One of the definitive texts of modern dystopian literature.
(1949)
Powerful warning against totalitarian regimes and extreme political
“Enemy of the ideologies
State” “Big Brother” is watching you.
“2+2 = 5 — dogma, spread by the government through
propaganda”.
Memory Hole — any mechanism of
destroying/disappearance/alteration of the embarrassing documents,
photographs, transcript to give an impression that something never
happened
Room 101 — Torture camp where party attempts to subject a
prisoner to his worst nightmare or fear or phobia etc
There is nothing called ‘Free Lunch’.

Train to Pakistan Kushwant Singh Horrors of Partition and the miseries experienced by people on both side of
the border.
Tells about how a peace loving village Mano Majra at the Indo-Pak border
transformed into a battlefield, as the trains from Pakistan come full with
dead bodies of Sikhs.

The Origin of Charles Darwin Natural Selection and Survival of the fittest (Herbert Spencer)
Species

The Path Ahead Amitabh Kant Transformative ideas for India

(Niti Aayog)
Health, Education, Finance etc all are covered
Bureaucratic reforms (lateral entry) also
 Innovation

The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins One of the most revolutionary book about science and biological evolution.
Evolution of life through the prism of a gene’s eye view of life.
It established the Darwins’ Natural Selection into a conceptual framework
with far-reaching implications for our understanding of evolution.

Origins Lewis Dartnell

How the geology, geography of Earth played a role in writing human
history?
Author takes on a ride through hundreds of millions years of Earth
history.
How voting patterns in parts of the USA and Britain are the result of
geology.
How climate changes and mass extinction events are connected.
Why does Democracy originated in Greece — Alps mountains
Caution over how in last 200 years we humans are dangerously
playing with the Earth, repercussions of which are beyond our control
and imagination.