Random thoughts

There is something special about the problems that i chose to write my first computer programmes.

This was some winter vacation from the NDA, I would think. We lived in Dhakuria those days. My introduction to computer programming was from the book on BASIC by Balguruswamy.

The very first that i can remember is the one about the problem of 8 marbles.  How to find an unequal weight in 3 weighings. I just worked out the algorithm for a program that would solve it for a generic case. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H - any one being the suspect weight. I wrote the Algorithm in bits of paper stapled to each other from each place that a sub branch took off. On another day, when I had access to the computer at Jadavpur University High Tension Lab (my father’s friend being a prof there). I wrote down the whole program from my pieces of papers.

I was so engrossed writing through the day that I forgot my mom was leaving for Rajasthan in the evening. When I remembered, reached home, found it locked, caught a bus and was sprinting till i reached the Howrah station. Mom was worried, already in her seat, train ready to leave, and she unsure whether she should be travelling.

what a day - but it all ended well. thank you God.

Was going through Ramanujans life in the wikipedia.

I wonder how many Ramanujans were here in todays India - unknown, uncelebrated, probably starving.

We must find some means to discover them.

Just like we have talent search on television for music and dancing.

Dear Sree,

I was there for just one day, came by bus in the afternoon from Montreal. Stayed in a Youth Hostel close to the heart of the city called - Rideu. It was raining when I arrived, so had to drag my bag in the light drizzle for about two city blocks asking people.

The building behind is called the Parliament building, the most important tourist attraction in the city. I took a walk around it in the evening, taking pictures. There was a japanese group who had come in their bus, excited, rushing. The skyline at dusk was nice, there were quite a bit of water bodies I could see, rivers or lakes I dont know. It was quite cold. The funny thing was their senators dont see the fuss of security we do in India. They were there, in suits, talking, smoking outside and you could walk up to them if you wished. They went to their cars by themselves in the parking and drove off.

Then I was walking the city, ate something at a subway, watched people, there was a man playing the guitar at a street corner. I listened to him for a while, talked to him. I thought he was very smart, thinks fast on his feet amusing passer bys - especially women. People leave change behind in his cap on the pavement. Even I left some, not much, a little.

Then I went to check out the night spots in the town. They were all close by. A strip bar.

While smoking outside, I had a brief conversation with a single girl who had come down to the city from Manitoba. She tried to explain what she does - “copyright” I said, she was impressed I knew what she does.

It was really late when I was walking back to my hostel. We each have a key to it. So you walk in making as little noise you can, go to your room and climb into the warm blankets. I sleep right away without any more thinking because I am generally tired, having walked the whole day, having drunk some modicum of beer and the cold makes one fall asleep fast. They call it the Sleep Country.

In the morning, I was sitting outside with a young man (about 21) from Denmark. I think his name was Sven. I gave him some of my Indian cigarettes to try. He was dressed very unusually in a worn out black suit, a tie and had a thin beard. He looked like the Mormons, which I pointed out. He said - everyone says the same. He was really a distressed soul. He had come to Canada trying to trace his lost girlfriend who he had heard was in Canada. The girl had sent him an email that she would call the police if he were to meet him. He showed me a ring he was wearing that was the symbol of their love. I could see how that ring was cutting into his flesh. How painful even that sight was. I somehow talked him into taking the ring off his finger and throwing it into the grass outside. He had never taken it out and he had a tattoo of her name on his chest. I said - here is its grave, you know where it is and you may visit it if you want, it will be here. Dont go to pick it up and dont wear it on your finger again. I asked him if he was feeling better - he said he did. That event, was in a way the most significant thing I did in Canada. Although I was passionate and sagacious in how I talked to him, I told him that what I had done to him as a way of preaching was something that i needed to do myself. So in fact he was teaching me. I wish I could learn.

I knew I had little time in the city so I took off for the beautiful campus of Ottawa university close by. It was a riot of colors, the leaves of trees, orangle, rose, red, burgundy, yellow, violet what not. The multicultural student community was beautiful too. Then I found my way to a bus which took me to the termimus where I got on to another bus which was going to take me to Toronto.

Abhijit

This is an old post at Rimcollians Forum on Jan 26, 2005, being republished here.

This is about semantics, ontology. 

Yesterday I sent this mail to Dr Berkan and Prof Raskin of Hakia.com.

— 

I had an idea once which I better say, before my life
is out. I think it could be significant if I had the
means to execute it.

I started thinking of it a long while ago, inspired by
NLP (Natural Language Processing) and the stories of
the first expert systems that were attempted. Some of
them were designed to emulate how a psychiatrist
counsels and then we had the Turing test and the
unclaimed Turing award applicable to these machine
brains.

When I met the Internet, i saw an wonderful
opportunity to benefit from the huge cooperative
resources at pool, to create a machine which will not
only catch the public imagination, but could also be a
very useful thing if executed right. Even if it were
executed wrong, it would add a great deal to our
learning in the process of building it and bring us to
grips with some of the complex issues that face us in
this field.

Its called the “Web Baby”

The web baby would be a mass of code connected to a
very special database structure.

It will run on the Internet.

In the beginning it will be a clean slate, it will be
perfectly innocent. But it will have all the algorithm
in place to assimilate knowledge, just like a human
baby is when he is born. All the neural networks ready
but no information.

You will have to start with something.

Say with an elephant.

So you enter the first sentence.

“There is an elephant in the market”

The algo detects which are the nouns in the sentence.
“elephant”, “market” and checks its database if it
finds any reference (previous knowledge)

So it asks..

What is an elephant ?

You answer

An elephant is an animal.

The algo detects the “is a” relationship between
elephant and animal. The elephant is a subset of
“animal”. It links as such in the database. The
database is designed in a very special manner. Special
datastructures are dynamically allocated depending
upon the nature of the subject. It shows behavior like
a huge linked list. Ideally, the whole thing should be
executed in memory but the same can also be done on a
database.

< I wish databases were different, but there is a way
out even with these ones, modified in special ways >

Back to Web baby,

It has also found out another relationship. That an
elephant is something that can have a “in”
relationship with a market. (whatever a market is !)
This is information as well because the elephant
cannot have a “in” relationship with a “sky”, “a cat”,
“black”, as it shall eventually find out.

It shall also find out a class of objects that can
have a “in” relationship with “market” and those are
the same ones that can have an “in” relationship with
a “playground”, “forest”, “yellow submarine”. That
class has members like “elephant”, “table”, “woman”.

This is significant information because this whole
class (coincidently) does not share a “in”
relationship with “anger”, “tea”, “paper”.

These clues will add to the weights when the Web Baby
will take a decision on an input like “The table is
crying”.

Then it asks

“What is a market”

- The market is where we do all the shopping.

“Where” is a trigger word for the algo to acquire a
structure.

and “do” suggests there is a “action verb” ahead.

You get the hang I suppose..

As more and more sentences <simple supervised
sentences at first - the first one million of them>
are parsed by the “Web Baby”, it starts acquiring a
structure in its web of relationships between newly
acquired nouns and verbs.

The relationships also have a system of weights, like
a neural network has, so that confusing or erroneous
nodes are wasted away by the heavy reinforcements in
the other nodes.

“An elephant in the computer” could be an input too,
but thats overriden by others..

With such a algo in place, the Web Baby is let lose on
everything it can find to read - in literature and in
the web.

There will be tricky situations that it will face once
in a while, where it will be confused.

There, the web baby is allowed to ask a question.

“Does an elephant lay eggs?”

I find no <significant> reference in my knowledgebase
of elephant laying eggs.

[Statistical significance is that which exceeds say x%
of all related inputs]

Last input from a source with a credit rating of 6
states..

“The mother elephant ran over the newly laid eggs”

A volunteer from the web is allowed to give a
structured reply to the question which will address
the exact question in the Web Baby.

The exact question is a syntax that exposes the weak
areas in the relationships formed so far, which can be
corrected by human volunteers.

In only few days of training, the Web baby will be
ready to answer questions such as these..

What is an elephant ?

The algo knows that a What question has an answer in
plucking the “is a” relationship. But there are
several.

is a - animal
is a - mammal
is a - pachyderm.

The web baby could give out all or several of them.

There would be several other questions that he could
answer on his own, that would impress you.

Well, you get it, this requires large refinements of
course, but this could be a significant idea.

And none of this acquired knowledge would be wasted
away.

If we spared sufficient thoughts before we went on to
develop it, we could have a structure that could be
exportable and amenable to exchange. Web Baby’s could
cooperate to share information with each other. And
that is how we could meet the challenge of artificial
intelligence.

The biggest challenge is identifying what I call the
“atomicity of information”. After all what is
information, knowledge. Information is something else,
but the closest grip we have with this is in our
language. Our ancestors did a great job already in
discovering the secrets of the structure of it and
hence we have a grammer in place. We have nouns, we
have verbs and we have several other parts of speech.
So even a 4 year old knows something when we say.. The
katahook jumped over the nonigog.

He has already formed his structure and he is ready
with his first questions.

How do you like this ?

Abhijit.

From the archive
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rimcollians/message/6300

This is an old post at Rimcollians Forum on May 31, 2004, but this was nice so I fetched it to publish here.

—–

Would someone like to comment on what Lord Shiva was really like and what he symbolised. You are welcome to add to this by whatever more you know about the mythologies of Shiva.

There are so many paradoxical character traits that are inherent in him and I am definite that these werent just the whims of the mythology spinner. Every thing in the Indian mythology carries deep inner import with symbolism that not only appeals to one level of consciousness but to several planes of it as we grow and as we die. Each thing is trying to tell you something.

Look at this..

Nubile women in India visit the Shiva temples praying that they get a husband like him.

What were it, if they actually landed up with a husband like him..

Look at Shiva’s own marital life..

There is a little bit of mythology about Shiva’s courting also.

Durga - the best that paradise had to offer, came with him, saw that this guy is not attached to anything materialistic, he roams around the mountains, smokes ganja, stays in his own trip and is least mindful of his role as a husband or a father. So Durga had to go back to her father with the kids. All bright kids.. Laxmi, Saraswati, Kartik and

Ganesh.

Shiva has been a one woman man. He doesnt share any of the traits of Krishna, or any of the others who were enchanted by danseuses in paradise. There is no such allegation for Shiva and nor there is any indication of his sex life and yet he is the symbol that stands for Sex. The lingam. Isnt that strange but I am sure it has meaning.

He is also called the Ardhanaarishwar - half woman - ever figured that one?

“”He is both static and dynamic and is both creator and destroyer. He is the oldest and the youngest, he is the eternal youth as well as the infant. He is the source of fertility in all living beings. He has gentle as well as fierce forms. Shiva is the greatest of renouncers as well as the ideal lover. He destroyes evil and protects good. He bestows prosperity on worshipers although he is austere. He is omnipresent and resides in everyone as pure consciousness.”"

I am no scholar of Hinduism, but just let me touch upon the things i know about Shiva..

He is the one who is most calm.
And yet he is the one who would go into a “Tandav Lila” if his anger overpowers him, which happens at some point. This will leave a trail of death in the three worlds. There is a story that when Swami Vivekananda was a little boy and would throw a tantrum, his mother used to pour water over his head chanting Shiva, Shiva. The little boy used to calm down.

Shiva has a great heart. Very soft really.
He is the easiest to please by the slightest of offerings and sacrifice from his devotees. He cant bear it to see his devotees going through penances to please him. He immediately comes down to grant boons, which are so majestic that only he has those super powers. Ravana acquired great powers because he was one of the fondest devotees of Shiva. Shiva has asked his rituals to be amongst the simplest and they are very forgiving. If you cant do this, do this etc.

He is also known by the name of “Bholenath” - the simpleton. Does it mean he was the naive, not at all, he was simply higher, where one percieves beauty in simplicity. Satyam - Shivam - Sundaram.

Shiva lives unslovenly, amongst the chandals and the dead, covered in ash, sitting on a deer skin mat, in deep trance that has marijuana in it and he doesnt return home.

Whats so great in this guy who has traits you wouldnt want in your kid.

When all of paradise was in thick soup, they approached Shiva to rescue them. So Shiva drank up all the poison that would have killed them all. Shiva went blue but could hold the drink. Steady! man. You saved us. Thank you.

Shiva is not like any of the rest of the appointment holders in paradise, someone sits in a throne, another does tricks but whole lot of them absorbed into living. Shiva is in an entirely different level of perception.

Shiva I am told was a Yogi. The knowledge of Yoga was passed on to us by Shiva.

I am a great fan of Shiva. He is the ultimate stud and sure enough the bull (Nandi), with all its characterestics symbolises Shiva.

Dolly up to the 21st century. A scientist from the MIT, who is known as the father of Artificial Intelligence once said that there are two kinds of people. The Neat and the Scruffy. The neat are the ones who have their tie in place and everything right and they are the ones who attack clearly defined problems. On the other hand, there are the scruffies, who are shabby guys but these are the guys who attack the really hard problems, the amorphous problems, those lying in undefined areas. That scientist was a self declared scruffy. This concept has taken firm root in the computer sciences.. Google “Neat Scruffy”

I think Lord Shiva was the ultimate Scruffy.

I would also like to mention another thing. There was a TIME LIFE book in the NDA library on the lives of the greatest mathematicians. There was a well selected picture of Shannon. The man who propounded the Information theory - the mathematical basis on which we do all sorts of digital communication, your cell phone to the Internet. Shannon was lying on the bed, looking at the ceiling thinking, on his bed side table was a statuesque. It was the Nataraja.

Where in India does one find the Shaivites ? What are their beliefs like ? I think they are mainly to be found in South India and there is even a system of horizontal bands on the forehead to represent Shaiva and vertical ones for Vaishnavs (Vishnu). Vgk, are you a Shaivite ?

Another paradox.

We have this system of cycles.. Creation, Sustenance and Destruction.

Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar.

Maheshwar is Lord Shiva.

How come such a sweet guy who always does good for everybody, doesnt ask for anything from the world in return and has meditated so hard to achieve the highest levels of spiritual powers be representative of Destruction. This beats me.

I asked someone, he said.. because only destuction will promise the birth of the new.

From the archive
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rimcollians/message/5508

Great, you never mentioned about this smart friend.

You are right, Delphi is particularly good with rapid
prototyping.

But you are wrong about it being unsuitable for custom
work. Its extremely well designed for that too.

A notable Delphi application is the Skype application.

You can write assembly code inline if you want to.

It is object oriented but also supports procedural
programming or even the goto statement.

It is strongly typed, which makes sure you make less
inadvertant errors.

The object heirarchy is very well designed (complete
atomicity and extendability) and quite different in
structure from the MVC model of Java or that of C++
libraries. Both of which I hate.

Its so good that it was only imitated by .net after
Microsoft poached the lead developers at Delphi.

Brent can tell you more about it, and I can too.

By the way, I have become a good PHP developer in the
last 48 hours. I will show you something I am making
after its made. Didnt sleep at all this night.

> development works by having the software already
> know what you want to do. 

No, not in the sense that Microsoft knows what you
want to do. For example, that pesky hairpin in Word
which was voted to be the worst usability feature of
the world.

—

Most people dont know Delphi - they think they know
what it could be about because they have only seen
lousy RADs starting with Powerbuilder.

But Delphi is a different kettle of fish as only a
Delphi developer knows.

It is joked around that Borland made that great
product and expects its users to do the marketing.

Which we do, most happily all the time.

For myself, I know, that I would never have been a
real programmer had it not been for it. I find
everything else sucky. I would refuse to program.

I am not such a good developer, but if I were, I would
have known to create anything that I wanted.

The latest versions of Delphi have suffered though,
from the good guys leaving, including its founder
leaving for other persuits.

But the community is huge and full of extremely
talented people who keep contributing.

Hindus cremate their dead, Christians and Muslims bury, I think the Budhists also cremate, so do Sikhs. The Zorastrians are the ones who leave their dead in the tower of silence for the vultures to feed on.

This is the one I think is most respectable and energy efficient. We need our bodies to go back to the system in as useful ways as it possibly can be to anyone. Why into ash or mud then. Why burn some more wood.

I would like my body to be fed to the fishes in a coral reef. If it is just left there they will take care of it. That way you have the guarantee that you will be alive in some form in the reef, the very next day!!!

But leaving a putrefying body in a coral reef which are already endangered may not be very environment friendly, so just leave my body at any point out in the open sea. It will be taken care of quickly enough. And also I dont want a boat to make that journey exclusively for me. If any one is going that side, he can take this body along. Or else, just leave it in the large river estuary that I live near. Just make sure, this body doesnt become a nuisance or pollution for another.

If even that cant be done, just leave it for the vultures in some desolate place where it will not be a ghastly sight for anyone else, and the stench wouldnt reach. I will be most happy there.

Why be burnt in an asphyxiating chamber of smoke and soot while one can be in the bright sunshine and lots of fresh air.

Hi Steve,

Happy weekend.

Delphi for PHP - from Codegear - Rapid Application
Development for Object PHP. You drag and drop
components like in VB/Delphi and the code is
internally generated. Huge object heirarchies and
framework already existing, open source. Components
being created by others.

I am learning this fairly quickly. Its very
productive. I find it better than what Ruby has shown
me.

The tool is buggy right now, under development, like a
beta stage, but its future is very bright. I am quite
an active member in pointing the bugs.

I want to ask you a database question.

Suppose you have a portal which offers to store the
information of your favorite tracks.

So, every user would be registering and becoming a
member, with a username and password.

After which they would be storing their favorites.

Now would you be putting all the favorites of
everybody in one database table (userid and track
mapping) or would you be storing each users favorite
in a different table, his own tables.

The question is generic. One could be storing many
other things apart from favorites, in which case there
would be the need to create more than one table for
each user, multiplying the issue.

Advantage of separate tables

1. Easy to retrieve, quick to retrieve.
2. Problem in one table will not be able to effect
another’s operation. No catastrophic breakdowns.
3. The opportunity to distribute the databases, tables
over separate servers.
4. No chance of a table becoming extraordinarily
large. Single table size will always be managable even
with growth in number of subscribers.

Disadvantage
1. Numerous tables, need to create them, need to
delete them when a user leaves. Resolution to unique
names, Management of it.
2. Any global search function will need to go into
hundreds or thousands of tables, making such a
function slow.
3. May not be the standard database practise. Or is it
the standard practise.

I hope you got my question. Please think 5 minutes
about it.

This question has been on my mind ever since I first
started learning databases.

May be you are familiar to this issue.

For a small problem, any of the ways should work. But
my question is what is a better design practise for
applications which may need to cater to hundreds of
thousands of users.

sincerely,

Abhijit

Historical overview:
- The Wonder That Was India - A.L.Basham (2 volumes)
- India: a History - John Keay

Modern India: Socio-politico-economic commentary:
- The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and
Identity - Amartya Sen
- India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond - Shashi Tharoor

Economics:
- India Unbound - Gurucharan Das
- Development as Freedom - Amartya Sen (while the book is not entirely
about
India, there are
remarkable insights into the Indian economy)

Fiction:
- The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor
- A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
- Betrayal and Other Stories- Sivasankari (alas, her best Tamil novels
are
not available in translation)
- Rich Like Us - Nayantara Sahgal

Additional recs:
- anything by RK Narayan, particularly Malgudi Days
- Ancient India - RC Majumdar
- A Cultural History of India  - ed. Al Basham
- Also worth looking at: Sivasankari’s project ‘Knit India through
Literature’ - collects notable literature from Indian writers: 
includes
translation, some analysis, and interviews. The multiple volumes are
published by East West books in Chennai.
 

> Fiction:
> - The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor
> - A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
> - Betrayal and Other Stories- Sivasankari (alas, her best Tamil
novels are
> not available in translation)
> - Rich Like Us - Nayantara Sahgal

Naipaul’s trilogy :”Area of darkness”, “Wounded civilization” and
“Million
Mutinies”
Park’s “Preventive and Social medicine” is one of the best books I have
read
on India though it is probably useless for the general reader
“May you be the Mother of a Hundred sons” - Elisabeth Bumiller
Kamala Subramaniam’s “Mahabharatha”

posted by others, needs to be cleaned up sometime

Filed under: Basic Questions — Naveen @ 11:07 pm
A bit of the wisdom of the crowds wont hurt here. A friend recently asked me about the TEN BEST BOOKS ON INDIA. I could not come up with the list. Hence I am soliciting your help. He is an economist and hence is primarily interested in the Indian Economy. But he is also looking for books (or even chapters in books) that throw more light on her society/ politics/culture or even a specific strand like the Emergency period. Of course, the idea is not to know everything about India from these books. In my opinion, that is impossible. The objective is to compile a list of good reads, maybe some interesting but not-too-famous ones will turn up. Recommendations can range from one to ten; mainstream to academic; english or vernacular. Have your say!

58 Comments »
Khushwant Singh’s “INDIA,” a collection of articles published way back in the 70’s, still seems so relevant and enlightening. KS is often dismissed as a humorous commentator rather than a serious writer, a characterization he himself has no problems with. In reality he is an erudite scholar who has the rare ability of summing up serious issues about India in simple words.

And no, I would not nominate any of Naipaul’s “India” books because they are as confusing as the writer is confused.

Comment by Sarat — June 19, 2006 @ 1:44 am

I couldn’t say if these the best books but can I start off with “Freedom at Midnight” by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins about the state and optimism in India when it became independent. I am sure there are better books on the dismal state of economy when the British finally left the shores.

And add Chapter 8: After the Permit Raj: India’s Awakening from “The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy” by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw for a good summary on how India’s economy was scuttled for decades (this book also ties into the what was happening in other countries during the same period).

I may be repeating myself – my first comment got gobbled up by your spam blocker, I think.

Comment by Chandra — June 19, 2006 @ 2:09 am

“Culture Shock! India”, by Gitanjal Kolanad. Kind of a “cultural sensitivity for dummies”, and obviously it is full of generalizations, and can’t cover everything about Indian culture - but still a good overview of how Indian society works.

“Everybody loves a good draught”, by P. Sainath. The book to read if you’ve dealt with the modern, booming IT/Outsourcing economy, and need to be reminded that half of India still consists of poor, illiterate subsistence farmers.

I’d love to hear everybody else’s suggestions. Although in my experience, India is too large and diverse to be covered adequately by books, if you really want to get to know it, you have to spend some time there. Or, as an Indian colleague used to say, it takes a month to see India, a year to feel India, and a lifetime to know India.

Comment by Elmar — June 19, 2006 @ 2:11 am

Oh, and one more thing:
Last week The Economist ran a special section devoted to the state of the Indian economy. Very well written, a must-read to start with.

Comment by Elmar — June 19, 2006 @ 2:12 am

The idea of India — Sunil Khilnani

Comment by Renuka Sane — June 19, 2006 @ 5:00 am

On the Emergency, I’d recommend “In the name of democracy” by Bipan Chandra

Comment by Vulturo — June 19, 2006 @ 9:17 am

Why not consider “India 2020″ by APJ Kalam? Dreams and aspirations of India in the light of today!

Comment by Saurabh — June 19, 2006 @ 9:41 am

Gurcharan Das’s India Unbound and The Elephant Paradigm?

Comment by Patrix — June 19, 2006 @ 11:03 am

I think, ‘India in slowmotion’ by Mark Tully gives a fair picture of the diversity of India both from the cultural and issue perspective. It talks about starting from the Rama Janmabhoomi issue to the kashmir problem on one side and the boom of IT in India. It is a good read.

Comment by hobbes — June 19, 2006 @ 11:54 am

Tamas by Bhisham Sahni

Comment by Lakshmi — June 19, 2006 @ 1:41 pm

India, A Million Mutinies Now by Naipaul.

Comment by Selva — June 19, 2006 @ 2:15 pm

“Discovery of India” by Jawaharlal nehru is a must read in my opinion. There is a condensed version of the book available, if needed.

Comment by Chaitanya — June 19, 2006 @ 4:43 pm

In Light of India — Octavio Paz (former Mexican Ambassador to India and Nobel laureate in literature)–neither gushing nor deprecating.

Empire of the Soul–Paul William Roberts; caveat: this guy likes Sai baba for reasons that I cannot fathom. On the other hand he is no drug-induced hippie, confused and trying to escape reality. He is one foreigner who truly seems to have got into the skin of being an Indian–he has come to terms with the apalling poverty and squalor and see beyond it. Amazing.

Naipaul’s trilogy. You cannot read get the full import of Million Mutinies without reading the Area of Darkness. If you dont have the time, I would give Wounded Civilization a pass. The remarkable difference in tone between Million and Area of Darkness is a reflection both of Naipaul’s own education and realization and also the evoltuion of India. The change in Naipaul’s views exemplify what I said about Paul Roberts–it is difficult to see beyond the abject poverty, stench, and dirt. It took Naipaul a few books. What helped him was that India had also changed. Without reading Naipaul, one is apt to make the mistake that Gururcharan Das makes in his extremely superficial book, India Unbound.” All change did not occur in 1991. In any case, even among economists, it is quite widely accepted that the current era of liberalization starrted in the early 1980s, in Mrs. G’s second avatar.

India: The Most Dangerous Decades–Selig Harrison (1960). Not for its analysis or quality of writing (the first poor, the second mediocre). An example of how wrong foreign prognosticators of doomsday were about India (and about a whole lot of things). Paul Ehrlich also belongs to this category, although his focus is not political analysis.

Comment by srinivas — June 19, 2006 @ 6:48 pm

the chapter devoted to India, in ‘Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy’ …Barrington Moore Jr.

Comment by Ameya — June 19, 2006 @ 9:57 pm

“India After Independence” By Bipan Chandra. Its a bit “Textbooky” though.

Comment by Mudit — June 19, 2006 @ 11:38 pm

I recommend Gurucharan Das’s “India Unbound”.It offers an interesting
tail of India’s socio-economic situation post independence.

Comment by Shailesh — June 20, 2006 @ 12:05 pm

I second Patrix and Shailesh. Gurucharan Das’s “India Unbound” is the only book that offers purely statbased factual analysis of the Indian economy. On the other hand, when I read some of the nonsense that is out there especially by head-in-the-cloud idealists like Vivekananda and that moron Nehru, I always wonder which India are they talking about ? The India of Nehru has existed only in Nehru’s wishful fatasy world. Like his father who sent his silk laundry to France to be washed at taxpayer expense, Nehru is prime example of Do as I tell, Not as I do. And Vivekananda is so far out confusing mysticism, spirituality, Hinduism and everything else with Indian psyche, he will simply bewilder the naive reader. The one book/person to avoid is Naipaul. His sympathies lie elsewhere. He is very clearly ashamed at some level of being of Indian origin, as a thorough study of his books evidence. India is not just Gold, Gods,Ganga, it is also Caste,Cow and Curry. It is also huts, howels and hopelessness. Yet India has clearly made enormous progress since the seriously misguided five year policies of that fabian Nehru. Only Gurucharan Das acknowledges that reality. Perhaps it is because he is the only one who made his own money as Procter & Gamble’s CEO, and then returned his green card to the American embassy and said he was going to India for good. I was weeping with joy at the end of that chapter - how many of our immigrant NRI brothers will have the guts to return the green card and exit the USA permanently for their home country ? No, I am not talking about those H1B ppl who lost their tech jobs in the post-2001 bust. But NRIs who VOLUNTARILY returned their greencards and came back to India - that shows how much they actually care about their country.

Comment by Just a journalist — June 21, 2006 @ 2:29 am

The great Indian middle class by Pavan Verma, nice book, but I wont put it in top 10

Comment by Ketan — June 21, 2006 @ 3:35 am

Being Indian: Inside the real India is also a recent thought provoking book although I wont classify it as top 10. For the specific purpose, I doubt whether one will find a better read than Das.

Comment by Sameer Mehta — June 21, 2006 @ 3:59 am

My personal faves:
India: A Million Mutinies Now by , Naipaul. Truly seminal… hasn’t gotten the acclaim it deserves. The other two books in his trilogy are also very good. Even though they’re dated, and can seem a bit caustic, very insightful…

Add to this, Octavio Paz’s In Light Of India

An old chestnut, but still remarkable is Basham’s “The Wonder That Was India”. I was extremely skeptical at the outset, because of the gushing title, but was quickly won over. A tour de force.

Gurcharan Das: share his sensibilities and like his optimism, but a bit simplistic. When juxtaposed w/ Naipaul’s India: AMMN, or Rusdhie, really shows up… However, in his defence, Das is a business-exec turned author, while Naipaul and Rushdie make their living from their writing.

Overall, the non-fiction cupboard is rather bare –a continual complaint of mine. That’s why I’d add to this list, Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children”….

Comment by Prashant Kothari — June 21, 2006 @ 9:13 am

I have to second The Idea of India by Sunil khilnani.
Brillinatly written, unputdownable, insightful and for a 200 page approx definately a must-read.

Comment by Piyu Roy — June 21, 2006 @ 2:26 pm

I agree there is a paucity of good books. But here would be a short list:

Nehru, Discovery of India - still a good place to start.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, The Burdens of Democracy, a short, sharp and elegant essay on what Indian democracy means. Does for democrcay what Khilnani does for the State

The Best of R K Laxman, need one say more

Why Ethnic Parties Succeed in India, Kanchan Chandra, an unusual take on Indian Democrcay

Jagdish Bhagwati, India’s Economic Reforms - still relevant,

Raag Darbari, especially if you can read the Hindi original

Comment by sashank — June 21, 2006 @ 6:59 pm

The Best of R K Laxman,

Definetly high on the list — but the reader would need to have some understanding of india to really get it.

Comment by mihir — June 21, 2006 @ 10:32 pm

The Age of Kali - William Dalrymple. Excellent book - mostly covers events of the 90’s.

Comment by Venu — June 21, 2006 @ 10:36 pm

Aside - On what basis can you call Das simplistic(Kothari) or superficial(srinivas) ? Das actually sat down with every single bloke who made the reforms in the summer of 91. He got very detailed transcripts from them on their exact actions and he wrote based on these facts. He’s not pulling stuff out of thin air. He is not a fiction writer like Naipual who can afford to make up pleasant sounding rhetoric just to pander to his English readers. The fact is - reading that chapter Summer of 91 in Das’s book seems very over-dramatic. Did PVNR really wear a lungi fresh out of bath and sing off on Manmohan Singh’s reforms without reading a word ? Did Chidambaram & Manmohan really demolish all of the redtape assembled meticulously in 50 years, in a span of just 8 hours ? Is that even possible ?
Well, the truth is - it is not just possible, that is exactly what happened. India is a very strange country. You can see great drama on everyday basis that will seem totally unbelievable to an outsider. When things need to move fast because of political crisis, they will move with unimaginable speed. It is not like New Orleans where president has to be shaken out of his stupor after numbly watching 1000 floating corpses. Ask people who worked in the secretariat during 91, they will confirm each and every detail.

Comment by Just a journalist — June 22, 2006 @ 12:11 am

Just a journalist,

Das is superficial in his book not because he has failed to describe the gory details of the drama. On the contrary he attaches too much importance to 1991 and sees it a revolutionary event. He fails to understand the evolutionary nature of change in India’s economy. He fails to recognize that, while 1991 cut through the Gordian knot of licensing, the knot was already being weakened through much of the 1980s (read Rodrik and Subramaniam). Of late, Das’s writings have reflected this, but not his India Unbound book.

Naipaul is not writing fiction when he is writing A Million Mutinies or India: An Area of Drakeness. They are nonfiction based on his actual interactions and covnersations with people during his travels in India. There is nothing fictional in them. Naipaul is the best because he does not let ideology or preconceptions come in the way of his narration. Yes, he does have his opinions, often unpalatable to many, but very few can quibble with his keen sense of observation and finely analytical mind.

Comment by srinivas — June 22, 2006 @ 7:10 pm

“the knot was already being weakened through much of the 1980s”
There are other blokes who say it was even further in the 1970’s -
that kind of liberalisation included Nationalisation of Banks. Oh wait!

Stop kidding yourself - India is still not Liberalised

http://indiauncut.blogspot.com/2005/06/myth-of-indias-liberalization.html

Comment by anon — June 24, 2006 @ 10:52 pm

Just a journalist…

Don’t want to start quibbling here… I enjoyed India Unbound. From what I can gather, Gurcharan Das and I would agree on most matters — government regulation and licensing (the less, the better) or the importance of free markets and free trade.

And, to reiterate a point in Gurcharan Das’ defence, Naipaul is a full-time writer, while Das is a part-time author.

However, I find Das’ opinion that India’s finally unbound simplistic and premature. As someone who still does lot of business in India, I’d strongly endorse Amit’s views here — http://indiauncut.blogspot.com/2005/06/myth-of-indias-liberalization.html. India’s less tangled than it was earlier — however, still a long ways from being unbound.

Also, Das’ opinion that

a) the Indian upper-middle classes’ knowledge of English and

b) the resultant boom in IT and IT-enabled services are going to be India’s economic saviors is way off.

As lots of us on IEB, including Atanu and I, have pointed out, this entire sector employs just a million people. Hardly enough to lift a billion people out of poverty.

And, while English has proved a boon for the IT & ITES industries, it’s not a mass-based language. And never will be. In my opinion, the lack of a common language imposes huge costs for the country.

Not sure if it’s relevant but in the interests of full disclosure, I do run a BPO firm.

Comment by Prashant Kothari — June 25, 2006 @ 5:08 am

Joining late and also new to this kind of debate. But would like to suggest two books. Firstly to understand the strength and weakness of post independence India i think “Social Background Of Indian Nationalism ” by A R Desai is an absolute must. Written in terms of a marxist understanding, which is not very popular nowadays, the book explores the background of Indian freedom movement and delinates the trends which assume their full colour over the post independence half century.
The other book is ‘The world is flat” by Thomas L. Friedman. It is not specifically about India but gives an idea of India’s potential and its place in the new emerging world order.
Ravinder Goel
25 June, 6 PM, Delhi, India

Comment by Ravinder Goel — June 25, 2006 @ 5:27 pm

The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen
Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru
Early history of India (and other volumes) by Romila Thapar

I am excluding vernacular language books here. Also, anyone know about anything by late 19th century thinkers such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Gopal Krishna Gokhale or Jyotiba Phule? Any good books regarding religion and caste traditions, and the traditional Indian economic system?

Comment by Mihir — June 26, 2006 @ 3:04 am

Another great book is Sourcebook of Indian Tradition ed by Ainslee Embree. Found it far better-written and more rigorous than anything by Nehru or Thapar.

Comment by Prashant Kothari — June 26, 2006 @ 7:07 pm

“Freedom at Midnight” by Larry and Lapierre is indeed a very good book, capturing last moments of power transition from British Raj to divided India.

In fiction, Hermann Hesse ‘Siddhartha’ is a novel inspired by author’s visit to India before First World War. It deals with meaning of life and self realization.

Comment by Ruchi — June 26, 2006 @ 9:00 pm

Prashant,

I actually think Das’s Indian Unbound is right now the money to describe 1991 as revolutionary - at least economic terms. Imagine the alternative of no reforms. I think there is general perception that reforms, while surely not enough, were inevitable. Nothing is inevitable, especially in India - things can and will persists for decades (or even centuries).

With regards to Das’s simplicity and being premature, clearly IT and related industry is just a beachhead with vast number of industries are emulating the industry’s processes and looking across the globe for markets. Billions may not be lifted out of poverty but the industry’s effect on entire spectrum of Indian life is clear - education is only way out of poverty. Except mass employment generation (not many industries have added jobs for other reasons), if one ignores ripple effect, IT is phenomenal in every other metrics of an industry’s contribution to Indian economy.

Comment by Chandra — June 27, 2006 @ 6:05 am

India Unbound definitely and maybe India: From Midnight to Millennium by Shashi Tharoor.

Comment by R — June 30, 2006 @ 8:08 am

For an economist, who needs facts and statistics rather than fiction and opinion, I recommend the following links which offer unbiased and authoritative facts about Indian Economy:

Various sectors of Indian Economy
http://www.india.gov.in/sector.php

About Indian culture and profile and org
http://www.india.gov.in/knowindia.php

Ernst & Young’s publication of Doing Business in India, excellent factual primer to CURRENT Indian Economy.
http://www.ey.com/global/download.nsf/India/DBI_2006/$file/DBI_2006.pdf

And if the economist really interested in the present, visit Indian Brand Equity foundation for an up-to-date on Indian Economy live:
http://www.ibef.org/

Comment by Murali — June 30, 2006 @ 8:26 am

how many of our immigrant NRI brothers … return the green card and exit the USA permanently for their home country?

I know at least one: me.

Though I don’t believe the answer to this question tells us anything much.

As for books, Tharoor’s “The Great Indian Novel” is excellent. A surprisingly good read that opens eyes on policy implementation is “Sardar Sarovar: The Independent Review” by Bradford Morse et al (more commonly known as the Morse Report). (Similar is Abhay Mehta’s “Power Play”, on Enron). Gillian Tindall’s “City of Gold” on Bombay, William Dalrymple’s “City of Djinn’s” on Delhi. Kavery Nambisan’s “The Hills of Angheri”. Siddharth Dube’s “Words Like Freedom” (even better than his second book, “Sex, Lies and AIDS”). I would even recommend Ramachandra Guha’s “Savaging the Civilized”, even though it is really a biography of Verrier Elwin.

Comment by Dilip D — July 2, 2006 @ 12:40 pm

1. These are all quite recent books.
2. But From Ved Mehta to Raj Thapar (very nice sketches of Mrs Gandhi’s kitchen cabinet) to Amaury de Riencourt to D.D. Kosambi to Christophe Jaffrelot and Marc Galanter, to say nothing of Penderel Moon, D.A. Low, the Allchins and Verrier Elwin, there is a huge amount of stuff out there waiting to be read.
3. About Freedom at Midnight I once asked Lapierre why the Indian version, published by Vikas Books, did not include the reference to Savarkar stroking Godse’s forearm, while the American and British paperback editions did, but he was unable to reply.
4. I would second the suggestions about the books by Bipin Chandra, Gillian Tindall, Naipaul, Paz and Khilnani. They are all very good.
5. There is some additional stuff by Isabel Hilton, Sunjoy Hazarika, Narendra Jadhav, Lawrence James, James Morris and Patrick French which is pretty good reading. Charles Allen and Sharda Dwivedi have their racy moments, too.
6. Finally don’t buy into the canard that only non-fiction tells the truth. There is some very vivid material by Rohinton Mistry (particularly about the Parsi community), Shoba De (particularly about the obssessions of the gin drinkers), Rushdie (about ravishing the Kerala pepper merchant’s daughter), jolly old Khushwant (Train to Pakistan) and Dom Moraes (My Son’s Father) that could have been wrenched from the headlines. And who can forget Satyajit Ray’s Tales of Feluda, or the stories of Ruskin Bond, and reaching further back, that arch-imperialist, Mr Kipling? Some of his short stories are astounding — as are Premchand’s, for that matter, but I have never seen a decent translation of Premchand. Forster’s Hill of Devi is pretty interesting too, as a snapshot of a vanished time. And to give you a second bookend of arch-imperialists, Nirad Chaudhuri.

Comment by Anand Ganesan — July 2, 2006 @ 7:35 pm

Speaking of fiction, glad to see Anand Ganesan’s list. I’m surprised nobody, me included, has mentioned RK Narayan. “Swami and Friends” is one of those Indian must-reads; also his less well-known novels like “The Vendor of Sweets”.

And I think this one must get a mention: Irawati Karve’s “Yuganta”. What a skillful, thought-provoking interpretation of the Mahabharat (and, therefore, of the Indian psyche itself), and all in probably 150 pages.

Comment by Dilip D — July 4, 2006 @ 10:54 am

Engaging India - Strobe Talbott
The Polyester Prince - Hamish McDonald

Comment by Vijit — July 11, 2006 @ 2:02 am

The wonder that was India - A. L. Basham

Comment by Subhas — July 22, 2006 @ 7:33 am

ok good make some more books

Comment by rohit thaduri — August 14, 2006 @ 3:45 pm

Greetings,

The Vedas, Bhagavad Gita, The common sense of the galaxy of saints

Cheers.

Comment by Anel — August 16, 2006 @ 2:31 am

[…] I chanced upon this blog post about Books on India and decided to list out some of the books listed by people in the comments of that blog post. So here is a lot of food for thought on India… […]

Pingback by Kaushal Kurapati’s blog » Blog Archive » Books on India — August 22, 2006 @ 11:48 pm

[…] Some time back there was a question regarding good books that shed useful light on India and various aspects of it. Read Ten Best Books on India? Nobody mentioned Pankaj Mishra’s Butter Chicken in Ludhiana. Admittedly I dont hold it in high regard but definitely it is an important piece of travel writing in its time (if anything for lack of alternatives) that captures India well. Read Chandrahas’s take on it at Pankaj Mishra’s Butter Chicken in Ludhiana at eleven. You will also find quite a few good weekend reading links there. […]

Pingback by The Indian Economy Blog » Weekend reads — November 26, 2006 @ 2:54 am

Let me try my top 10 here:

1. The Idea of India - Sunil Khilnani - a keen effort to analyze modern Indian history and understand why and how India works as a secular democracy.

2. India - from Midnight to Millennium - Sashi Tharoor - Another superb and updated effort in line with Sunil Khilnani’s. A bit liberal for some, but wonderfully written and captures the modern, liberal indian ethos brilliantly.

3. In spite of the Gods - The strange rise of modern India - by Edward Luce

4. India Unbound - Gurucharan Das

5. The Algebra of Infinite Justice - Arundhati Roy - About modern India, a different view [also Greater common Good, by the same author]

6. On a slightly different note, ‘Five Point Someone’ and ‘One Night at Call Centre’ by Chetan Bhagat

7. The Discovery of India - by Jawaharlal Nehru - examining the Indian history from a liberal perspective

8. The British Rule in India - by Karl Marx [and other writings on India] - leave the politics and read from a pure economic perspective.

9. The Wonder that was India - A L Basham - an all time great, though slightly dated now.

10. Imagining India - Ronald Inden

Comment by Supriyo Chaudhuri — November 27, 2006 @ 9:56 pm

I believe “India Unbound” by Gurcharan Das is a must read. The style with which Das has described the transition of India’s economy and politica from a pro-socialist democracy to more a more of vibrant India,seems to be very down to earth , realistic and thought provoking.

Yet to read “Elephant Paradigm”

Comment by Prashant Dugar — November 29, 2006 @ 1:25 am

How about Osho’s book ‘India My Love’ ? His books provide a unique insight about Indian culture

Comment by shri — December 1, 2006 @ 8:16 pm

“A source book of Indian philosophy” (S Radhakrishnan is one of the editors).

The development of the different branches of Indian philosophy (and the clinging of most people to a very small subset of it today) is still very relevant to India’s economy as well as other aspects of India.

Comment by aschig — December 14, 2006 @ 10:14 pm

A search in Secret India by Paul Brunton

Comment by Goutham — January 13, 2007 @ 11:47 am

[…] Sometime ago when I was planning on how to spend my vacation, in a moment of enhanced desi-ness I decided that I must conquer the Indian authors. I googled for a top list, and to my surprise other than the href=”http://indianeconomy.org/2006/06/18/ten-best-books-on-india/”>Ten best Books About India at the IndEco blog I was unable to find any list. […]

Pingback by Must Read Indian Authors and Books, Fiction and Non Fiction — March 5, 2007 @ 11:50 pm

In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce

Must Read . Preface to economic, political and cultural changes in the last 50 years in INDIA. Edward Luce narration is novelistic and generates interest in reading though.

He describes how British rule left long lasting impressionistic and bureaucratic elite that threatens the core system in India and the cultural, religious balance and challenges faced.

Liked his comprehensive comparison to CHINA.

Book is a fine balance of conversation between Political, economic and cultural INDIA

Comment by Sashi Poluri — April 5, 2007 @ 3:40 am

[…] Sidebar: For those interested, we had a great discussion on IEB earlier about the ten best books on India. […]

Pingback by The Indian Economy Blog » Are There Any Good Textbooks On The Indian Economy? — April 8, 2007 @ 8:17 pm

Really helpful. I was planning to read a book on India and thanks for the advice. From the looks of things, India Unbound seems to be the one to conquer.

My 2 cents. Wings of Fire, Ignited Minds and Being Indian are quite good too. The former 2 are inspiring (to me atleast).

Comment by Prasanna — April 10, 2007 @ 3:58 pm

One billion Indians, and you aim to find consensus on 10 books? Ambitious!

My 10 may come from the following list (no particular order except how visible they are on my shelves):

1. In spite of the Gods - Ed Luce
2. India - What can it teach us? - Max Mueller
3. In light of India - Octavio Paz
4. India: a million mutinies now - VS Naipaul
5. Alberuni’s India - er, by Al Beruni
6. India: A history - John Keay
7. A two volume history of India - Romila Thapar and Percival Spear
8. The Idea of India - Sunil Khilnani
9. India - Shashi Tharoor
10. The Argumentative Indian - Amartya Sen
And many more but I had to list ten, no?

Comment by Shefaly — April 10, 2007 @ 4:08 pm

“Indian Economy since Independence” by Uma Kapila is pretty good…
besides the two volume book on the Indian Economy by C rangarajan.

Comment by jaleel — April 10, 2007 @ 4:42 pm

A compilation of all the books recommended by readers:

In spite of the Gods - Ed Luce
India - What can it teach us? - Max Mueller
In light of India - Octavio Paz
India: a million mutinies now - VS Naipaul
Alberuni’s India - er, - Al Beruni
India: A history - John Keay
A two volume history of India - Romila Thapar and Percival Spear
The Idea of India - Sunil Khilnani
The Argumentative Indian - Amartya Sen
Wings of Fire - APJ Abdul Kalam
Ignited Minds
Being Indian
A search in Secret India - Paul Brunton
A source book of Indian philosophy - S Radhakrishnan
India My Love - Osho
India - from Midnight to Millennium - Sashi Tharoor
India Unbound - Gurucharan Das
The Algebra of Infinite Justice - Arundhati Roy -
Five Point Someone - Chetan Bhagat
One Night at Call Centre - Chetan Bhagat
The Discovery of India - by Jawaharlal Nehru
The British Rule in India - by Karl Marx
The Wonder that was India - A L Basham
Imagining India - Ronald Inden
The Vedas, Bhagavad Gita,
Engaging India - Strobe Talbott
The Polyester Prince - Hamish McDonald
Yuganta - Irawati Karve
Swami and Friends - RK Narayan
The Vendor of Sweets - RK Narayan
The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor
Sardar Sarovar: The Independent Review - Bradford Morse
Power Play - Abhay Mehta
City of Gold - Gillian Tindall
City of Djinn’s - William Dalrymple
The Hills of Angheri - Kavery Nambisan
Words Like Freedom - Siddharth Dube
Savaging the Civilized - Ramachandra Guha
Sourcebook of Indian Tradition - Ainslee Embree
Early history of India (and other volumes) by Romila Thapar
The world is flat - Thomas L. Friedman
Social Background Of Indian Nationalism - by A R Desai
The Age of Kali - William Dalrymple
The Burdens of Democracy - Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Why Ethnic Parties Succeed in India - Kanchan Chandra
India’s Economic Reforms - Jagdish Bhagwati
Raag Darbari
The Best of R K Laxman
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
In Light Of India - Octavio Paz
Tamas - Bhisham Sahni
The Elephant Paradigm - Gurcharan Das
Culture Shock! India - Gitanjal Kolanad
Everybody loves a good draught - by P. Sainath
Freedom at Midnight - Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins

Comment by Ammadio — April 16, 2007 @ 3:37 pm

Thanks a lot, Ammadio, for the compilation.

Comment by Naveen Mandava — April 17, 2007 @ 11:42 pm

History and culture of the Indian people, 11 volumes, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
History of the freedom movement, R C Majumdar
The renaissance of India, Sri Aurobindo
Most writings of Vivekananda
The gospel of Ramakrishna
India: a wounded civilization, Naipaul
Writings of Jainendra, Tagore, SharatChandra, Bankim,
Arun Shourie “Eminent Historians”, “Worshiping false gods, Ambedkar and the facts which have been erased”, “A secular agenda”