By IANSlife

August 25, 2023 (IANSlife)  Here is a list of books you can skim through in your spare time from fiction to comments on India's digital growth.  

India’s Techade by Nalin Mehta

This is a small book about big disruptions. Over two decades, and across two different political regimes, the world’s largest democracy combined the rise of cheap mobile phones, cheap data and a unique digital ID system to create an unprecedented revolution in digital public goods. This included the rise of path-breaking fintech systems like United Payments Interface (UPI), the creation of a new kind of welfare state based on digital direct-benefit transfers and inter-linked e-governance systems that brought in almost half a billion poor people who previously never had bank accounts into the financial system.

This book pieces together how India created the digital revolution, using the software infrastructure loosely called ‘India Stack’, and leading to what Prime Minister has called ‘India’s Techade.’ A short, crisply written primer on the subject in the context of India’s leadership of G20, this is a book for every Indian reader.

 

On Being Indian by Amit Chaudhari

Originally a talk delivered at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, in February 2020, and then published as an essay in Social Research Quarterly the following year, On Being Indian is many things. On one level, it is a record of the various events and utterances that led up to and characterised the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in India. On another level, it questions, and shows us the limited value of, dichotomies such as the secular and the religious. The protests were an occasion for these humanist binaries to be dismantled exuberantly, often by thinkers who emerged at the time not from academic institutions but from diverse walks of life. Part analysis, part intellectual and cultural history, part literary criticism, and part an impassioned expression of, and meditation on, what it means to ‘be Indian’, this long essay is an exploration of how such a critique might be written in a way that’s urgent but not journalistic; intellectually rigorous but not academic; political as well as imaginative.

 

If God was your financial planner by Suresh Sadagopan

Financial planning meets divine intervention in a book that guides you towards that smarter life. Certified financial planner Suresh Sadagopan breaks down complicated investment and savings plans to illustrate how financial planning can be easy—even exciting. He weaves in the stories of his clients, both entertaining and illuminating, to bring these ideas to life in a compelling narrative.

Sadagopan’s financial planning is guided by Lord Krishna’s precepts, a lens through which financial myths and mistakes become easier to see through. The lord even steps in to help Sadagopan with things like retirement planning, asset allocation and risk management, as he guides his clients Bala, Preeti, Kala and Anshuman through financial and life planning. These stories give way to Sadagopan’s investigation of various aspects of financial planning, both monetary and otherwise. In each of these facets, he stresses on how closely finance is linked to other aspects of life, such as children’s education or retirement planning. If God Was Your Financial Planner is a compelling argument for channelling a spiritual attitude to arrive at smart financial planning.

 

The Fraud by Zadie Smith 

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

 

Stay True by Hua Hsu

From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken--with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity--is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes 'zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them.

 

Shabbat by Adeena Sussman

As a child, Adeena Sussman looked forward to the magic of Shabbat—the traditional Jewish day of rest—all week. A treasured time when family and friends come together to relax, unwind, and revel in one another’s company during open-ended, tantalizing meals, Shabbat has been practiced all over the world and throughout history. In Sussman’s home, then and now, the Shabbat table is a centering force, a nourishing place where one and all are welcome. It’s an opportunity every week to feed the soul.

The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

Everything is about to change. This is the only book you need to understand this new world.

From the ultimate AI insider, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, part of Google.

'Fascinating, well-written, and important' Yuval Noah Harari , author of Sapiens

'Deeply rewarding and consistently astonishing' Stephen Fry

'An excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times' Bill Gates

Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.

 

 

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