Book Review: Braving A Viral Storm by Aashish Chandorkar & Suraj Sudhir

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Soren Kierkegaard

As the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and slowly ravaged, the world in 2020 & 2021, and, now with the hindsight of the past 3 years, these words of Kierkegaard struck me. From a position of ignorance to fear and, from a sense of hope to relief, we have come a long way. And the credit for this goes no doubt to India’s almost miraculous vaccination drive. Dubbed as the #LargestVaccinationDrive, in retrospect, it seems simple and not so much of a big deal. The authors of this book tell us why this was not so.

Beginning from when India reported its first case on 30^th Jan’ 20, to the entire vaccine R&D process (including the focus on Aatmanirbharta), EUAs being granted for 2 indigenous vaccines, to the vaccine rollout (including detailed logistics of the vaccine suppliers, cold storage chains, vaccinators, people behind the scenes, etc.), and the current vaccination status, the book really captures the journey India has traversed in the last 3 years. [Incidentally, 16^th Jan’ 23 will be 2 years from the day the vaccine rollout started in the country].

The authors detail the entire process of how the Govt. machinery got into immediate action mode in Mar’20 itself, beginning with the creation of a task force, pushing for vaccines’ development nationally, monitoring the national & international happenings (including publishing daily data on the vaccine supplies & vaccinations done), etc.

The odds were stacked against India & the developing world in terms of financial & operational constraints for developing a vaccine. And yet, the ingenuity of Indian pharmaceutical firms & its scientists enabled it to manufacture not 1 but 2 vaccines which covered most of the population. They were aided by the CoWIN platform, which became the fastest tech platform globally to amass 20 crore registrations in less than 4 months. It routinely handled more than a billion visits daily at the peak of the vaccination process [I may have contributed to some of those visits myself :)]

The book details how India’s fortitude, courage, conviction, collective efforts & foresight enabled it to tide over this crisis. Its people had an unflinching trust in the country’s leadership & scientists. Several challenges in the vaccination process, including scale, readiness to take vaccines, training the medical personnel, etc., were overcome through four Ps – process, people, platform & persuasion. What India demonstrated during the Covid-19 response is that it has a sophisticated public that understands the challenges of execution & also recognizes both basic & sophisticated solutions being delivered to solve long-pending problems.

This is not to say that the process proceeded without any criticisms. The vaccination rollout was questioned, lampooned, prejudged, subjected to a veiled ridicule, etc. But as Alexandre Dumas noted, “Nothing succeeds like success.”

The detailed discussion on Aatmanirbhar Bharat – how India stood its ground while fighting against pressure from international pharma firms, their domestic lobbyists & global amplifiers was an interesting read. So was the chapter on Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, especially Vaccine Maitri, in which India sent vaccines to several low & middle income developing friendly nations [by the time the Delta wave hit India in Apr’21, it had supplied vaccines to ~95 different countries & entities; by the end of Oct’22, India had exported ~27 crore vaccine doses to 100 countries]. India also fought for IPR issues at WTO & sought TRIPS waiver. The WTO developments ensured that India received a lot of goodwill from the developing world & from the Global South.

I got literal goosebumps reading Pg. Nos. 168-169: “Young India believes” – why the youth embraced vaccination so enthusiastically.

As of 15^th Jan’ 23, India has crossed 220 crore vaccination doses; 2 years from the start of the vaccination drive. This would have seemed almost entirely unbelievable to someone at the start of the journey.

The book is quite an interesting and easy read, peppered with a lot of anecdotes, data (numbers + tables), and facts (including how other nations dealt with this) about the vaccination journey. It seeks to remind us of how difficult the path has been, especially for India, and how it has come out strongly in the fight against Covid-19, helmed by a strong leadership, ably supported by the innovative skills of our scientists & the humble backing of our various institutions including BIRAC, DBT, DCGI, ICMR, IISc, NIV, etc.

While reading the book, there were quite a few things which I learned for the first time, including:

• Louis Pasteur’s work led to doctors beginning to use personal protective equipment (PPE).

• India took longer than Somalia, Ethiopia, & all of sub-Saharan Africa to eradicate polio.

• Most of the contributed smallpox vaccine was provided under bilateral agreements by the USSR, which donated more than 1,400 million doses from 1958 to 1979.

• Indian states already had databases on individuals with co-morbidities, which were created through non-communicable disease screenings done by health & wellness centres.

• Introduced in 2015, the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network, or eVIN, predated Covid-19 by several years. The CoWIN platform was extrapolated from this.

• Mumbai airport has Asia’s biggest import cold chain capacity, with a storage capacity of more than 30,000 tonnes.

Some of the sentences in the book that I really loved:

• India was up to the task of this global arranging of deckchairs.

• The commentary was basically the tyranny of the op-ed space – the one with the access to the opinion can have a field day alleging practically anything.

• When complex processes work exactly as planned, there is not much analysis of why things worked the way they were supposed to.

And, last but not the least, the last sentence in the Acknowledgements: Your faith is our booster dose of motivation.

Book Review: The Magicians Of Mazda: Ashwin Sanghi

I have been a huge fan of Ashwin Sanghi’s writing and when I read that he is out with a new book – The Magicians of Mazda – I knew I had to get my hands on it. The kind folks at Indica Books sent me a review copy and I couldn’t be thrilled.

Like any other Ashwin Sanghi book, this one is a combination of history, geography, science, and architecture, backed by a lot of research into the smallest of things.

It starts with a Parsi scientist Jim Dastoor getting abducted from his laboratory in Seattle and from there the story traverses Tehran and Afghanistan, while in between also reaching Diu & Kashmir in India. It’s written in a quite a thrilling fashion and the reader is always intrigued to find out what’s going to happen next. Also, his writing style is such that one is always suspecting almost all the characters, thinking one of them is going to frame the other.

There is also a lot of discussion in and around how the Parsis came to be in India, how did they set up their fire temples in different places in West India, primarily Gujarat, and how the protagonist of the story is entrusted with a Parsi secret, as part of his legacy; a secret which some people would even kill to lay their hands on.

While I enjoyed reading the book, and getting to know how similar Parsi and Hindu rituals are, especially with respect to worshipping the fire, at some places, the book becomes quite tedious to keep track of. I kept going back and forth sometimes trying to figure out who the different characters referred to in the book are.

Book Review: Sanghi Who Never Went To A Shakha by Rahul Roushan

For those who are active on social media, especially Twitter, Rahul Roushan is not an unknown name. His tweets come across as witty oozing with satire and sarcasm, with pithy observations on the happenings in our world, especially in the political world. So I had to get my hands on the first book written by him.

Rahul has not written anything new in his book. And yet, it is a very important book; one that needs to be read by as many people as possible, in India and around the world – especially by people like me – urban, educated, middle-class/upper middle-class, to know what has seemingly changed in India over the last 7 years; why do we see the masses getting so vocal about their beliefs and opinions, and the how and why of the rise of Modi.

Like Rahul, I too was not ‘involved’ in politics until 2013. Though I was aware of the political leaders and the various parties, I did not follow them religiously (if I may use that word!); I was not clued into their every action and I was definitely not vocal about my political, and religious, choices.

In a way, Modi changed that. This book seeks to explain it, amongst several other things.

It also seeks to talk about the change in society, and politics, from Independence – the Nehruvian era, the rise, and assassination of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi’s unprecedented parliamentary majority and the birth of the Mandal & Mandir politics, the rise of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav, political instability at the Centre and the economic liberalization during the 1990s, the 2002 anti-Godhra riots in Gujarat, the various terrorist blasts all across India almost every other year, including the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the gang rape in Delhi in 2012, the rise of the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare, AAP forming the Govt. in Delhi, the rise of Modi to the Centre, etc.

The book also captures the double standards of the Left, the secular parties, the intellectuals, most of the mainstream media (MSM) and the online news portals [Rahul was/is a part of both] through various real-life examples and incidents. As I was not active into politics earlier, most of these were new, and shocking, to me. Now I am better able to relate to it, seeing it almost every day on MSM/SM. Rahul highlights how these people actually indulge in pretentious intellectual snobbery, with a condescending and patronizing attitude. Smokescreens of bigotry, jingoism and communalism are created, followed by muddling of facts, denials, shifting of goalposts and an orchestrated propaganda.

The book also talks about how social media has truly democratized the discourse in India [something I am truly grateful for – people have fallen off their pedestals and how!] – where people decide the tone and contours of a debate, without the direct involvement or censorship by the MSM. This has given rise to a whole generation of people who are now actively involved in politics [compared to people like me] and who are vocal about their choices & the reasons for the same.

Last, but definitely not the least, the book talks about Rahul’s journey from being offended at being called a Sanghi to actually getting comfortable with, and being proud of, being called one.

It spends a fair bit of space to discuss in detail about Modi – how he was relentlessly projected as a ‘controversial’ leader who won the 2002 elections riding on the wave of ‘hate’ (the narrative still seems familiar, right?), how he won three state elections with an absolute majority, how Modi started projecting himself as pro-development, how he understood how social media worked, etc. It also gives Modi a fair bit of credit in making people warm up to Hindutva/Hindu nationalism. Modi had started to impress many, especially the urban online-savvy educated class, many of whom had no special ideological affinity for the RSS or Hindutva.

I was able to identify with, and nod my head at, some of the incidents and examples in the book – the prejudices and biases against anything and everything connected to the word ‘Hindu’, the ‘liberal’ habit of linking every vice in the Indian society to some aspect of the Hindu culture and religion, the whitewashing of the atrocities committed by Muslim invaders, the deeply narrow definitions assigned to words like secularism, anti-Brahmin rhetoric, etc.

Rahul’s writing style is easy-to-read and the book is pretty much a page-turner in that sense. His satire and sarcasm comes across very well in the book. Also, he does not mince words while narrating or describing certain incidents. Though the book is a kind of an autobiography, I am sure many people will identify with some or the other incidents in it. The only thing I disagree with Rahul is his paranoia about the survival of Hindus. Hindus have, and will survive, forever. In fact, most Hindus, including me, have now started becoming very vocal about a lot of things.

Some of the sentences that stuck with me:

1. At the core of it, the secular state of India discriminates against Hindus by assuming that they can never be disadvantaged.

2. Every political party is not the same when it comes to the environment they end up creating by the mere virtue of being in power. They trigger some changes directly, and some indirectly, some as a driving force, some as a catalyst, some intended, some unintended.

3. You don’t need to publicize a treatise against Brahminism to push a person into cutting his janeu; you just need a good personal story. That is the power of storytelling.

4. When the ideological debates would start getting heated, it would invariably be the pro-Modi guy who had to step back and assuage the feelings of his liberal friend, who just couldn’t stop ranting about how fascism must be stopped.

5. The establishment is an entrenched bunch of people and institutions that systematically control the thoughts and beliefs of the masses. It is often achieved via control on the media and academics. Political power is transient, but the power that a real establishment enjoys is potent and lasting. [This one is my favourite!]

I would heartily recommend this book to anyone wanting to know what has changed in India, especially why do Hindus suddenly seem so vocal about their identity. I would also recommend this book to anyone wanting to get a sense of the history of India – how certain unconnected things are actually connected, which is not apparent to the common man. The book is a great read and I will definitely be rereading it often.

Book Review: Lutyens' Maverick by Baijayant 'Jay' Panda

I have been following Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda on Twitter for many years now. He’s one of the sharpest, most erudite, brilliant, humble and knowledgeable people around. Plus, he’s a voracious reader himself, often tweeting about the books he’s reading and the parts he’s found interesting.

This book is a collection of articles written by Panda over the last few years. It covers the topics of Parliament & Governance, Political Correctness, Economics, Foreign Policy, Law and Citizens & Society. Some of the of sub-topics include A Short History of EVMs, A Quota for Women, Taking Criminals out of Politics, Checks & Balances, The Yakub Memon Frenzy, Aadhaar & Data Security, Sabarimala & Triple Talaq and Hypocrisy on Free Speech.

Panda’s articles are written in a no-holds barred and candid manner. It was a sheer pleasure to read the book and understand his views on the various topics.

Some of the topics/quotes which I found interesting and would like to read up more on:
1. Our Parliament is still plagued by systemic gridlock between the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
2. Overcoming resistance to change is sometimes rooted more in fear and suspicion than in rational considerations.
3. But this isn’t the ‘80s any more, when bank computerization could be put off for more than a decade due to pressure from the unions.
4. Jawaharlal Nehru is reported to have told Jehangir Tata that he considered ‘profit’ to be a dirty word, even in the context of the public sector.
5. A quarter of a century ago, Rajiv Gandhi famously accused the notoriously leaky government machinery of gobbling up 85 per cent of the funds spent on poverty alleviation programmes, leaving only a paltry 15 per cent for the actual beneficiaries.
6. Though historical injustices can never be erased and elements of prejudice against some groups can still be seen, there are also many signs of empowerment, not the least of which is political clout.
7. The use of technologies like Aadhaar are revolutionizing the delivery of services far more efficiently. It could well be that massively ambitious sociopolitical goals may no longer require the kind of massive boondoggles they used to.
8. PM Modi has been seeking transformational change through mega persuasion campaigns instead of by legislation – for example, the exhortation of the ‘Swachh Bharat’ programme, rather than, say, emulating Singapore’s harsh punishments for littering.
9. The government has started penalizing non-performers, and in 2017, modernized bureaucrats’ appraisal system, including – for the first time – peers’ and subordinates’ feedback.
10. It should also not be surprising that dynastic politicians have been among the least enthusiastic users of SM in India.
11. The lack of meritocracy, evidenced by many bright younger Congressmen and women who have been held back for years, has taken a huge toll on its capabilities.
12. Any economy’s fundamental soundness will depend on regularly having to swallow bitter pills that will be unpopular, at least in the short term.
13. Too often we disparage the good because it is not perfect.
14. It needed PM Narendra Modi’s massive electoral successes, not just in the 2014 general election that gave him the numbers in the Lok Sabha, but also in subsequent state elections that, in turn, have been adding to his numbers in the Rajya Sabha, for the GST to become feasible.
15. For a country with the Ashoka Stambh as its national emblem, it has taken India far too long to recollect Kautilya’s mantra of statecraft: sama, dana, bheda, danda (conciliate, compensate, divide, fight).
16. Why are Hindu temples administered by the government when all other religious communities manage their own places of worship?
17. Instead of looking in the rear-view mirror at what has not worked in the past, we would be better served to benchmark what works in most of the world.
18. Finding the balance between an adherence to basic democratic principles and the pressing compulsions for simple, blunt solutions is one of the greatest challenges of modern democracies.
19. I remain an optimist, but one that believes that rather than just hoping for the best, we have to keep attempting to solve lingering problems.
20. It cannot be every individual’s right to impose his version of a religion on others who profess it. Thus, while he may practise religion as he pleases in private, in a religion’s place of worship, the rituals, subject to not harming anyone, must reflect the group consensus.
21. To keep insisting that terrorism has nothing to do with religion after every new jihadi atrocity is no longer tenable.
22. Why should we still have a feudal mindset that our ruling elite be treated differently from the average citizen?
23. Liberalization and economic growth have made available to the hoi polloi what earlier only the exalted could have.
24. In democracies, lasting solutions only emerge from bridging differences, even if that has to wait until power is gained through less temperate means.

Book Review: Draupadi by Saiswaroopa Iyer

India is blessed to be the land of the Mahabharata. The beauty of it is that one can never get bored reading its various interpretations about its various characters. So, when I came to know about this book, I knew I had to read it.

Draupadi, the daughter of Drupada, the princess of Panchala and the wife of the five Pandavas, is a fascinating character. And Saiswaroopa has been able to portray her as a true feminist in her book. She’s shown to be strong-willed, a fierce warrior, brave; at the same time, a loyal wife, a dutiful daughter-in-law and committed to the strange circumstances of her life.

The book takes us through the various stages in Draupadi’s life – from her luxurious stay in the father’s palace to her swayamvara and wedding to the five Pandavas; from their stay in the forest to their one-year stay under disguise; from her humiliation at the hands of the Kauravas to her need for revenge; and finally the war at Kurukshetra.

The book also touches about some of the other characters in the Mahabharata such as Uttara, Shikhandi, Dhrishtadyumna, Rukmini, and, of course, Krishna. Her relationship with Karna is also portrayed beautifully in the book.

Saiswaroopa’s writing style is quite easy and free-flowing. I could almost visualize the happenings in the book as I was reading it. This is the first book of hers that I have read and I do look forward to reading her earlier books as well.

Some of the quotes that have stayed with me:
• As an emperor, he could have initiated the change in the codes that undermine dharma. The delay in consolidating that victory has taken its toll.
• If only we had realized that dealing with victory was as crucial as dealing with threats!
• I value our history and the achievements of our ancestors. But more important is the effort to be worthy of our ancestors.
• The future generations will respect those who take action. The present has to be saved for a future to exist.
• When we lay claim to what is rightfully ours, we shall stop at nothing. We shall go to any lengths in undoing the damage done till now.
• Those who change loyalties with twisted arguments of dharma and then pretend to take the moral high ground aren’t worth fighting by our side.

Do pick up this book if you are interested in the Mahabharata. It will give you a good perspective on Draupadi – a princess whose destiny was written so very different from others, but who nonetheless rose upto the challenge.

Book Review: The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel

The Library at Night is an ode to libraries worldwide - both old and new - and the author's personal library in a small village in Loire, France. The author finds great comfort in sitting in his own library at night and simply surfing through his books; "to assemble in one place our vicarious experience of the world." The book is also an ode to various books and its readers who grant books immortality - "Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth."

The book describes the library as myth, order, space, power, shadow, shape, chance, workshop, mind, island, survival, oblivion, imagination, identity and home. Some of the libraries described are Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, Le Presbytere, Bodleian Library, Centre Pompidou Library in Paris, Laurentian Library in Florence, etc. Some imaginary libraries are also mentioned such as the library of Captain Nemo, Mr. Casaubon's scholarly library in George Eliot's Middlemarch, murderous, monastic library in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, etc.

The author notes, "Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that malignant booksellers attach to the backs. These evil white scabs rip off with difficulty, leaving leprous wounds and traces of slime." While comparing paper books with electronic books, Manguel says "leafing through a book or roaming through shelves is an intimate part of the craft of reading and cannot be entirely replaced by scrolling down a screen, any more than real travel can be replaced by travelogues and 3-D gadgets." He describes the joy of a library thus "to be able to enter a place where books are seemingly numberless and available for the asking is a joy in itself."

Manguel also mentions how certain books were banned at certain points of time for various reasons - under the military regimes in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile in the 1970s, poems of Neruda and Nazim Hikmet (communists) and novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (Russians) were considered suspicious. In March 2003, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger argued that the Harry Potter books "deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly." Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, declared that the public burning of books by authors such as Heinrich Mann, Stefan Zweig, Freud, Zola, Proust, Gide, Helen Keller and H. G. Wells allowed "the soul of the German people again to express itself."

I loved reading about the history of libraries, which is, in essence, a history of the world till date. I also loved reading about the comparison between paper books and electronic books and how the two will continue to co-exist.

My only grudge - the book makes absolutely no mention of any library in India nor any Indian author. It's a little sad considering India has the most number of libraries [https://www.quora.com/Which-country-in-the-world-has-the-most-libraries-total-and-which-has-the-most-libraries-per-capita] and possibly the largest number of languages in which books are written in a single country. Truly, history that is never recorded is never narrated.

Some quotes that stayed with me:
The illusion of immortality is created by technology.

Like Nature, libraries abhor a vacuum, and the problem of space is inherent in the very nature of any collection of books.

We scorn, wrote Tacitus in the first century, the blindness of those who believe that with an arrogant act even the memory of posterity can be extinguished.

The act of reading is now condescendingly accepted as a pastime, a slow pastime that lacks efficiency and does not contribute to the common good.

The Web is an instrument. It is not to blame for our superficial concern with the world in which we live.

We alone, and not our technologies, are responsible for our losses, and we alone are to blame when we deliberately choose oblivion over recollection. The petroglyphs of our common past are fading not because of the arrival of a new technology but because we are no longer moved to read them.

The stories that ultimately reach us are but the reports of the survivors.

There is something about sitting outside in the dark that seems conducive to unfettered conversations.

Alice's bewilderment or Sinbad's curiosity reflect again and again my own emotions.

Electronic text that requires no page can amicably accompany the page that requires no electricity.

Book Review: The Man Who Saved India by Hindol Sengupta

I will admit I picked up this book purely basis the interest it generated on Twitter – I had no clue that Sardar Patel was responsible for integrating 500+ princely states into the Indian Union at the time of Independence; I am not sure if it was taught in history at school. Soviet premier Nikolai Bulganin considered the feat bigger than Bismarck’s unification of Germany.

Hindol Sengupta must be commended for writing this book and enlightening people who do not know about Sardar Patel. The book is an ode to Mr. Patel – the stellar role he played in the Congress leading up to Independence, the various negotiations he undertook during the same and the sacrifices [both personal and professional] that he made in this journey.

Each of the chapter titles is a statement made by Sardar Patel, ranging from “Gandhi is a Mahatma. I am not.” to “My life’s work is about to be over…do not spoil it.”

The book brings out so many qualities of the Iron Man of India – his pragmatism, his leadership, diplomatic and political skills, his statesmanship, his indomitable spirit, his tenacity and his absolute lack of ego.
Sardar Patel understood better than anyone else that democracy isn’t so much an everyday plebiscite but a daily judgment – the interplay of incessant retribution and reward.

The book brings out the contrast between Patel and Nehru beautifully – the former always had to give up the Congress President position in favour of the latter courtesy Mahatma Gandhi. Lord Mountbatten said, “Patel had his feet on the ground while Nehru had his in the clouds.”
Nehru was a product of the benefits of class and wealth; Patel maintained a frugal lifestyle. Nehru believed that the ideals and virtues of socialism could be used in India to bring about a revolution; Patel was critical of the socialists. He wrote, “It is very easy to organize processions of mill workers flying red flags, but I would like to ask them what purpose is served by such hustle and bustle.” Nehru had to be sent to the villages of India to understand peasant life; Patel came from that real India and did not have to go or be sent anywhere to comprehend it. [Doesn’t it seem familiar to the current political scenario in India?]

As the plague broke out in Ahmedabad in 1917, Patel [who was then the Ahmedabad municipality president] worked almost round the clock with his volunteers to help the victims and their families. He advocated the use of India’s long coast [which is finally being done now, courtesy Nitin Gadkari]. Patel announced the Government would rebuild the Somnath Temple in Gujarat.

It’s a little painful to read how Nehru decided, against Patel’s wishes, to take the Kashmir issue to the United Nations Organization, based on Mountbatten’s advice. It begs to ask what if Nehru had adhered to Patel’s wishes. Or what if, Patel had become the first Prime Minister of India.

Along with Sardar Patel, the book gives a good glimpse into some other important figures of the Indian Independence movement, including Maulana Azad, Subhash Chandra Bose, Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It makes me now read a bit more about Jinnah [hoping Hindol will do the needful!] The book also gives a good overall view of history and geography during the entire period of time.

It’s only fitting that our current Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi inaugurated the Patel statue on 31-Oct-2018, as a tribute to the Iron Man of India for creating history. After all, hadn’t Mr. Patel himself said, “Why not create history rather than waste time writing it?”

The book is a must-read; I learned so many fascinating tidbits and aspects [cannot possibly post all these as part of the review!]. It will be a book I will definitely keep going back to in the future.