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India and the COVID-19 vaccine

Posted on December 29, 2020 by ashmita

The COVID-19 vaccine: a favourite topic in the present day. When will it arrive? Why are they taking so long? And most importantly, do we really need them, or is herd immunity enough in a country like ours?

In this article we try and answer these questions, from Dr Chandrakant Lahariya, Dr Gagandeep Kang and Dr Randeep Guleria.

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India is the largest producer (by volume or number of doses) of vaccines in the world, and provides vaccines to UNICEF which then distributes them in Africa, South America and Asia. For UNICEF to buy the vaccines, the vaccines have to be pre-qualified or approved for purchase by the WHO. The WHO’s approval process relies on the fact that the country which makes the vaccines has a national regulatory authority that meets the standards laid down by the WHO. India’s CDSCO has met these criteria and ensures that the vaccines made in India are of high quality and safe. Indian vaccine manufacturers, which have grown in number and capacity since they were established decades ago, have good and long experience with manufacturing in high volumes. However, they have only recently begun modest investments in research towards new vaccines. With a population of 138 crore, India needs local and indigenous production of the COVID-19 vaccine to ensure widespread availability.

front cover till we win — Till We Win||Dr Randeep Guleria, Dr Gagandeep Kang, Dr Chandrakant Lahariya

The development and availability of the vaccine in India has been part of some of the early discussions on the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A national task force for vaccine research and development was set up in April 2020. The progress on the vaccines, both globally and in India, has been reviewed by high-level committees, and planning for delivery of the vaccines is ongoing. In early October 2020, the health minister announced a proposal to vaccinate 20 to 25 crore Indians by July 2021. In parallel with many such efforts around the world, discussions are on about the prioritization of target populations for initial vaccination.

When can we expect the first vaccine against COVID-19?

Till October 2020, six vaccines had been given limited licence in China and Russia. While a definite timeline is difficult to predict, there is a possibility that some vaccines may be available by early 2021. However, vaccination will be an ongoing process and it will be two to three years before sufficient vaccines are available to vaccinate all those in need.

There are a number of vaccines in the last stage of clinical trials, why is it taking so much time?

It is true that there are COVID-19 vaccines in phase III of clinical trials across the world, with trials starting in India. However, there are no guaranteed successes, and we need to wait for the results to know what works and what does not. If successful, the data need to be submitted to the regulatory authorities for approval. This is followed by production by one or more vaccine companies and then supply, resulting finally in availability. All these steps are expected to take some time.

What is herd immunity? Do we really need COVID-19 vaccines or is herd immunity enough?

Herd immunity is also called herd effect, community immunity, population immunity or social immunity. It is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease which happens when a defined proportion of the population has been infected and has become immune to an infection. As an increasing number of people are infected or vaccinated, the number of people who can be infected (‘susceptibles’) decreases and transmission or spread also decreases. When herd immunity is reached, it is important to note that this is a feature that works at the population level—a decrease in spread within a defined group; it is not perfect protection of all uninfected people. At the individual level, the status of immunity depends on that person’s exposure or vaccination status. This means that if a susceptible individual is no longer within the ‘herd’, then they are likely to be infected on exposure, and are not ‘immune’.

When the level of infection or vaccination that is required is calculated, then the basic reproductive rate of the virus has to be known. The higher the reproductive rate, the greater the proportion of the herd that needs to be infected or vaccinated to prevent the spread. For measles, which is very infectious, we would like to reach 95 per cent vaccination to prevent outbreaks. At this time, data from sero-surveys in India shows 7 per cent seropositivity in a national survey at the end of August but pockets of high positivity in urban areas (56 per cent in some localities in Mumbai and 51 per cent in areas of Pune and 29 per cent in Delhi). This indicates that herd immunity is still far for most of the country, and we should be looking to a vaccine for more predictable development of immunity.

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Offering insights on how India continues to fight the pandemic, their book Till We Win is a must-read for everyone. It is a book for the people, for political leaders, policymakers and physicians, with the promise and potential to transform public health in India.

Poetry in the times of things falling apart

Posted on December 29, 2020 by ashmita

Perhaps one of the most cited lines from Theodore Adorno’s Cultural Criticism and Society is “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”. Often decontextualized, it is misunderstood as a call to silence poets and artists after the events of the Holocaust. In actuality, Adorno’s reference was in fact to the very opposite – that to write poetry after the Holocaust without addressing the event, without trying to grapple with the unthinkable, was barbaric. His contestation was that art should be able (and arguably has a responsibility) to respond to its times. Poetry, before and after Auschwitz, has continued to change and save lives. Whether through the works of poets like W.H. Auden and Paul Celan who created unsettling and indelible imagery of the horrors of Nazi Germany, or Amiri Baraka and Langston Hughes’s rousing work about black identity and culture, poetry has often addressed the very impossibility of addressing some experiences. Poets have, time and again, through joys and disasters, immortalised events and the subjective experience of being alive in times of unprecedented grief or disaster.

Poetry has the tremendous capacity to shed light on the ineffable experiences to the reader. The collection Singing in The Dark is one such vehicle of experience, a composite body that speaks to and about a time that perhaps nobody anticipated. The pandemic crept upon us, unexpected, and it has altered irreversibly the dynamics of human interaction, and the relationships we share with each other, and most importantly, with nature. Over the past few years, we have seen various environmental and engineered crises, from the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Amazon fire to the cyclone Amphan and the Australian bushfires among several others. The planet seems to have become a battle zone between indigenous people who seek to preserve the lands they live on and corporations who believe anything can be bought on the clout of money.

Front cover singing in the dark — Singing in the Dark||K. Satchidanandan, Nishi Chawla

Editors Nishi Chawla and K. Satchidanandan write, ‘The anthology will well serve the purpose of capturing the anguish and the trauma, the anger and the befuddlement, as well as the hope for returning to the certainty of the world order that the pandemic has destroyed or the movement towards a more just and egalitarian world.’ As an array of poets from across the world find their works together in this anthology, perhaps the only common thread is the experience of living through a global disaster. Tragedy unites, and the pandemic has been tragic in an unimaginable number of ways. The impact of the coronavirus has been different for the privileged and non-privileged, and it has denuded the fault lines of our social fabric more starkly than ever. It remains up to us of course, to acknowledge the fact that there needs to be a radical change in the structures of the world, and that systems needs to be cleaned from the inside. Any fight for an egalitarian world will remain only theoretical unless the mantle of responsibility is picked up, and things are unstitched and restitched.

Singing in The Dark is an amalgamation of vulnerability and hope, of the dream of a world that can be better, and people who can do better, despite overwhelming evidence of the contrary. There is anger and befuddlement, and anguish and trauma. These will remain for some time, possibly even indefinitely. But poetry and art give us the opportunity to reflect on these, and on our own location within the grander scheme of the world. It pushes us to reconsider the experiential boundaries of our lives, and to reorient our understanding of how the world treats different lives differently. The pandemic forced us to confront the fact that human lives are entangled, that one person’s actions affect others in incomputable ways. Singing in The Dark too, is evidence that despite differences, human beings are not separated from each other, and cannot live insulated and isolated lives. In our experiences, in our fears, hopes, vulnerabilities, frailties and anger, there is an unbreachable commonality; maybe the idea of community is much more far-reaching than commonly believed, surpassing geopolitical boundaries, going into the heart of the very fact of being human and being alive at a time when everything seems to be falling apart.

Seven tips on raising funds like a seasoned entrepreneur

Posted on December 20, 2020December 21, 2020 by sanjeeta

The world is definitely buzzing with intrepid entrepreneurship and most of us are starting-up and striking out!

Amidst this thrilling zeitgeist though, the problem of funding remains, especially in the post-COVID-19 world, where money is scarce.

Dhruv Nath and Sushanto Mitra come to the rescue with Funding Your Startup And Other Nightmares It taking you through stories of early-stage start-ups, and their hits and misses in the journey to raise funding.

Funding Your Startup And Other Nightmares || Dhruv Nath, Sushanto Mitra

The authors also interview some of the most accomplished founders in the world of business, such as Deep Kalra of MakeMyTrip, Yashish Dahiya of PolicyBazaar, Dinesh Agarwal of IndiaMART and Sairee Chahal of SHEROES. Their stories all come together in a useful ‘PERSISTENT’ framework, which helps make a start-up investment-ready.

Read on for seven invaluable tips about the basics of funding that will help you launch straight onto entrepreneurial superstardom.

Treat your customers with the same awe you do investors, because it’s their money that is crucial for a business in the long run

Always remember, the customer’s money is much better than the investor’s money—as long as it is

coming in regularly, and is higher than your costs. Because you then have a viable business. This is especially important in the post COVID-19 world. And if you are getting the customer’s money,

you will almost certainly get the investor’s money.

While entrepreneurs are understandably concerned about giving too much of their stake away, you need to focus on what’s best for growing your business.

Well, first of all, if you need funding to grow rapidly, you need it. Do not worry too much about the valuation and the stake you are letting go. Obviously you must try and get the best deal you can, but get the funding. It’ll help you grow rapidly, and your next round can then be at a significantly higher valuation. So while you may have parted with a significant stake in the first round, you can actually get far more for a proportionately lower stake in the next round

Crises can turn investors risk-averse and more likely to insist on a lower valuation. Here is a great option to handle this

There is another interesting option. Raise the money right now, without fixing the valuation at the moment. Instead, link it to the subsequent round of funding. How does this work? Well, let’s call

this Funding Round 1. And at some stage you will be raising Funding Round 2. You could then set the valuation in Round 1 at a 20 per cent discount (or any percentage that both sides can agree to) to the

valuation arrived at in Round 2.

To create maximum impact in the least time, brevity is the name of the game! WYKM (what’s your key message- and deliver it!

One simple, key idea. Which is easy to understand, absorb and, therefore, remember. Nothing huge, not hundreds of words, or tens of ideas. One simple message—that’s it. And therefore, ladies and gentlemen, the recipient gets the message and remembers it!

Multi-tranche or staggered investments, released as you continue to meet milestones are great for start-ups looking to prove traction.

In other words, we’ll give you the money in two tranches. Based on the first tranche, let’s set a milestone. Once you meet that, we’ll release the second tranche. By the way, the second tranche could even be at a higher valuation.’ Incidentally, this is not an informal arrangement. It actually becomes part of the term sheet and ultimately the shareholder agreement.

While you’re on tenterhooks waiting for your investors to choose you, make sure you choose your investors wisely and well

More than just the money, it’s important to get it from the right investor. Someone whose thinking is aligned with yours and who is ideally passionate about the business as well. Someone who can add

value and not keep breathing down your neck asking for a quick exit.

Angel networks, gathering investments from a large number of investors are one of the best bets for start-ups and much more accessible than venture capitalists at first.

Who provides this support? Very simply, the angel network. So the network evaluates each start-up and then shortlists the ones that seem the most promising. The founders are then asked to make a presentation or pitch. After the pitch session, start-ups that investors are interested in are evaluated in further detail (unfortunately, the others go home with coffee and cookies). Finally, those that are ripe for investment are given a term sheet. Which is rather like an MoU.

Festive reads for you and your family

Posted on December 20, 2020December 20, 2020 by sumangala

It’s the most wonderful time of the year and we bet you’re looking forward to the festivities! Spread the joy with some of our handpicked selection of books to choose from. Here is a list of books from Penguin and Puffin, perfect for your little one, yourself, or as a gift for friends and family!

The Thursday Murder Club

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late?

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

Front cover — The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse || Charlie Mackesy

Enter the world of Charlie’s four unlikely friends, discover their story and their most important life lessons. The conversations of the boy, the mole, the fox and the horse have been shared thousands of times online, recreated in school art classes, hung on hospital walls and turned into tattoos.

Uparwali Chai: The Indian Art of High Tea

front cover of Uparwali Chai — Uparwali Chai || Pamela Timms

From Saffron and Chocolate Macarons to Apricot and Jaggery Upside Down Cake to a Rooh Afza Layer Cake, Uparwali Chai is an original mix of classic and contemporary desserts and savouries, reinvented and infused throughout with an utterly Indian flavour. A beautifully curated set of recipes full of nostalgic flavours and stories, this is a book every home cook will be referring to for generations to come.

An Extreme Love of Coffee

When they drink a cup of ‘magic’ coffee, Rahul and Neha are entrusted with a quest that promises to lead to great treasure. As they race from the plantations of Coorg to Japanese graveyards, they are trailed by the Yamamoto brothers-bearing grudges and carrying swords.
But will they manage to evade their Japanese assailants and find the treasure they first set out for?

Wish I Could Tell You

A disillusioned and heartbroken Anusha finds herself in the small world of WeDonate.com. Struggling to cope with her feelings and the job of raising money for charity, she reluctantly searches for a worthwhile cause to support. For Ananth, who has been on the opposite side, no life is less worthy, no cause too small to support.

They can’t escape each other. In this world of complicated relationships, should love be such a difficult ride?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End

Greg Heffley and his family hit the road for a cross-country camping trip, ready for the adventure of a lifetime. But things take an unexpected turn, and they find themselves stranded at a campsite that’s not exactly a summertime paradise. When the skies open up and the water starts to rise, the Heffleys wonder if they can save their vacation – or if they’re already in too deep.

The Puffin Mahabharata

Like a modern-day suta or storyteller, Namita Gokhale brings alive India’s richest literary treasure with disarming ease and simplicity. She retells this timeless tale of mortals and immortals and stories within stories, of valour, deceit, glory, and despair, for today’s young reader in a clear, contemporary style.

A brilliant series of evocative and thoughtful illustrations by painter and animator Suddhasattwa Basu brings the epic to life in a vibrant visual feast.

A Girl Like That

Sixteen-year-old Zarin Wadia is the kind of girl that parents warn their kids to stay away from. You don’t want to get involved with a girl like that, they say. After a tragic encounter her story is pieced together, told through multiple perspectives, and it becomes clear that she was far more than just a girl like that. This beautifully written debut novel from Tanaz Bhathena reveals a rich and wonderful new world to readers; tackles complicated issues of race, identity, class and religion; and paints a portrait of teenage ambition, angst and alienation that feels both inventive and universal.

Tharoorosaurus

Shashi Tharoor is the wizard of words. In Tharoorosaurus, he shares fifty-three examples from his vocabulary: unusual words from every letter of the alphabet. You don’t have to be a linguaphile to enjoy the fun facts and interesting anecdotes behind the words! Be ready to impress-and say goodbye to your hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia!

Get moving into a healthy life

Posted on November 25, 2020 by ashmita

‘Movement is the cure’

– Shwetambari Shetty

‘I’ve trained with many people who completely turned around their circumstances once they started incorporating exercise they enjoyed in their fitness regime’, writes Shwetambari Shetty. Her book, Get Moving!, is, among other things, a curation of the ways of fitness. The focus of her exercises, and the broader driving philosophy is that the human body is made for movement; it is in its natural habitat when moving. In her book, Shetty also details how exercise, diet and fitness routines have helped people with lifestyle diseases, and she explains the impact of physical movement on some of these medical conditions:

Diabetes

Regular exercise keeps blood glucose levels low, and Shetty says that a brisk 45-minute walk for 5–6 days a week is a great start. If yoga or weight training is added to the routine, it enhances the benefits. Weight gain in diabetes is most likely due to inactivity, and a well-planned diet with reduced sugar intake can help reduce excess fat. Taking the stairs instead of the lift, watering the plants instead of assigning it to someone else, doing the dishes instead of using a dishwasher or walking to the grocery store instead of taking your car are small changes that can have a big positive impact on our health.

Thyroid

A modified diet should be accompanied by training 4 to 6 times a week. Patients with hypothyroidism can boost their metabolism through exercise, but intense activities can cause fatigue. The key here is to choose medium- to low-intensity workouts. Combining cardio and light weight training is a constructive change, in addition to functional training and circuit training without heavy lifting. If this not possible, brisk walking once or twice a day can clock in 10,000 to 12,000 steps daily, and is a good substitute.

front cover Get Moving — Get Moving!||Shwetambari Shetty

PCOS/D

Working out regularly stabilizes the hormone levels in the body, and helps manage PCOS/D more easily. Walking, running, dancing, rowing, boxing and exercising on the cross trainer or treadmill are all great. Another good option is cycling, which works the abs and burns a lot of calories. Swimming also works as great strength and cardio training. Combining it with a bit of light weight training protects the muscle mass and make fat burn more effective.

Arthritis

People with arthritis should avoid processed food (especially sugar) as it causes inflammation and bloating. Bone broths, on the other hand, are extremely beneficial. In addition to diet, the focus in terms of exercise should be on strengthening the muscles around the joints. Stronger muscles help mitigate the pain and increase the range of motion, delaying stiffness, allowing you to keep exercising and managing the condition better. Water-based activities such as water walking (if you can’t swim) are much safer and less painful. They build resistance, help gain strength and burn calories in the process. Aerobics, dance, weightlifting and squats too can be done more easily in water.

A lot of the conditions described are amplified by a sedentary lifestyle, and therefore, consistent activity throughout the day is a good way to keep the symptoms at bay. Lifestyle diseases do not preclude people from working out; it only means that the workouts need to be tailored in such a way that they address the specific problems at hand. Movement, as a rule of thumb, is the best way to avoid these conditions from getting out of control, allowing us more manageable and healthy lifestyles, where nothing is an impediment.

Up close with Krishna Udayasankar

Posted on November 25, 2020 by ashmita

If you just cannot get enough of The Cowherd Prince, you are not alone. Krishna Udayasankar’s prequel to the bestselling novel Govinda is a thrilling insight into the world of Govinda before he became the master strategist of The Mahabharata. We had a chat with the author and it was an absolute delight!

We hear you’re a science fiction buff. Who are your favourite writers in the genre?

KU: I was a huge fan of Isaac Asimov as a child and teenager. I mean, I still am, but it’s difficult to say that now without asking myself questions about separating the art from the artist – after the allegations of harassment against Asimov. But I can’t stop liking what I’ve liked all these years, I can’t change the fact that I love the books and have been influenced greatly by them. So yes…

You characterise your protagonist Govinda very carefully. You have also said that consent is one of the most important things to learn from Govinda. What would you say is the importance of looking at mythological characters from a more contemporary lens?

KU: Fiction is a device by which we look at the world around us, all the more so for genres that deal with alternate worlds, like myth and history or fantasy. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that good fiction is always a commentary on the way the world is. When it comes to mythology, I believe that becomes even more important because it is a two-way thing – the way we understand our past, the way we believe things happened, are fundamental parts of how society functions in the present. And if we want to question our present or examine it, then we also need to examine our understanding of myth or the pre-historic past – all the more so because for a large part of our society, myth is the bedrock of defining good and bad, right and wrong.

front cover the cowherd prince — The Cowherd Prince||Krishna Udayasankar

We also hear that you hate spinach. If abandoned on a deserted island with only spinach to eat, which three books would you take with you?

KU: Haha! Since I would not eat a book or tear it up even if I were starving, I assume the question is which books can make the spinach go down easier? Traditionally, it would be Amar Chitra Kathas – since those were the spinach-y books of my childhood. But now my list would be: My entire Calvin and Hobbes collection, Kalki’s Ponniyin Selvan and Asimov’s Foundation series. And maybe I’d try to sneak in Lord of the Rings too? And The Jungle Book. And … wait a minute, three books? I can survive on spinach but I can’t survive on only three books.

What are you reading now? What book are you excited to read next?

KU: I am re-reading Martha Well’s Murderbot novellas in anticipation of reading her latest – a full Murderbot novel next.

What is your favourite thing about being a writer?

KU: Hanging out with some amazing (imaginary) people. Living in other worlds. Travelling to places I have never been, vicariously doing things I can’t dream of doing otherwise in this lifetime (whether it’s flying a fighter jet or whipping up a six-course meal!) And of course, one of the best parts of being a writer is getting to share these experiences with readers – who often become friends.

How do you battle writer’s block?

KU: I don’t battle it, not anymore! All I do is show up every day, even if that means I’m doing nothing other than stare at a blank page. But that is when I am writing. I often go for months without writing, particularly between books. I’ve learnt that imagining new worlds, new stories is one of the best parts of writing (other than playing with words). I tell myself now, that its ok to do that, and the story will come to me when it has to.

What is your writing process like? Are you a planner, or do you wing it, or is there a third customized method that works for you?

KU: I’m a mix of planned, chaotic and downright clueless. I think I try different methods at different points on time in a book – usually winging it when I begin, then stepping back to plan a little bit, then just being instinctive about it again. I also work on multiple books, sometimes, so I could be following different processes at once. Like I said, clueless and chaotic!

Krishna Udayasankar’s The Cowherd Prince is captivating and will keep you reading well into the early hours of the morning.

5 innovative insights to get started with your start-up!

Posted on November 23, 2020 by swara

Startups have changed the world. In the United States, many startups, such as Tesla, Apple, and Amazon, have become household names. The economic value of startups has doubled since 1992 and is projected to double again in the next fifteen years.

As venture capitalist Alexandre Lazarow shows in this insightful and instructive book, this Silicon Valley ‘gospel’ is due for a refresh–and it comes from what he calls the ‘frontier,’ the growing constellation of startup ecosystems, outside of the Valley and other major economic centers, that now stretches across the globe. The frontier is a truly different world where startups often must cope with political or economic instability and lack of infrastructure, and where there might be little or no access to angel investors, venture capitalists, or experienced employee pools.

Here’s a glimpse into some of these insights for all you future entrepreneurs!

Learn from the microfinance industry

‘In [the industry’s] early days, a key insight was that the poor were creditworthy borrowers. By placing borrowers into groups with a sense of strong social accountability and shared responsibility on the loans’ repayment, microfi nance lenders found that repayment rates were high.

But this insight was also the biggest challenge: the in-person nature of putting people in groups, making regular visits to collect money, and maintaining deep customer engagement is expensive. Companies like Tala, Branch International, and Safaricom’s own M-Shwari now offer consumer loans, relying entirely on the mobile money platform.’

Front cover of Out-Innovate — Out-Innovate || Alexandre Lazarow

Create rather than disrupt

‘Timbo Drayson founded OkHi, a technology-driven startup that creates addresses where there are none. OkHi’s mission statement is “Be Included.”

Creators do three fundamental things simultaneously. First, they offer a product or service that solves an unserved, acute pain point in the formal economy. Second, Creators offer a solution for the mass market. Finally, Creators are focused on game-changing innovations that fundamentally rethink a market and a sector.’

Raise a camel, not a unicorn

‘The growth-at-all-cost model simply does not translate to the realities of the Frontier. Instead of the unicorn, then, I propose the camel as the more appropriate mascot. Camels live in and adapt to multiple climates. They can survive without food or water for months. Their humps, primarily composed of fat, protect them from the desert’s scorching heat. When they do find water, they can rehydrate faster than any other animal.15 Camels are not imaginary creatures living in fictitious lands. They are resilient and can survive in the harshest places on earth.

Signing up for Silicon Valley’s unicorn-hunting strategy is a bit like mortgaging your home to buy three new homes. If things go well and the market moves in the right direction, then the rewards are massive. Facebook’s eye-watering returns for investors are a case in point. Yet this approach also increases the likelihood of losing everything.’

Build A-teams, don’t hire just A-players

‘…in Silicon Valley, companies and employees see their relationships as short-term affairs. Retention rates are among the lowest in the United States. More than 13 percent of staff turn over every year, and in certain job categories like user design, the rate is well above 20 percent, which translates to short employee tenure.

Frontier Innovators […] use fi ve key strategies to build and scale top teams. They test candidates for behavior and capabilities, develop a proprietary talent pipeline, leverage global distributed options, take a growth mindset to retention and training, and think critically about compensation and perks.’

Cross-pollinate

‘Frontier Innovators […] cross-pollinate. They leverage diverse lived experiences, often across multiple geographies, industries, and sectors, to build their businesses. They tap global networks for capital and resources.

At the Frontier, a typical innovator’s lived experience is longer and spans geographies, sectors, and industries. This diversity in experience explains the issues they choose to tackle and the unique approaches they employ.’

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With rich and wide-ranging stories of frontier innovators from around the world, Out-Innovate is the new playbook for innovation–wherever it has the potential to happen.

Decoding Amartya Sen – the man, the economist, the visionary

Posted on November 18, 2020November 18, 2020 by vanyajaiswal

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen is one of the world’s best-known voices for the poor and the downtrodden, and an inspiration for the proponents of justice across the globe. He has contributed almost without peer to the study of economics, philosophy and politics, transforming social choice theory, development economics, ethics, political philosophy and Indian political economy, to list but a few. In How to Read Amartya Sen, Lawrence Hamilton provides an excellent, accessible guide to the full range of Sen’s writings, contextualizing his ideas and summarizing the associated debates. In elegant prose, Hamilton reconstructs Sen’s critiques of the major philosophies of his time, assesses his now-famous concern for capabilities as an alternative for thinking about poverty, inequality, gender discrimination, development, democracy and justice, and unearths some overlooked gems.

Today, we are sharing with you some interesting insights from the book on Amartya Sen that would strengthen your understanding of him as not just as an economist, but also as a deeply sensitive man and a visionary par excellence.

1) The man

‘For many years, Sanskrit was Sen’s second language, after Bengali, and he could read classical, Vedic and epic Sanskrit. This fascination with the language and literature of Sanskrit also balanced and complemented his acumen in mathematics. Both of these important skills have been readily apparent ever since in his academic work, often side by side in the same volume.’

‘Sen is also a child of the Bengal famine and Indian Partition. He experienced at first-hand as a nine-year old boy the horrors of the Bengal famine of 1943, as he did a little later the horrors of communal violence of Partition. In a number of places in his academic and non-academic work, he tells the story of how, during the sectarian tensions and violence that accompanied Partition, a Muslim man, a poor day-labourer, was attacked by a gang in his mainly Hindu area. The man was still alive as he stumbled into Sen’s childhood home; the now slightly older boy helped organize to have him sent to hospital. Unfortunately, he did not survive. Not only does Sen use this story to illustrate his oft-repeated and convincing point about the dangers of sectarianism and dogmatic community and identity-based thinking, but also that, despite his wife imploring him not to go into Hindu areas in this period fearing for her husband’s life, this poor man felt impelled to do so as he was the breadwinner for his family and could get work nowhere else.’

2) The economist

‘First, despite his training in the mainstream of strait-laced post-Second World War economics, in exemplary fashion he grasped the opportunities provided to him and schooled himself in the main currents of contemporary philosophy. This gave him a much broader and more capacious view of the assumptions of the ‘dismal science’ of economics, the main shibboleths of which would be his targets for years to come…. in line with two of his greatest forebears and two of the political economists upon whom he draws most, Adam Smith and Karl Marx, he has done all he can to understand the main problems and issues in economics from the perspective of a broader ethical concern: improving the quality of life of all.’

‘Second, especially in his work on famines, but also right across his many contributions in other areas, such as development, freedom, justice and democracy, Sen has always immersed his reader in his deep and broad knowledge of theory, while never tiring of supporting his claims and arguments with relevant empirical facts.’

‘Sen’s theoretical and practical proposals based on his version of capability value the agency of individuals in and of itself – as constitutive of a life worth living – and because they tend to produce better overall effects in development projects.’

front cover of How to Read Amartya Sen — How to Read Amartya Sen || Lawrence Hamilton

3) The Visionary

‘While…Sen is first and foremost a man of letters (and numbers), he has also been involved in a number of practical projects that have changed the way the world thinks about and carries out a number of important and pressing matters, particularly as regards development. In fact, it is his work for and criticisms of large international bodies such as the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank (the Bank), and many others besides, that has broadened his appeal and fame, along with his associated practical contributions to, for example, global attempts to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality.’

‘Sen has provided new ways of conceiving of development, as well as new tools for measuring it and its component parts: famine, poverty, inequality, growth, freedom and so on.’

‘Sen’s view of freedom is much richer than is the norm in a great deal of economic, development, philosophical and political theoretical literature: it encompasses both the requisites for individuals to make their own individual choices and the social, economic and political means for individuals to exert the necessary democratic power within and beyond their own societies.’

Six steps you need to follow to make your life a celebration

Posted on November 18, 2020 by vanyajaiswal

The universe has bestowed limitless powers and infinite siddhis on the human consciousness. Along with being effective and successful in the personal and professional spheres, the purpose of human life is also to ensure the complete blossoming of the individual consciousness. In Celebrating Life, Rishi Nityapragya shares the secrets that can help you explore your infinite potential. He offers an in-depth understanding of how to identify and be free from negative emotions and harmful tendencies, and how to learn to invoke life’s beautiful flavours-like enthusiasm, love, compassion and truth-whenever and wherever you want.

Here are the only six steps that you need to follow and inculcate in your life to become a master of your circumstances and lead a more meaningful and fulfilled life.

1) Play of universal consciousness

‘As science translates its findings into practical use, to make life more comfortable and convenient, spirituality is about beautifying the human consciousness and making it blossom.’

‘As there are laws governing the physical universe, there are specific laws according to which the human consciousness functions.’

2) Extraordinary Powers, Siddhis, of Your Individual Consciousness

‘Nature has bestowed limitless powers upon the human consciousness. The more you understand the technicalities, the scientific aspects of your consciousness, the more you realize that you already have all the abilities necessary to create the quality of life that you want.’

‘In the domain of consciousness, like attracts like.’

‘The way people relate to you is largely a reflection of your own mind.’

3) Meticulous Refinement of Your Own Consciousness

‘Through optimum utilization of the instruments given to you by the nature of body-breath-mind-intellect-memory and ego; through your Committed Skilful Efforts you have the opportunity of tremendously accelerating the process of evolution of your own consciousness.’

‘Inherently, you already have all the powers necessary to create the life that you want. You are not designed to be a slave of circumstances; you are designed to be the master of situations.

front cover of Celebrating Life — Celebrating Life || Rishi Nityapragya

4) Being Free from All Bondages, Negativities and Harmful Tendencies

‘The incoming breath energizes the body, provides vital force and supports the soul so that it continues to live in the physical form; the outgoing breath removes impurities from the body and empties your individual consciousness. The secret is, the more empty, the more free the mind is, the more happy it is and more available it is to do anything that you want to do with it.’

5) Optimizing the Golden Opportunity of Being in the Human Body

‘Every individual soul is giving these three precious instruments—of time-energy-mind—to the activities of their own lives. …though time and energy are extremely precious instruments of your life, it is the mind that plays the whole game. It is the mind that gives direction to your time and energy as well.’

‘Neither is Maya designed to give you higher insights, nor is it meant to enhance your energies or offer you any happiness. On the contrary, it is guaranteed to waste your precious time, drain your most valuable energy and is destined to contaminate your pleasant, happy mind.’

6) Designing Your Life

‘Your emotions, your choices, your actions, your decisions, your happiness, your Dharma, the blossoming of your consciousness, all of it is your own responsibility.’

‘The more you become an instrument in the process of someone’s learning, the more you teach, the more you learn.’

Emotion, energy exploration and a little love

Posted on November 3, 2020February 26, 2021 by vanyajaiswal

A new normal has replaced the established order. Distant relationships, virtual work, blurred futures and measuring our way back to this reality occupy us every day. Negotiating these changes, Sanil Sachar’s And… Perhaps Love will work as your companion. It is a silent observer for when you want to read it, and a patient listener when you wish to communicate with it. Capturing the ideas of love, darkness and the attempt to find balance in life, this is a book for now and forever.

Today, we have with us Sanil Sachar, the author of this poetic expedition into the realms of love, sharing with us how the book came into being.

By Sanil Sachar

Love is often romanticised and put on a pedestal

When we think of love, stereotypically, we think of songs with background dancers, serenaded surrounding, flowers blooming, and what not! Why not think of love in ways that don’t put such immense pressure on it? How about love as the reason to feel dismay? Love as the tool to success and failure? Love is more than just a feeling, it is a way of life.

Love is associated almost a hundred percent with people

front cover of And...Perhaps Love — And…Perhaps Love || Sanil Sachar

When we think of love, we subconsciously associate people with it. When we think of passion, we think of an endeavour. When we think of places, we think of escape. Now, the passion to do something and the feeling of calmness and escape are, in truth, enhanced by the same parts of our body that fuel the feeling of love. So, the next time when someone says love, weigh your options because they all might hold the same weight. In fact, if one diminishes, it directly impacts the other, so hold on to love, in all forms.

Love is given too much responsibility

What is love? Energy. What does energy do? It gets passed on. Who passes on this energy? We, the humans, do. What happens when energy isn’t passed on correctly? Well, love is not passed on. So, who is to blame? Love or us, the people? You see, we make love responsible for much more than it is capable of on its own. It is given too much responsibility, just so we can pass ours onto it. In truth, we aren’t let down by love, we let love down.

To prevent this from happening, we need to acknowledge love in all its avatars.

Books can speak too and they have a lot to share

When we read, we are inspired to speak, write and communicate. To make this experience come to life, it was critical to write in a manner that is uncommon. A book with spaces, in order to make it seem less naked, needed words that were left undone, unless it inspired the reader to fill the remaining spaces with their experiences. Utilising all forms of literature, with a sequencing leading to several endings to the book, helped establish that books can speak too. They have a lot to share and the best bit about them is, we can say anything we want to them and they don’t tell anyone.

Researched the hardest subject on earth, love

I believe And… Perhaps Love when read in the correct permutation by each reader is biographical in nature, simply because hundreds of minds led to what is penned within. Over the course of my writing, I have researched subjects through facts, figures and here, the research is inspired by feelings and facts of lives that I met over a conversation shared between strangers, or those that are now strangers.

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