Books on law woo students and advocates

What is the difference between the Lokpal Bill and the Jan Lokpal Bill? What is Indian Penal Code? What does Article 1 of the Indian Constitution state? The answers to these above questions were found at a book stall put up in the Ninth Book Fair currently underway at the Moti Mahal Lawns, Lucknow.

Right from books dealing with the Constitution of India to the glossary of legal terms, all are available here. "We want to create legal awareness at the grass root level. People should know the basic laws and its implementation, so that no one fools them," said Paul Jacob of Indian Social Institute (ISI). In fact, this is the only stall in the fair that has books on law. Organisers have been trying to catch hold of other publishers since the past nine years, but have failed badly.

"We have been consistently trying to woo law publishers to participate in the fair. But they cite reasons such as deficit in sale," said Dev Raj Arora and Umesh Dhall, the organisers. This year, they approached Eastern Book Company and various publishers from Allahabad but all refused to come. Reason: These publishers have a fixed target, which they fail to get in the book fair.

Full report here Times of India 

Shahryar awarded 44th jnanpith

Justu-ju jiski thi usko toa na paaya hamne, is bahane se magar dekh li duniya hamne...” (What I longed for, was never mine, but on this pretext, I beheld the world...)”

These spine-tingling lines from the movie Umrao Jaan by Muzaffar Ali in 1981 still cut through to both heart and soul of a listener. The writer of these living lines — Akhlaq Mohammad Khan Shahryar — has unleashed his formidable power and control over words all through his life as an Urdu writer, a lyricist and an academician.

Mr Shahryar, who was awarded the 44th Jnanpith Award for the year 2008 in the national capital on Sunday by superstar Amitabh Bachchan, lyricist Gulzar and Cabinet minister M. Veerappa Moily, has maintained a conscious balance between tradition and modernity. “He expresses modern thought...with a new style but maintains a continuity of tradition.,” Dr Moily said. Mr Shahryar said, “Humans always try to maintain a balance between material and spiritual progress. Thank God we live in a world which at least as of now values emotions... there still exists a bond between humans. Art has a role to play in this world and I am glad to be part of it.” Born on June 16, 1936 in Anwala, Bareilly, he obtained his Ph.D in Urdu from AMU.

Full report here Asian Age

Chetan Bhagat on his new book

Seven years ago an Indian investment banker penned a story of three friends at the Indian Institute of Technology, one of the country’s top schools. Soon after, the book became a best seller, hugely popular among India’s college crowd. Same thing happened a year later, when he published his second novel, this time on the life of call center employees .

The books were Five Point Someone (2004) and One Night @ the Call Center (2005). The former banker is Chetan Bhagat, an author credited with having helped extend the reach of literature to a broader audience in India. While some critics initially brushed off his success as mere fluke, his lasting popularity proved them wrong. Among the country’s teenagers and twenty-somethings, he is little short of a youth icon. Last year, he even made it in Time magazine’s list of “100 Most Influential People in the World.”

His books have gone on to become Bollywood hits, the most successful of which has been “3 Idiots,” a blockbuster inspired by his first novel starring Aamir Khan.

After tackling the sensitive topic of the Gujarat riots in The 3 Mistakes of My Life, (2008) and inter-communal marriages in his 2 States, Mr. Bhagat’s fifth book is set for release in October.

Full report here WSJ

Insights from an insider

In his latest book, this banker questions the functioning of the corporate sector and believes the ends are becoming far more important than the means

Mumbai-based banker Ravi Subramanian’s third book, The Incredible Banker, will be released this week. The last in his trilogy of banking chronicles—after If God was a Banker (2007) and Devil in Pinstripes (2009—The Incredible Banker is set in a foreign bank and tells the story of two employees who get embroiled in “dirty” corporate politics and become scapegoats.

An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Subramanian is the president and CEO (non-chit) of Shriram Group. He has worked with various multinational banks, including Citibank, ANZ Grindlays Bank and HSBC, in a career span of more than 18 years.

His next book project is likely to be more of a family-oriented story about three generations of a south Indian family. In a phone interview, Subramanian spoke to us about the existing corporate culture in India, where it is headed and why, and his new book. Edited excerpts:

What is ‘The Incredible Banker’ about?

This book, like my previous books, is set in a foreign bank. It’s about how two people, trying to be one-up, play with each other’s careers, and in the process, how the organization as a whole suffers. It’s also about how people external to the organization actually make use of such conflicts.

I’ve attempted to ask pertinent questions about the functioning of corporates in India. For instance, many MNCs in India have foreign CEOs. Do we really need them when we’re so rich with talent? I also want to put across the message that even if you have the best policies and processes in place, if the people behind those are compromised, then nothing would work.

About the storyline, the two protagonists are Deepak and Karan, who work in an American bank called Boston Global. They enter into a conflict with each other, try to settle old scores, Karan eventually leaves and joins a media firm that exposes the big scam. But finally Karan realizes that Deepak was innocent, yet suffered as a consequence of the exposé.

Full interview here Mint

Jnanpith presented to Shaheryar

Legendary Urdu poet and academician Prof Shaheryar was on Sunday presented India's highest literary honour — the Jnanpith Award — for the year 2008.

Presenting the award, Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan said, "Like Rahi Massom Raza, Shaheryar also believed in breaking the imaginary wall between Hindi and Urdu. He is a real mascot of Hindi-Urdu culture."

In the form of songs in 'Fasle', 'Anjuman', 'Gaman' and 'Umrao Jaan', Shaheryar has given unique gift to the film industry, Bachchan said. "Today I feel honoured because I got the opportunity to give this prize to Shaheryar sahab," the veteran actor said.

Full report here Times of India 

Hitting the bull's eye

Chetan Bhagat seems like a guy you can hang out with. He's quick with a joke, is refreshingly honest, and has a sincerity that makes him hard to miss. Don't be fooled by his light-hearted banter, his casual choice of words; underneath this animated 37-year old, lies a revolutionary and a rebel who broke the rule of the publishing industry - a million copy sold was almost unheard of before him; and changed the game of Indian literature - he was a techie and an investment banker before he took to writing books. In his own words, he'll "never win a Man's Booker Prize," but he'll always be a loved by a million readers. He prophases change and seems driven enough to bring one himself. He's fearless and flamboyant all at once. Here's more on the high octane Q&A session at the India Today Mind Rocks Youth Summit 2011.

Chetan Bhagat is often known to be marketing-driven person, which leads to better sales of his novels. Do you agree?
I have always had a fondness for marketing as a profession and a discipline. In fact, India has a long way to go when it comes to marketing its products: say, tourism. But then again, it's not just about advertising, promotions, and the frills; it's most importantly about the product. It's that what you're selling. I don't have a marketing budget; I launch my book at a shopping mall. My marketing starts and ends with the book. My sales force is my readers.

Full report here India Today

Likeable in some ways

The goodness of the good Indian girl is a badge of sorts. Or, as the cover of Annie Zaidi and Smriti Ravindra’s The Bad Boy’s Guide to the Good Indian Girl suggests, a tacky sparkly medallion. As the authors emphasize in their introduction, “good” here “does not mean the opposite of bad”; merely the set of behaviour considered desirable in an Indian girl.

What Zaidi and Ravindra explore in this collection of loosely connected (several characters and names appear in more than one) stories is not the oppressive nature of this set of desirable qualities, but the ways in which women can transgress them and still retain the Good Indian Girl (or GIG) tag. The result is a book of surprisingly subversive tales in which girls interact with men, climb down rope ladders (“BIG Girls”), flirt and draw back (“Strangers”), cut themselves (“Out of Here”), are nervous and afraid around men but simultaneously willing to play along (“Finger Play”) and manipulate their perceived goodness for their own ends (“Daddy’s Girls”). They are less about emphasizing the restrictions placed on Indian women than they are about how women use and test them. The “GIGs” in these stories have agency and they use it.

Full review here Mint

Elegant but limited

Aatish Taseer’s latest novel, Noon, despite being a slim and incredibly easy book to read, is not an easy one to describe. It is composed of four unequal parts, each longer than the last, with a prologue and epilogue. All the sections are bound together by the presence of Rehan Tabassum, the child of an Indian Sikh woman and a Pakistani Muslim father (similar to Taseer’s own life), although some sections are from his first-person perspective, and others from a third-person perspective.

Through the four stories of Noon, a reader follows Rehan from his early childhood all the way to the present day. A reader is walked through an evolving, triangular relationship between Rehan, his mother and his grandmother; the changing social dynamics between India’s new business elite and the decay of its old, compromised feudal lords; an investigation into a robbery; and finally the power play within a politically and economically powerful family in Pakistan. Closely observed, and finely told, the stories have atmosphere and resonance.

Full report here Mint

The algebra of infinite crises

Why has DC Comics restarted its storylines? A comics nerd explains why ‘The Man of Steel’ is getting a suit of armour

For the last three months, Internet users everywhere had their newsfeeds bombarded with articles which read like The Onion mated awkwardly with MAD magazine, producing a baby obsessed with superhero fashion.

Normals among these readers wondered incredulously about the sudden flood of worldwide interest in whether Wonder Woman needs pants or Superman rocks his briefs.

But nerds knew what was coming. Boy, did we know. You see, it’s happened three times in the last 25 years. Only this time, they’re serious. DC Comics has destroyed the universe. Again.

Full report here Mint

Flipkart moves fast

Several months ago, when Prabhu Kumar could not find a book he wanted in bookstores here, he found it online at Amazon.com for $10. But he had to pay more than $9 in fees to have Amazon ship it to him.

Kumar, a software programmer, said he would not be doing that again. He now shops on India's answer to Amazon - FlipKart.com - which delivers books, phones and other items in as little as 24 hours at no extra cost. Kumar doesn't have to pay FlipKart a single rupee until a courier bearing his books arrives at his door. He can then hand over cash or a credit card.

"I think it perfectly fits the Indian mentality," Kumar.

While dozens of electronic commerce firms have recently sprung up to capitalize on India's growing Internet use, they have a problem. Indians are not yet comfortable with shopping on the Web. Many of them remain unwilling to use credit cards online. So the Indian retailers have gone to great lengths to gain customers. Customers may pay in cash on delivery, and the company fields delivery squads to ensure shipments get to customers quickly.

Full report here Economic Times

A date with Tagore and his women

Rabindranath Tagore - a poet, writer, playwright, composer and philosopher worshipped by millions - was also a man heavily influenced by the fascinating women who were part of his life.

“Gender and social issues in the works of Rabindranath Tagore” was the topic of discussion at a function organised here on Wednesday by the All-India Women's Conference to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of the Nobel laureate. Lok Sabha member and chief guest Girija Vyas inaugurated the event with singer Jayati Ghosh setting the mood for the rest of the day.

“Tagore grew up with his 14 siblings in his family's Jorasanko mansion, his family were extremely rich upper-caste Pirali Brahmins and the women who married into the family were often very young, uneducated and overwhelmed by the intellectual and social superiority of the Tagore household but almost all of them educated themselves to be worthy and equal of the Tagore men,” said Ms. Aruna Chakravarti who talked in detail about the women who looked after Tagore in his early life and formed the bridges to his later success.

Full report here Hindu

Writer with a royal lineage

Princess Aswathi Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi has authored books on the Padmanabha Swamy and Travancore temples, culture and heritage.

The palatial building, with its gigantic pillars and imposing veranda, lies in the heart of Adyar. In a city whose physical and cultural contours are changing every hour, the structure, showing signs of age, is a reminder of a past era. I am here at the palace to interview Princess Aswathi Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi, niece of the late Maharaja Chithira Thirunal Rama Varma and his brother, Sri Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma, the present head of the royal House of Travancore.

Sri Marthanda Varma won widespread admiration for renouncing the claim of the royal family to the enormous riches discovered recently in the Sri Padmanabha Swamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram. The Travancore rulers, the hereditary trustees of the temple, have considered themselves as rulers on behalf of the Lord for hundreds of years.

Full report here Hindu

Beaning the bean counter

Have you ever been tempted to strangle your CFO? Desist. Instead ask your CFO to read Everything You Know About Business is Wrong and to start practising it. If he fails to do either, you can justifiably strangle him.

Alastair Dryburgh, of course, intends his book for a general corporate audience – not just for people in Finance – but his own training as a chartered accountant, followed by years of experience in the commercial functions, makes him particularly adept at identifying the sclerosis a traditional accounting mindset can bring to the best of organisations. Dryburgh displays a practitioner’s insight when he identifies the tension that exists between a Finance Director’s job as Head of Control and Compliance (“Produce the basic accounts. Make sure customers pay when they should. Prevent people spending money they shouldn’t …”) and a Finance Director’s job as a Business Partner (“How can I help this organisation make more money?”). Most of the shibboleths Dryburgh trashes are associated with atavistic accountants but that does not prevent his treatment from being amusing and instructive for the general business reader.

Take, for instance, the first commandment of the accountant’s Decalogue: to cut costs. Dryburgh demonstrates, with logic and illustrations, why making a religion of cost-cutting is not only an inadequate answer to the fundamental question of how to improve profits, but is in fact frequently counterproductive for meeting the goal of raising profits. As Dryburgh puts it, “… getting rid of the corporate jet is … cost saving. Reducing capital expenditure or research and development is sacrificing the future of the company to the immediate short term.”

Full report here Business Standard

R.K. Narayan's family to be compensated

Family happy over move to declare house a heritage monument

R.K. Narayan's family has expressed happiness over the Karnataka government's decision to declare the late writer's house in Mysore a heritage monument, said Minister for Urban Development S. Suresh Kumar in a statement on Wednesday.

Narayan's granddaughter Bhuvaneswari Sreenivasamurthy and her husband K. Sreenivasamurthy called on the Minister in the Vidhana Soudha here.

“As they live in Chennai, they expressed their inability to maintain the house in Mysore,” the statement said.

Mr. Kumar said he assured the family that the government would offer them an alternative housing site in Mysore or compensate them monetarily, and a decision to this effect would be announced soon. The family and experts would be consulted when the building, to be named Malgudi, would be restored.

“The Minister was very cordial and promised that he would take all efforts to protect the legacy of my grandfather,” Ms. Sreenivasamurthy told The Hindu.

Full report here Hindu

Engrossed

Of the things that unite South Asians, a love of words and an alacrity with language are often noted. While the book trade struggles in much of the world, Kathmandu is the latest city in the region to launch an annual literary festival, which begins on September 16th. Big-name international writers will be there, as well as dozens from Nepal’s own energetic literary scene. Several thousand Nepali bibliophiles, most of them young, are expected to attend three days of fizzing discussion.

The fashion for literary gatherings in South Asia spread from the Jaipur festival in India, founded on a shoestring in 2006 and now a huge international success. Pakistan, where the Karachi Literature Festival had its second outing this year, showcases relatively young but internationally liked authors. Bhutan, Galle in Sri Lanka, and Goa and Trivandrum in India have joined in. But a new annual festival in Srinagar, capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, has just been postponed indefinitely after threats of violence and a perverse campaign by some authors who argued that it was wrong to talk about books in a place where liberties were curtailed.

Full report here Economist

Faiz was against class system: Shaam

The second day of the international conference on Faiz Ahmed Faiz concluded here at Jinnah Medical and Dental College on Wednesday.

The proceedings were started with the recitation of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai’s poetry by the mystics of shrines.

In the morning session speakers read out their papers on literary services of Faiz and eulogised his various roles besides being a poet, as a trade unionist, a versatile columnist and an editor of two newspapers.

The session was presided over by renowned journalist Mahmood Shaam. While addressing the session Shaam pointed out that Faiz was against class system.

Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) Executive Director Karamat Ali said in his address that Faiz was the only true revolutionary poet of sub-continent. He continued that Faiz was a great preacher of world peace. He pointed out that despite abject poverty, illiteracy and militancy in India and Pakistan, both countries were in the race of making more and more nuclear weapons and missiles.

Full report here Daily Times

City writer bags Rajiv Gandhi Award

The State has again a reason to rejoice as local talents are making a mark at the national level by dint of their achievements. City talent Amit Kumar has won the Rajiv Gandhi Award for his book Globalisation and India.

Kumar was given this prestigious award at the Vigyan Bhawan by the President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil on Wednesday. A resident of Ratu Road, Kumar wrote his book last year and it was published by Satyam Publishing House. In the book, the impact of globalisation on the country has been discussed from different angles. The advanced effects of globalisation can be better learnt by reading this book.

Amit was interested in writing since childhood. He studied in Shradhanand Bal Mandir. Amit is now posted in a Uttar Pradesh college as lecturer.

Full report here Pioneer

‘I’m not looking for revenge’

After meeting chief minister Omar Abdullah on Wednesday, the journalist and writer David Devadas told this newspaper, “I’m not looking for revenge.”

All he wanted is that there should be a system of justice working in the state. “That may be idealistic, but that is what one aspires for,” he added. In a letter to the CM, Mr Devdas has accused the police of abusing and badly beating him up after a mix-up at peak traffic hour on September 5.

In a letter to the Chief Justice of India, Mr Devdas narrated his first hand experience at the hands of the J&K police and spoke of “attempts to fabricate the sequence of events that led to my being bodily battered”. He also wrote, “I now fear for my life."

The chief minister has asked him to remain in Kashmir and continue his work. “He said he was sorry about what had happened to me and assured me that action would be taken against the erring police personnel.”

Full report here Asian Age

Tricity celebrates Hindi Diwas

Hindi Diwas was celebrated in some parts of the city on Wednesday. Various competitions were held on the occasion of the Hindi Diwas to promote the use of Hindi language among people.

State Bank of India
The Chandigarh head unit of State Bank of India celebrated Hindi Diwas on Wednesday by organising a Hindi Shabdavli competition. More than 70 staff members participated in it. Pradip Rai, Deputy General Manager of the Sector 17 branch presided over the programme.”

Hindi is a very simple and accommodating language because it can adopt the words of other languages easily,” said Pradip Rai.

Full report here Indian Express

UN honours Tagore, Neruda, Cesaire

The top UN cultural body Unesco on Tuesday launched a programme honouring India's Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and two other humanist poets, Pablo Neruda and Aim Cesaire.

Each of the three poets, in his own way, carried high the standard of humanist values, said the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).

Beyond their different geographic, social and political contexts, Tagore, a Bengali poet at the time that India was under British rule, Chile's Neruda and Cesaire - from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe - showed a commitment to speaking for the voiceless, it said.

Full report here Economic Times

The perfect ode to Gurudev

You make me endless, such is your pleasure” (Translation from Tagore’s Gitanjali, Poem 1) To pay a painstaking tribute to Gurudev Rabidranath Tagore on his 150th birth anniversary celebration, Chennai-based ace Bharatnatyam danseuse Anita Ratnam choreographs an aesthetically designed offering, woven from the bard’s casket of creative gems. Recently premiered at Kolkata’s well-known G.D.Birla Sabhaghar auditorium, Ratnam’s rendition drew critical acclaim and accolades. Responding to her performance titled Handful of Dust, the internationally renowned dancer shares: “This humble homage on Gurudev is one in a million such compositions, compiled by many other Indian artistes, who too have been deeply touched, inspired and moved by Tagore’s treasure-trove of works at some point of time or the other. As for me, I’ve always admired his multitude of works till the present moment.”

Having grown up in South India, outside the cauldron of Bengal (where Tagore’s glory is still given a deified status and the man himself, revered as a sacrosanct figure), the dancer feels that the Nobel Laureate’s rich magnum opuses and timeless verses still need an expansive amount of translation to make it more accessible to the rest of the country. “Other provinces at large are still left deprived of reading Tagore’s repertoire in parts, let alone in its entirety. Agreed it is not humanly possible to grasp a versatile genius’s depth of creations and understand its underlying essence in a lifetime. But at least we can try to scratch the surface, which becomes inescapably unwieldy in want of extensive interpretations and paraphrased versions of his volumes of literary texts,” she says. “After the lift-up of a rigid copyright act, things however, seem to breathe easy and give way to leniency from the erstwhile straight-jacketed codes and set parameters to be followed. Even my fellow Bengali artiste friends, scholars and connoisseurs hailing from this part of the world have repeatedly rued over the strict possession of the Tagorean legacy, which had noticeably remained confined within a clique of handful few staunch custodians. Now hopefully, the trend is changing to augur well for a better future. And to welcome a rewarding tomorrow, the next-gen posterity has to possibly carry forth the Tagorean heritage amidst contemporary developments, progressive experiments and futuristic evolutions,” she opines with a note of observation. At the formal request of the cultural wing of the Union government, Ratnam gave her consent to dedicate her act in honour of the bard.

Full report here Asian Age

Iceland comes calling to Delhi

This week, get a glimpse of the culture of Iceland at an ongoing festival. On at the Max Mueller Bhavan is an exhibition of Icelandic literature and artwork, movies and also an installation by India-based artist and architect Gudjon Bjarnason, a native of Iceland.

Bjarnason, who divides his time between Puducherry, Bangalore, Reykjavik (capital of Iceland) and New York, works for three leading fashion houses in India and designs commercial buildings in southern India. He blends his Indian sensibilities and 20 years of experience in American and Nordic art to create sculptures, abstract drawings and digital prints.

“I like India. It is a marvel of an inspiration. I like the way art and architecture come together in India,” says Bjarnason. As for his artwork, he says, “I use at least seven different kinds of explosives like C4, nitrate-based explosives and Flex-X to blast and distort metals to create new forms that represent chaos.”

Full report here Hindustan Times

DSC Prize 2012 Longlist announced

The longlist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for 2010 was announced in Delhi today. There are 16 books on the list.

The list has both established as well debut novelists. There are also three translated entries. The five member jury each selected three works, revealed jury member Ira Pande. She said the list includes works from South Asia's cultural diversities as well as books that reflect urban as well as rural landscapes. There are two books on Afghanistan.

The shortlist will be announced on October 24 at the Shakespeare Globe in London, while the $50,000 prize will be given during the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2012.

"I am delighted that the DSC Prize is able to provide a global platform to recognize such fine works and present them to a wider audience," Manhad Narula of DSC said.

The longlist:
Omair Ahmad: Jimmy the Terrorist (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin India)
U.R. Ananthamurthy: Bharathipura ( Oxford University Press, India, Translated by Susheela Punitha)
Chandrakanta: A Street in Srinagar (Zubaan Books, India, Translated by Manisha Chaudhry)
Siddharth Chowdhury: Day Scholar (Picador/Pan Macmillan, India)
Kishwar Desai: Witness the Night (HarperCollins/HarperCollins-India)
Namita Devidayal: Aftertaste (Random House, India)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: One Amazing Thing (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin India)
Manu Joseph: Serious Men (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, India)
Usha K.R: Monkey-man (Penguin/Penguin India)
Shehan Karunatilaka: Chinaman (Random House, India)
Tabish Khair: The Thing About Thugs (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins-India)
Jill McGivering: The Last Kestrel (Blue Door/HarperCollins-UK)
Kavery Nambisan: The Story that Must Not Be Told (Viking/Penguin India)
Atiq Rahimi: The Patience Stone (Chatto & Windus/Random House-UK, Translated by Polly McLean)
Kalpish Ratna: The Quarantine Papers (HarperCollins-India)
Samrat Upadhyay: Buddha's Orphan (Rupa Publications, India)

Fear & loathing in Bhutto’s land

Blood, sword and suffering are the heartbeat of Fatima Bhutto’s literary soul. And it was fear that propelled her poetry, says the heir to Pakistan’s tragedy-scarred Bhutto family. An accomplished poet, Fatima, 29, captures love, loss and the solitude of her circumstances in her verses.

“I have not written poetry for a very long time, but poetry like prose is ultimately a means of expressing what seems difficult otherwise,” Fatima, who will be in India for the Kovalam Literary Festival (October 1-2), said in an email interview from Karachi.

“Kovalam will be my first visit to south India. And I’m looking forward to seeing more of the country and interacting with new audiences and opening bridges between our cities and stories.”

She won’t be reading out just from her poetry. Fatima has authored Whispers of the Desert, an anthology of poetry, as well as 08.50 am, an account of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, and Songs of Blood and Sword, a searing document of the turbulence that had ripped her family apart on her native turf.

Born in 1982 in Kabul to Murtaza Bhutto, the son of former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Fatima carries the illustrious and violent lineage on her young shoulders. Her grandfather, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged to death in 1979. In 1996, Fatima’s father Murtaza was gunned down in Karachi by the police during the tenure of “aunt” Benazir Bhutto. Eleven years later, Benazir Bhutto met with a similar fate in Rawalpindi in 2007 when she was shot dead at a rally.

Full report here Asian Age

Writers, teachers hail Hindi on its day

Hindi Diwas reminds citizens that they should have full regards for their mother tongue, said Hindi writer and Padmshree awardee Giriraj Kishore, while talking to TOI on Wednesday, which was celebrated as Hindi Diwas. He added that languages cannot be made 'alive' by using techniques or methods as they reside in people's heart and soul.

Kishore, also a former IIT registrar, added, "No other language in this world, except Hindi, has a day attributed to it. So Indian must pay their tributes to this language on Hindi Diwas."

On September 14, 1949, Hindi in Devnagari script was adopted as the official language of the country.

Renowned Hindi author Badri Narain Tiwari said, " Ban Ki Moon had said that Hindi is a language of harmony and understanding during the 8th World Hindi Conference on Hindi at United Nation headquarters in New York. He had surprised many by inaugurating the ceremony with 'namaste! kya hal chal hai'. Moreover, except Atal Bihari Vajpayee, no other Indian leader ever used Hindi while representing India, internationally. I want to ask why?"

Full report here Times of India

S&S plans a unique marketing strategy

Simon & Schuster, a global leader in the field of general interest publishing, providing consumers worldwide with a diverse range of quality books across a wide variety of genres and formats. It is the publishing operation of CBS Corporation, one of the world’s premier media companies.

S&S Director of Sales and Marketing, Rahul Srivastava spoke to IBNLive about the company, its strategy and future course of plan in India.

Which segments of the market is S&S targeting? With what kind of books?
Our target readership will be the family as we offer many different subject categories and want to market and promote the same. Our niche is certainly business, non-fiction and self help books.

Who are the marquee authors on the list? And who are the best-selling ones?
We will begin our operations with three of our best-selling authors, Stephen R Covey – The Third Alternative, Irshad Manji – Allah, liberty and love and Brendon Burchard’s Millionaire Messenger (self-published best seller in the USA)

Full interview here IBNLive

Anita Rau Badami: The book tour

Anita Rau Badami is the author of Tamarind Mem, The Hero’s Walk, Can You Hear The Nightbird Call?, and, most recently, Tell It To The Trees. Born in India, she now calls Montreal home. Badami will be guest editing The Afterword all this week.

After spending the last 100 years inside my small cave of a room, buried under paper, unwashed dishes from way-past-midnight snacks, books, pine-cones, shells, paint rags, pebbles, clothes, jars of dead flowers, seed catalogues, and other objects that are so furry with dust I can no longer identify them, I have become a snarling, shaggy grouch. My mother has stopped phoning me because I never respond, my sister has given up on leaving snippy messages asking whether I remember her existence or whether I still exist myself. I have been absent – from my life, this planet and real people. I live in pyjamas and my son’s discarded t-shirts eating whatever my long-suffering husband leaves outside my door. I am rarely seen outside the house and the occasional time when I emerge blinking in the bright light of day my neighbour and once-upon-a-time close friend cannot recognize me.

Full report here National Post

Indians dominate DSC Prize Longlist

Works of 13 Indian authors, including a writer duo, figure in the longlist of 16 titles for the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature announced today.

Manhad Narula, Ira Pande and Surina Narula at the
announcement of the DSC Prize

The longlist for the USD 50,000 award was chosen from 52 entries which were reviewed by a five-member jury comprising chairperson Ira Pande, Alastair Niven (UK), Fakrul Alam (Bangladesh), Faiza S Khan (Pakistan) and Marie Brenner (US).

The longlisted books include an interesting mix of established as well debut novelists, along with three translated entries, the jury said.

Among the prominent Indian authors longlisted for their works are Manu Joseph (Serious Men), Usha K R (Monkey-man), Tabish Khair (The Thing About Thugs) and Kishwar Desai (Witness the Night).

Commenting on the longlist, Pande said, "This list is an interesting mix of 16 titles chosen after a careful consideration of various styles, languages and subject matter. It reflects the best of the South Asian literary tradition - a wide landscape of rural and urban life, intricate rituals of story-telling and an indication of its evolving form.

"This is the East, seen as it is by some of the most promising novelists of Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India, and as it appears to those who live elsewhere."

Full report here Outlook

Eng version of Punjabi book out in Canada

There is good news for all those wanting to read Punjabi short stories translated into English.

A collection of Punjabi short stories written by Dr Harshinder Kaur, deputy medical superintendent of Government Rajindera Hospital in Patiala, have been rewritten in English by a Canadian writer, Ajmer Rode.

The book titled - It happens in India - was released on September 11 by Sikh scholar Dr Harjinder Singh Dilgeer during a function at Vancouver. The stories depict atrocities inflicted on women in various parts of Punjab.

Full report here Times of India

A time to scribble and revel

Perhaps nowhere else, for now, is the printed word in such rude health as in South Asia. The region’s writers have much to cheer. Readers have a raging appetite for text on a page, and they are happy to spend money for it. (Most gratifying, at least for a journalist, is to see the old-fashioned newspaper industry flourish as literacy levels rise and a middle class grows.) Advertisers and sponsors are hungry to reach book readers, reckoning that they are among the region’s wealthier and better educated consumers. As a result, cash-rich banks, insurance and construction companies, among others, fall over each other to stump up for literary festivals and book prizes.

Take the announcement today that 16 novelists have been put on a prize longlist for writing on South Asia. DSC, a big Indian building firm, sponsors the prize and is also part of the largest annual literary festival in India, in Jaipur, which burst at the seams with 200 authors and nearly 100,000 visitors this January. The firm is also involved in a South Asia writing festival that will be held soon in London. This is only the second year of the DSC prize, so it hardly has the pedigree of the Man Booker one, say, which has been around for over four decades. But measure it in hard cash—$50,000 for the DSC award, ₤50,000 for the Booker—the South Asian award starts to look serious.

Full report here Economist blogs

Vikas Swarup at Reykajvik Literary Festival

The Indian novelist Vikas Swarup, author of Six Suspects and Q & A, which was adapted into the multiple Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, appeared at the Nordic House in Iceland last week as part of the Reykjavik International Literary Festival 2011.

Swarup was interviewed by Icelandic journalist Petur Blondal in front of an intimate crowd in the main conference and meeting room at the Nordic House. In the interview, Swarup talked about Dharavi on the outskirts of Mumbai in India, which is the largest slum in the world, and how his work is influenced by the inspiring spirit of the people who live there. The Indian author also gave readings from both of his novels; Six Servants, and Q & A.

Full report here IceNews

Desai debuts as novella writer

In one of the finest works of her career, Anita Desai's latest book, The Artist of Disappearance, coming out later this year, comprising three novellas, her first offering after seven years since The Zigzag Way, captures with pervasive intensity the slow debilitation of ambition and spirit of its characters, and their isolation, to the point of self-flagellation of mind, memory and existence.

Desai, 74, has had success in writing both short stories and novels in a career that spans over six decades now. She published her first story when she was nine years old. Two of her novels, Clear Light of Day published in 1980, and In Custody in 1984, were nominated for the Booker Awards for Fiction, now known as the Man Booker Award.

Her collection of short stories, "Fasting, Feasting", in 1999, also got short-listed for the same award. But it is perhaps in the art of the novella, that strange depth of the literary canyon where it is difficult to fathom if the echo from below has reached the top or not, that Desai is strikingly brilliant in capturing with intricate detail and the right kind of pace the life of her characters and plots, exploring deftly various nuances of tedium, isolation and eccentricities, without satiating or saturating too early.

Full report here International Business Times

Author mixes disaster, diversity in novel

The year 2005 will forever be remembered by residents of the Gulf Coast as the year of natural disasters. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina had caused colossal damage to New Orleans, many Houston residents participated in a massive and chaotic evacuation as Hurricane Rita threatened to repeat Katrina’s destruction.

Sugar Land resident and author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was one of the unlucky few who participated in the mass exodus. While caught up in the hours of stop-and-go traffic, Divakaruni paid special attention to the way people were interacting, both good and bad. Surprised by the humanity and willingness of strangers to help others, Divakaruni used the events as inspiration for her latest novel, One Amazing Thing.

“I started thinking about being in the whole crisis situation, which you couldn’t control. A crisis situation where you especially feel trapped with a group of people you don’t know,” Divakaruni said. “What happens to us in such situations? Is it possible to rise above our fear and panic and create a community to help each other?”

Full report here Yourfortbendnews

Dalit movement & literary phenomenon

In 2004, the French Institute of Pondicherry provided a platform for about a dozen Dalit writers in Tamil to reflect on their experiences in the Dalit literary movement. What they said on the occasion, along with extracts from their writings, were published later. And the book under review is an English translation of that publication. David C. Buck, an American academic who has translated some medieval Tamil texts, has joined the editor of the Tamil volume, Kannan M., in this venture.

The Dalit movement had a late start in Tamil Nadu, when compared to Maharashtra and Karnataka, largely because of the dynamics of the non-Brahmin Dravidian movement. It was only in the early 1990s — in the wake of the Mandal–Masjid developments, and in the context of Ambedkar centenary and the break-up of the Soviet Union and its impact on the Left movement — that the Dalit movement first manifested itself as a literary phenomenon in Tamil Nadu.

Full report here Hindu

Lit fests bloom as interest grows among sponsors

The next four months will see at least 10 major literary festivals; realty firms, hospitality sector, banks in fray


Literature festivals used to be a niche pursuit—quiet little getaways where authors could meet some of their more ardent readers. No longer. The Jaipur Literature Festival in January, India’s biggest such event, saw nearly 100,000 visitors over five days. With more people attending such events, publishing companies are seeing them as brand-building platforms, reason enough for the corporate sector to show greater interest.

The indefinite postponement of Harud—The Autumn Festival of Literature, which was scheduled to be held in Srinagar this month, was an exception and more to do with politics than anything else.

Literature festivals have proliferated in India, and media houses are also entering the field. Both Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd (BCCL) and Kasturi and Sons Ltd, publishers of The Times of India (TOI) and The Hindu, respectively, will host literature festivals in the next few months.

The Hindu’s festival, Lit for Life, will be held in Delhi and Chennai for a day each in September and October, respectively, with 50-60 delegates, including authors and guests. BCCL’s Mumbai Fully Booked: TOI Literary Carnival will be held at the city’s Mehboob Studios on 2-4 December.

Full report here Mint

Reforms: the unfinished agenda

This book inspires some confidence about India's capacity to face the present worrisome phase

Growth and Finance:
Essays in Honour of
C. Rangarajan;
Edited by Sameer Kochhar
Academic Foundation
 Rs. 1095

India is now reckoned among the fastest growing economies in the world. The economic reforms initiated after the mid-1980s helped India to break through the ‘Hindu rate of growth' of about 3 per cent that prevailed in the earlier decades. Alongside the faster rate of growth, there has been diversification of the economy — from agriculture to industry and services — and growing and pervasive global linkages.

The emerging context has some notable features that are favourable to sustaining fast growth. Exports and mounting foreign exchange reserves are supportive of growth. The demographic dividend offered by the changing age-distribution profile of the population holds an exciting prospect. However, at the moment, there are dark clouds on the horizon raising serious concerns. The United States and Europe are going through a turbulent phase and it has its own impact on the Indian economy. Experts warn of a slowdown in growth as a consequence of India's global linkages. The common man is already struggling to cope with the persisting high inflation rate. A slowdown in growth could impose further burdens which may well prove to be the proverbial ‘last straw'.

Full report here Hindu

Gays unwanted in Young Adult Books?

When you think of the young adult books capturing the attention of America's adolescents and pre-teens, predominately-white, predominately-straight novels like the Twilight and Hunger Games series come to mind. In a post on Publishers Weekly's website, two writers argue that the reason most YA books don't include LGBT characters, especially ones of color, is because book agents don't have the balls to sell manuscripts with them.

Rachel Manija Brown, author of the memoir All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India, and Sherwood Smith, writer of the YA novel Crown Duel, say that fear is running the YA book industry. Brown and Smith wrote an unpublished novel together called Stranger, featuring a young Asian gay male character with a boyfriend.

"An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us," Brown and Smith write. "The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation."

Full report here Advocate

Tagore gala begins in Spain with book

Perhaps a historic wrong was set right when Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore reconnected to thousands of admirers in Spain - one of the few countries in Europe to which he had called off his visit - with a new book.

The compendium, 'Redescubriendo a Tagore (Rethinking Tagore)', was released on Monday. It is part of a larger project, Tagore in Spain, a celebration of his literature and performing arts in several cities in Spain and Costa Rica which begins this weekend.

It has been co-edited by Indranil Chakravarty, a professor of Film Appreciation at the Whistling Woods International Film Institute in Mumbai, and scholar S.P. Ganguly, professor of Spanish studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

The editors said Tagore had remained popular in Spain despite his decline in popularity in the rest of the Western world after World War I, where he was seen as an Eastern mystical poet removed from the harsh realities of life.

Full report here Times of India

Veteran parliamentarian speaks his mind

The volume covers Era Sezhiyan's 22-year period in Parliament that witnessed major political transformations

Parliament for People:
Speeches by Era Sezhiyan
 Institute of Social Sciences,
Rs 1450

This collection of speeches by an eminent parliamentarian deserves notice not just because Parliament hits the headlines frequently these days, although mostly for wrong reasons. There are at least two other reasons why it should interest keen observers of the polity and politics of argumentative Indians.

The volume covers a 22-year period that witnessed major political transformations. Sezhiyan entered Parliament when the government was headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, a strong defender of the dignity of the institution. He served as an effective parliamentarian during the Prime Ministership of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, and Morarji Desai. He stepped into Parliament House in the year of the Sino-Indian conflict and made his exit just months before Indira Gandhi's assassination. And he was witness to the formation of the first non-Congress government in New Delhi and its ignominious, mid-term fall as well. The long years he spent in Parliament and the rich experience he gained make Sezhiyan, who is in his late 80s, eminently qualified to do what he has attempted: to produce a ‘biography' of sorts of the bicameral Parliament in the form of his recorded role as a remarkably articulate and rule-abiding member. He made his presence felt in both the Lok Sabha (1962-77) and the Rajya Sabha (1978-84), as a representative of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam and the Janata Party respectively.

Full report here Hindu

Entries called for Konkani poetry competition

Kavita Trust that has been striving to promote Konkani poetry in all its form will be organizing All India Konkani Poetry Reading Competition in the months of October and November. The competition is open to all between the age group of 15 years to 30 years. Participants will get a chance to read their poetry or any one Konkani poem by another poet.

The competition will be held in two stages - in Mangalore and in Goa in October/ November. The competition that will be held in Mangalore is open to people from Karnataka and other states except Goa. The one that will be held in Goa is exclusively meant for Goans.

Participants will get one-and-a-half minute and a maximum of three minutes to read their poetry, a copy of which must be submitted to the organizers at the venue, with proof of age. The matter should be typed and must include the name of the poem and the poet, address, telephone number, age and e-mail ID.

Kavita Trust will not reimburse any expense borne by the competitors in the first stage. Ten competitors in each from Mangalore and Goa will be shortlisted  for the finals that will be held during Kavita Fest which will be held at Moodubelle on January 8, 2012. The competitors who participate in the final stage will be reimbursed travel and accommodation charges.

Full report here Daijiworld

Humanity needs to change course

The existential predicament of man is usually approached and analysed in two ways. The first is to examine the personal, social, political and economic circumstances that contribute to it and theorise on possible solutions. Many of the theories advanced are at best ad hoc rationalisations drawn from skewed perceptions of human behaviour. In practical terms, they are of little value. Further, the real villain is not the ‘circumstances' but the human mind, which is what creates endless problems.

At another level, neither the philosopher who pursues Truth, nor the religious teacher who offers to reveal Truth, nor the spiritualist who promises to lead us on to wisdom is likely to carry conviction because man's afflictions demand instant remedy and cannot brook any delay. The troubles stem from man's “over-worldliness”, with the human consciousness being unable to extricate itself from the shackles of the external world. When the scientist started peering into matter, searching for laws that governed its working, he began unleashing vast energies. He was not concerned with the ethics, good or bad, and it became the lot of the turbulent mind to make the choice. An objective, detached choice-making is difficult when the mind is not free from baser passions. The mind having created the demons is not going to destroy them. In the words of Einstein, the problem that man creates with his mind he cannot solve with the same mind. The “superficial mind”, as Aurobindo calls it, has grown to such dimensions that it has begun to wreck the fabric of harmony and happiness.

Full report here Hindu

DSC Prize 2012 Longlist on Wednesday

India's biggest literary prize in monetary value, the DSC Prize 2012 Longlist will be announced in Delhi on Wednesday, September 14.

The Longlist will be announced by Ira Pande, Chair of the Jury. In the spirit of promoting South Asian writing we will also be presenting a discussion on "The Question of Identity: South Asian Fiction in Perspective" by Namita Gokhale, Tarun Tejpal and Sanjoy Roy.

Pakistani writer HM Naqvi won the big prize last year for his novel, Homeboy.

A Sinopolar world

Forget about G2, China could be G1 soon. Arvind Subramanian's wake-up call is a must read

An economist and this newspaper’s columnist, Arvind Subramanian, has written a provocative book announcing the potential arrival of China as the world’s “dominant” economic power sooner than widely imagined. Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance (Peterson Institute of International Economics, 2011) warns a complacent West (a distracted India must also pay attention) that “Chinese economic dominance is more imminent and more broad-based – encompassing output, trade, and currency – than is currently recognised”.

The nineties saw many books predicting the “coming collapse of China”, while more recently there has been a spate of books recognising China’s rise but adding the caveat that the United States is going to remain on the top for the foreseeable future.

Much has, of course, been written about the “power shift” from the West to the East, the decline of the G7 economies, and the rise of China. Till 2008, and well into 2009, many in the United States, led by Fred Bergsten, had assumed that China and the US could create a G2 and run a bipolar condominium.
The Chinese pooh-poohed the G2 idea, seeking to retain their status as a voice of the developing world and preferred the French view of a “multi-polar” or “polycentric” world, perhaps partly to assuage fears in Asia about the rise of an “assertive” China.

Full report here Business Standard

Rushdie wants ‘similar’ Depp to play him

Indian-British novelist Sir Salman Rushdie has revealed that he wants Hollywood heartthrob Johnny Depp to play him in any biopic, because he thinks they are quite similar.

The 64-year-old author, whose fourth novel The Satanic Verses (1988) drew protests from Muslims in several countries, is putting the finishing touches to his autobiography and is keen to make it a movie.

“It’s a long read and I’m really excited about finishing the project over the next few months,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying at the GQ Men Of The Year awards last week.

“If it is made into a film it would have to star someone with a striking resemblance to me, so I’m trying to persuade Johnny Depp,” he said.

Full report here Zeenews

Indian American writers remember 9/11

On 9/11, I was in the San Francisco bay area. I opened up my computer early in the morning, and on the MSN homepage was a video of the towers being attacked. I was in shock. At first I thought it was a simulation, or a hoax. Then I turned on the TV and heard the news. I just sat in front of the TV, stunned, for about half an hour while the same clips were being replayed. Then I couldn’t stand it anymore and turned it off. I remember feeling hollowed out.

By then the other hijacked planes had crashed as well. I felt terrible for all the lives lost unnecessarily. I felt terrible to think someone hated America (and us Americans) so much. I felt terrible because I was afraid of the violent aftermath that I guessed would follow. And of course it did — in terms of government retaliation, and also in the hate-crimes that swept across the nation aimed at anyone who seemed/looked Muslim.

Full report here Firstpost

Flipkart tries to outdo Amazon

When they were starting out, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal would get on a motorbike to make the rounds of book warehouses across Bangalore, ride back to their two-bedroom apartment and package orders for online customers.

It was a humble beginning for two former software developers for Amazon.com who set out in 2007 to beat their one-time employer at its own game long before Amazon entered India.

“We were doing everything ourselves for the first four to five months, from packing to shipping,” Sachin Bansal, the 30-year-old chief executive of the company they called “Flipkart”, recalled of the six months before they moved into their first office. “Because our volumes were very low, our courier partners would sometimes refuse to pick up items from our apartment.”

“So we used to get on a motorbike, hold the shipment in our hands and personally deliver them to our Bangalore clients,” he said.

In those rocky first days, Sachin Bansal said, their suppliers, seeing two youngsters who had quit stable employment with Amazon, the world’s top online retailer, to go it alone, would counsel them to get proper jobs. The two men have since been cheered at home as poster boys for entrepreneurial India, establishing their company, Flipkart, as a leader in the fledgling Indian e-commerce market.

Full report here Deccan Herald

UNESCO tribute to Tagore`s legacy

Rabindranath Tagore is the flavour at the UNESCO House on Avenue de Suffren in Paris this week as part of a literary initiative to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of the Nobel laureate.

He will share the limelight with poets Pablo Neruda and Aime Cesaire.

A two-day initiative, "High-Level Sponsoring Committee for the Reconciled Universal for Rabindranath Tagore, Pablo Neruda and Aime Cesaire", beginning Monday will strive to reconcile the literary ideas of the 20th century behemoths.

While Neruda, who won the Nobel Prize in 1971, preached multi-culturism and spent several years in India, Cesaire was the founding guru of "Negritude" - the concept of black identity in French literature.

The inaugural capsule will cast the spotlight on Tagore with "Remembering Tagore".

Full report here Zeenews

Revisiting history

Chat Author of Chanakya's Chant, Ashwin Sanghi talks about his love for history, intrigue and writing

Indian fiction in English is going through its own coming-of-age moment where new authors are experimenting with different genres and are not scared of promoting their books with the distinct Indianness instead of aping their western counterparts. Moving beyond college romance or chick lit stories, readers are also welcoming the historical and mythological thrillers that authors are dishing out. . Ashwin Sanghi is one such author.

Businessman to author
With a management degree from Yale University and a stable family business Ashwin Sanghi penned his first novel The Rozabel Line, under the pseudonym of Shawn Haigins, which explored the idea that Jesus hadsurvived the crucifixion and eventually settled down and died in India. Explaining the choice behind his pen name, Ashwin Sanghi says, “I was a businessman for 16 years of my life, so when I started writing I wanted to keep my literary identity separate. But later it became a marketing hazard as I did not want my readers to be shocked to see a Marwari when they were expecting a Shawn Haigins.”

After a religious thriller, his second book Chanakya's Chant was a political thriller revolving around the life of the political strategist Chanakya during the rule of emperor Chandragupta Maurya, with a contemporary twist. The book also won the Vodafone Crossword Popular Choice Award 2010. The businessman-turned-author admits that he wanted to look beyond a mundane balance sheet and explore his creative side. After a prod from his wife, he began his literary journey. “Writing helps me create a different world that I can escape to,” he says. But commenting on a full time writing career he quips in, “My worry is, if I don't have a day job my writing will become a part of my mundane boring life. I like to wear the boring hat in the morning and the exciting one in the night when I am writing.”

Full report here Hindu

Does the US have a future?

Failure after failure after failure. Bubbles that end in busts. Wars that aren’t won. Stimuli that don’t stimulate. All together plunging the United States into the worst economic slump since the 1930s. Meanwhile, across the Pacific, America faces a geopolitical rival that is also an effective economic competitor — a combination not seen since the kaiser’s Germany.

Into this grim situation, Thomas L Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum step forward to offer hope. Or do they?

For there is an unnerving tension at the core of That Used to Be Us, a discordant emotional counterpoint. I don’t think it’s a disagreement between the authors so much as a disagreement within each of them.

Friedman and Mandelbaum repeatedly describe themselves as “optimists”, albeit “frustrated” optimists. Yet the stories they tell repeatedly suggest very different and less reassuring conclusions.

The main line of the book’s argument will arrive with congenial familiarity. Friedman is one of America’s most famous commentators, Mandelbaum one of its most distinguished academic experts on foreign policy. Their views – and their point of view – are well known. They speak from just slightly to the left of the battered American political centre: for free trade, open immigration, balanced budgets, green energy, consumption taxes, health care reform, investments in education and infrastructure.

Full review here Business Standard

Buy e-book reader, but not immediately

Every bibliophile knows that if you need to create more space on your bookshelf or tote hundreds of books, there's only one way to do it-get an e-book reader. Touted as a tech marvel, the e-reader allows you to carry an entire library in a single device. Globally, almost all paperbacks are being converted into e-books. In fact, there's a new set of authors that only caters to the e-book market. Take the self-published crime novelist John Locke, who sold one million copies of his e-book Saving Rachel through the Kindle store on Amazon.

Despite the obvious advantages, is it really worthwhile to invest in the device, and if yes, which e-reader should one buy? Let us try to find an answer to these questions.

What to consider
There are various e-book readers available in the country. These include Infibeam's Pi, Wink (EC Media International) and Amazon's Kindle, which are priced between Rs 7,000 and Rs 15,000. Most e-book readers have a screen size of 5-7 inch, with an e-Ink display, which makes it easy to read the text. Before buying one, check that the text doesn't look faded in direct sunlight and has an anti-glare screen. You should also be able to either change the size of the font or zoom in and out.

The next important factor to consider is the formats that the device supports. The universally compatible formats are PDF and EPUB, which are supported by most devices (Kindle is the only device that does not support EPUB).


Full report here Economic Times