In the early 1800s, in the small, sheltered village of Vilakkudi in the Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu, Ranganathan, a small-time landowner, was raising his children, at the time unaffected by British rule in India or upheavals in the rest of the world. As time passed, railways were built and newspapers appeared; isolated villages like Vilakkudi were exposed to social and cultural change. It is this transition that the author, Ranganathan’s great-great-great grandson, tries to trace through the story of his family.


Anecdotal and fascinating, A Comma in a Sentence includes the experiences of Ranganathan; of Ooshi, the author’s great grandfather, who was deeply concerned by the mismanagement of the great Madras famine by the British (an incidental benefit was that the family could earn a wee bit more out of paddy in those years); Gopalan, the author’s grandfather, who encouraged modern school education for his children; Rajam, the author’s father, whose generation moved to the cities for the first time to find work in colonial Calcutta; and R. Gopalakrishnan himself, whose generation was the first to attend college and whose children—the present generation—were fortunate to study in universities like Stanford and Harvard.

Told in lucid, insightful prose, this story provides a microcosmic view of the societal changes India has seen over the past two hundred years.

Sanjeev Aggarwal (Helion/ Daksh [IBM]), Subroto Bagchi (Mindtree), Girish Batra (NetAmbit), Sanjeev Bhikchandani ( Info Edge), Anish Dhawan (ChrysCapital), Ashish Gupta (Helion Ventures / Junglee), Zia Mody (AZB), Satya Narayanan (Career Launcher) and Vijay Shekhar Sharma (One97).

What’s common to these nine individuals?

“Over the years, these kids from middle-class homes become the founders of India’s new economy,” says the introduction to the book that they all feature in: The Captainship — First Gen Entrepreneurs.

Land acquisition by the state has become an arena of widespread conflict in India.  This paper is a status report on conflicts, prices, and agents in contemporary land acquisition processes.  The principal purpose here is to provide solid empirical information on current conditions, including a compendium of recent land transactions, conflict situations (including both some well-known and relatively unknown ones), prices (from a wide variety of settings, from the core of south Mumbai to the mining lands of Orissa and Jharkhand), and agents (buyers, sellers, political parties, and civil society).  The key findings are these.  First, contrary to popular belief, the conflicts are not fundamentally between capitalists and peasants but between the state and peasants.  Second, there are two core reasons for these conflicts; in many cases because not enough is being paid for land; in several others because the land is "priceless", an idea that I explain in detail.  Third: the price of agricultural land has increased by about an order of magnitude in less than a decade and it is yet to reach its true scarcity value.  Finally, the fundamental explanation for the conflicts (happening now, but after decades of iniquities) comes from information theory; specifically, the growth of new information agents in the form of civil society and political parties.

The book written by Nagesh Hegde in simple Kannada. This book is in chapters and each chapters can be completed in 15 - 20 minutes.

One of the most important inspirational writers of our time, and an internationally acclaimed spiritual guide, Anthony de Mello here presents a way toward peace of mind, inner power, and joy through simple spiritual exercises that blend the ancient traditions of the East with the psychological and philosophical perspectives of the West. Wellsprings is intended to guide us to a deeper appreciation of the physical and mystical realms within us.

In these pages, numerous aspects of self-awareness are explored that for many people are often left uncultivated in the rapid pace of modern life. In the tradition of the great spiritual leaders of the past, de Mello directs the whole person toward a state of harmony and grace -- in heart and mind, body and soul. This book's great insights into our universal spiritual yearnings have had tremendous resonance the world over, and its simple lessons of the spirit have touched the lives of millions.

Wellsprings is indeed a book for everyone who thirsts for inner growth -- regardless of age, religion, or cultural background. If read carefully, its exercises will lead from mind to body, from thought to fantasy and feeling. It is then that we are both freed and empowered, awakened to reality and our real selves. For, as the teacher explains, "in solitude your self is given back to you."

Maverick! by Ricardo Semler reveals the success story of SEMCO, which made a turn-around from being an ailing company to an organization that reaped huge profits notwithstanding the high inflation. Semler reveals how he redefined the rules of management and empowered his employees to make their own rules at the workplace, making them independent of the management. It reveals the story of how the managers in the organization decided their own pay structure and perquisites. Semler further explains that there was no code of conduct in the company and no authority. Semler threw open all the doors and ensured that meetings were held only when they were extremely essential. Correspondences within the organization were kept to a bare minimum, and the workers at the production units set their own targets while ensuring that these were met. The book reveals all these and more, and shows its readers how all the above steps taken by SEMCO turned it into one of the best companies in South America and Brazil.

Ricardo Semler took over SEMCO from his father when he was 19 years old. The company was on the threshold of bankruptcy, but went on to generate an income of $160 million in 2000. Semler has been lauded for his unique manner of management, which reaped astounding levels of success for the company, in turn turning it into a role model for other companies. He has also written other books like The Seven-Day Weekend, The Seven-Day Weekend: A Better Way To Work In The 21st Century, and The Seven-day Weekend: A Manifesto for Radical Workplace Change.

A provocative and inspiring work on overcoming the obstacles facing women on the path to leadership
Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they'd feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or equal pay, and some reticence creeps in.

The statistics, although an improvement on previous decades, are certainly not in women's favour of 197 heads of state, only twenty-two are women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally, and in the world of big business, a meagre eighteen of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women.

In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale. She draws on her own experiences working in some of the world's most successful businesses, as well as academic research, to find practical answers to the problems facing women in the workplace.

Learning to 'lean in' is about tackling the anxieties and preconceptions that stop women reaching the top taking a place at the table, and making yourself a part of the debate.

About the Author
Sheryl Sandberg is Chief Operating Officer at Facebook. Prior to Facebook, Sandberg was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google. She previously served as Chief of Staff for the United States Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton.