"ADAPT - To Thrive, Not Just Survive" by Harit Nagpal (Book Review by R. Chandra Prakash)

Our generation has witnessed an unprecedented transformation around us during the past sixty years.  These transformations have been far beyond the predictions in Future Shock of Alvin Toffler or even his The Third Wave.And it would not be wrong if one considers them to be beyond Peter Drucker’s theory of Knowledge Society. The innovations and the corporations have seeded these transformations. The composition, coverage and operations of business have become complex and risky. Greater competition coupled with narrowing profit margins force business houses to treat the customer with due respect. 

Today’s customer is well informed due to information revolution, particularly through the social media networks. Their wants and  demands keep on shifting, sometimes abruptly.  Such consumer behavior  cause constant business disruptions. The western world, where modern business management got evolved, has thoroughly prepared itself to generate content to deal with business disruptions. Most of thiscontent is prepared by university faculty who also have practical experience in and knowledge of business operations. This is possible as there is a lot of interaction between academia and business institutions. 

Unfortunately, India lacks such environment. Very few business executives have produced content based on their field experiences. Authors like Gurucharan Das have produced some content, but they are more in the micro-economic domain. Therefore, the book Adapt, To Thrive, Not Just Survive, by Harit Nagpal is a very welcome business discourse.  Based on his four-decade long experience in Indian industries, he illustrates how and why business disruptions may occur and their possible solutions. This book has certain unique features.

Features

First, the author has adopted a unique methodology of Case Study, coupled with dramatization of a crucial business challenge in the form of interactions between the people playing different roles. This facilitates the involvement of the reader in understanding its nuances. Second, he has chosen only ten common business challenges like: Customer Segmentation; Customer Communication; Product Quality and Customer Relations, Brand Management, Market Share, Teamwork Culture, and Product Life Cycle Management. Third,location of each of these case studies has been in different countries. In Chapter 1 it is Dhaka, Bangladesh, in Chapter 2 it is Milan, in Chapter 3 it is Malaysia, in Chapter 4 it is Alaska, and then there is Ghana, Pakistan, New Zealand, England, and Thailand. Such a diverse geographical environment provides for understanding the cultural environment challenges in a business. 

Fourth, the products chosen for in each chapter varies. It is Instant Food, Printing and publishing, Television telecasting, Housing, and even manufacturing of watches! Such divergence in product facilitates understanding the market / product dynamics and business challenges. 

Fifth at the end of each of these ten chapters the author provides for ten statements that reader should honestly respond to the business that they are part of, may be as an owner, or a manager. The reader has to answer these statements only in Yes or No choices. This exercise helps in internalizing the crux of the challenge/s explained in the preceding narration. Sixth, following of above methodology provides the readers with an opportunity to analyze and understand ten different disruptive business stories and deal with hundred constructive business questions. 

The book, thus, helps in understanding the organizational structure and response, inter-departmental dynamics, market analysis, customer preferences, product packaging, role of advertising, market cultural environment and the supply-chain dynamics.  

 

Presentation

The book is very imaginatively designed and presented. The cover page jacket has a colorful picture of chameleon’s tail to represent its adaptability to the environment. This also happens to be the essence of the topic of the book namely, the adaptability of business to its environment. 

 

Further, the chapter headings are very intellectually crafted with a more meaningful sub-title. For example: Chapter 1 The Customers We Want, and Those We Don’t Want has a meaningful and attractive sub-title - Navigating targeted segments. Similarly, Chapter 2 Ears to the Ground has - Listening to the customer, Chapter 6 Touching Customers’ Hearts has - Creating a brand that connects, Chapter 7 A House for Everyone has  - Growing the industry and your share of it. The typesetting is also reader friendly. These subtle attention to the minute things makes this book highly readable.  

 

Addition of Page Index at the end of this book would have facilitated its back reference. 

 

Usefulness

The book can be a very useful Handbook for the Business Schools students. This can also be a good-tool for upgradation of decision-making skills of employees in any business organization. 

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Author

Nagpal is a Chemical Engineering graduate with an MBA Degree. The author’s professional career, spanning four decades with Lakme, Marico, Pepsi, Shoppers Stop, and Hutch/Vodafone, gives him the hand on experiences of various business challenges at different levels of managerial hierarchy.  Since 2010 he is with (Tata Sky)   Tata Play, and presently, its Managing Director/CEO. 

 

"Santana Dharma at Crossroads - Waiting for Shiva - Unearthing The Truth of Kashi’s Gyan Vapi" by Vikram Sampath (Book Review by R. Chandra Prakash)

Sanathana Dharma, true to its meaning perenniality, has survived several millennia of political and religious attacks. Today it is being practiced by nearly eighty percent of the population of the country. Islamic occupations of 1300 plus years, and more than two hundred years of Christian colonialism did severely affect the Sanathana Dharma.  The partition of the country in 1947 on religious lines gave the impression that thereafter Sanathana Dharma will have scope to heal its wounds and grow as a resilient Dharma.  

 

But it is during the post-independence period that Sanathana Dharma has suffered challenges to its very existence. Bharat’s rich religious heritage and cultural ethos were mortgaged to fake and fictitious ‘secularism’. The Constitutional amendment to overturn the very sane Supreme Court judgment in the Shah Banu marital case in 1985,  the passing of The Place of Worship Act in 1991, and many other similar steps taken by the Congress party giving the Muslims prominence as a religious minority and using it as a vote bank added new tensions to the inter-religious relations in the country

 

Ram Mandir – A Political Turning point

The consequences of the re-emergence of Muslim political importance in the independent India became quite visible during the Babri Masjid / Ram Mandir dispute. Long drawn political and the legal battles became the turning point. This was evident from the Jan Sangh’s / Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) campaign on Ram Mandir as a counter to the Muslim appeasements by the Congress and few other parties.

Victory of BJP in 2014 with its own majority in the Lok Sabha, and its return in 2019 with bigger majority than 2014,was largely the outcome of this religious divide. The Supreme Court judgement of Nov 2019 in favor of the Ram Mandir, the successful construction and consecration of grand Ram Mandir in January 2024, seems to have ensured the BJP to have a hat trick return in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

With the inauguration of Ram Temple at Ayodhya, not only a long felt need of Hindus has been fulfilled, but also the hurt feelings of the millions of Hindu believers have also been assuaged. This is factually proved by crores of people who have taken a darshan of Ram Lalla with in a very short time, with daily number of visitors being somewhere above two lakhs! However, this fulfillment has triggered the desire to retrieve at least two more holy temple places – Gyan Vapi in Kashi and Lord Sri Krishna in Mathura.

 

Gyan Vapi Temple/Mosque

 

Vikram Sampath’s book Waiting for Shiva, Unearthing the Truth of Kashi’s Gyan Vapi is a very timely work in the above context. Despite the visual proof, a part of magnificent old temple attached to the mosque and the very name of Gyan Vapi symbolizing Hindu Sanskrit roots, there has been stiff opposition from the Muslims and their organisations contending that the Gyan Vapi mosque is not built by partly breaking down the ancient Shiva temple. This has further increased the Hindu-Muslim divide.

 

The History and Sanctity of Kashi

 

The author has established in great details that the city of Kashi, Varanasi with its multiple names, has a long religious sanctity not only to Hindus, but also to the Buddhists and Jains before them. And its Gyan Vapi Shiva Temple of the past was its central religious magnet for the Hindus all over the country from time immemorial. The belief of Hindus that dying in Kashi or at least to be cremated there, is the only way of getting Moksha, the Nirvana. In that it is a Historical City, and the City of Light.

 

Even while the Gyan Vapi Shiva temple is the epicenter of   Kashi, author in great details proves that the city has had multitude of Lingas all over the city. The author provides clarifications for mythological meanings relevance of these Lingas in Hinduism.

 

The Conflict

 

Vikram Sampath elaborately narrates the historicity of the conflict between the Hindus and the Muslims in the context of Gyan Vapi. The Chapter The Spark in the Tinderbox contains the origin and progress of the conflict ever since the Britishers took control of India. There have been records of multiple Hindu-Muslim riots leading to legal tangles in the British courts. Several reports by committees of British officers provide testimony to hard feelings on both the religious groups.

 

The ownership of the lands on which the Gyan Vapi mosque and the partly demolished Shiva temple are located were also the subject of long drawn legal battles. So also the earning of rents from parts of these lands. These legal battles continued after the Independence of the country. The politicization of these conflict was the automatic outcome of post 1990 scenario. In the post The Place of Worship Act of 1991 and the demolition of the Babri mosque, Mulayam Singh govt added fuel to fire by banning puja at Gyan Vapi ruins, even though it was being carried on for a very long time.

 

Shringar Gauri And the ASI Survey

Since 2020 the Sringar Gauri case filed by five women and the never tiring advocate Hari Shankar Jain have added a new dimension to the Gyan Vapi temple/mosque case. The details provided in this book are a record of concurrent history of this issue. The dramatic turns and twists of legal battles from the local courts to the High Court and the Supreme Court and the entry of Archeological Survey of India [ASI] are detailed by the author.

To quote the author on the latest legal development, “This cleared the decks for a proper, scientific, and archeological survey of the entire premises of the Gyan Vapi complex. On the same day, on 4 August,2023, a team of around forty-five ASI officials initiated the survey. After initially bycotting the ASI survey order, the masjid officials and caretakers decided to cooperate with the survey as there few options left, especially with the top court of the land upholding the demand for ASI survey”.  Since the book got published quickly thereafter, the author tries to provide a very brief update till the January 2024.

 

The Wait Continues

One cannot discount the fact that the sight of mosques projecting magnificently over the partly demolished ancient Hindu temples, both in Kashi and Mathura, even after 75 years of independence is not only painful reminders of our historical tragedies, but also very demeaning in the changed social equations due to too much political biased patronage of one religious group over the other. When the ‘other’ happens to be the majority of the country which has borne the brunt of religious partition and post independence discriminations. 

 

Sanathana Dharma today stands at a crossroad. Should it, as an independent country, continue to ignore its past humiliations portrayed by several of its religious monuments at the altar of fake secularism? Or should it recover and reconstruct, at least a few important monuments, as a testimony to its historical religious eminence? Well time alone will provide the right answer.

Bharat No longer International Punching Bag - Why Bharat Matters.? - by S. Jaishankar "(Book Review by R. Chandra Prakash)

In 2019 Indian air force planes bombed Balakot, in Pakistan. This was a retaliatory action in response to Pulwama terrorist attack by Pakistan sponsored terrorist groups. When Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was captured by Pakistan, Bharat got him back unscathed within couple of days.  Whereas, more ghastly Mumbai terrorist attack in 2009 by Pakistan sponsored group had only resulted in India’s paper protests. Till 2014 Pakistan’s “Atomic Power threat” had dictated India’s responses to its every grave terrorist attacks.

Similarly, in 2020 the China’s Galwan misadventure was repulsed by our defense forces, even though it cost the lives of our 20 brave Jawans. Whereas, till then India’s responses to every incursion, ever since 1962 Indo-China border conflicts, has been only paper statements.

Under the threat of Covid pandemic in 2020, the biggest ever evacuation exercise in modern history, India brought back nearly 250,000 of its nationals from across the world.  In 2022 Bharat very safely  and very quickly  had evacuated 23,000 (18,000  of whom were students)  of its trapped citizens from war-torn Ukraine. In May 2023 it successfully evacuated 534 of its citizens from war-torn Sudan. 

In 2023 the conduct of very successful one year long G20 Summit in 92 places all over the country  and on the suggestion of Bharat inclusion of African Union countries (with its own 55 membership) into the G20 fold are considered as a great international contribution. Indian Diaspora the world over is emerging as a very influential nationality and stands as a symbol of international brotherhood.

As recently as in Feb 2024 Bharat managed to get nine of its veteran defense personnel facing death sentences, for alleged espionage, released from a very powerful Islamic nation, Qatar. Inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the massive and beautiful BAPS Hindu Temple  in UAE on 14th Feb 2024 is considered as the most successful diplomatic endeavor. It in fact stands testimony to the growing prominence of Bharat in the international arena.

And to cap it all now the Indian Navy is protecting and rescuing ships passing through the Suez Canal in the Red sea from  attacks by the Yemini Houti rebels. 

Bharat – The New India

It is in the above context that the book  Why Bharat Matters, by none other than present foreign minister S. Jaishankar, gets its extra-ordinary importance.

S. Jaishankar has credible credentials.. Apart from his experienced command over the diplomacy, he is very articulate, and reliably diplomatic, both in his speeches and writing. In Why Bharat Matters the author explains the metamorphic shift in the operation of our foreign policy, retaining  its long tested fundamental principles.

S. Jaishankar desires to discharge two responsibilities through this book. First, “to share the thinking of a rising power with a world that has become increasingly aware of that happening. Second, is to communicate the necessity of accurately understanding global developments to our own people. Only then our nation will fully appreciate the opportunities and challenges that lie before it.”  Without any hesitation it can be said that the reader will feel fully informed about both these objectives after reading his book. 

Cultural Foundations

Author is not only richly experienced in international relations, but his unique quality is his deep understanding and belief in Bharat’s cultural ethos. The author is of the belief that “A major rising power, however, needs more than just an accurate landscape analysis and ability to act on it. It must, first of all, be confident of its own values and beliefs and base its policies on those convictions. These will draw from the totality of its culture, heritage and traditions. That is why India can only rise when it is truly Bharat.” Hence, in this book S. Jaishankar draws inspirations from some of the episodes of our two major epics - the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, while narrating approaches in our foreign relations. 

Author details how Hanuman in Ramayana is perceived as an exemplary embodiment of service who performs his duties undaunted by any obstacles. And Sri.Krishna  who  in Mahabharata is regarded more as a strategist and counselor, a source of wisdom in difficult moments. S. Jaishankar  draws inspiration and parallels from such heroes of  these cultural stories in explaining the current approach to Bharat’s international relations.

Elegant Swan and Modi’s Impact 

Author confesses that the diplomacy of a major country is very arduous. “What public sees is an elegant swan; underneath, there is furious paddling.” He credits PM Modi’s work style, which is his ability to constantly integrate the big picture and the smallest of details. He feels that the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of Modi’s foreign policy is there for all to see. However, the more complex proposition of ‘why’ is hidden in Modi’s deeper commitment to national rejuvenation and the resurgence of a civilization. 

Foreign Policy under Modi 

The book provides an elaborate framework explaining the transformations in Bharat’s foreign policy approaches since 2014. Having provided with the world view from the Bharat’s points of view author explains how our foreign policy is the outcome of our internal political and economic performances. Further, how our foreign policy is influenced by the state of the world as well and its proper understanding in the context of our own strengths and weaknesses. 

In the past decade the world has undergone fundamental changes. Cold War has given way to bi-polar and multi-polar relationships. And therefore ‘New Delhi has shed much of the ideological baggage of the past.’ Bharat has been successful in dealing with quick changes such as Brexit and post Brexit relationships with Britain and at the same time the remaining countries of European Union. Similarly Bharat managed to swiftly and safely maneuver  the political as well as the economic consequences of Russia-Ukraine war. And very recently the Israel-Palestine war. In both these cases our stakes in all the warring countries were very deep. Yet, Bharat managed to remain unaffected and more importantly maintained good foreign relations with all of them. 

Interestingly, today wherever there is international strife, all the countries of the world are looking forward to Bharat to intervene and find mutually acceptable solutions. This is because as per  the author “In the last quarter of a century, India has grown to emerge as the fifth largest economy, a nuclear weapon power, a technology centre, a reservoir of global talent and an active shaper of international debates. Its interests and influence have grown well beyond the Subcontinent.” 

Swimming Upstream

However, Jaishankar is conscious of the fact that the present world order is built by certain key players to serve their purpose, “ a power like India will have to swim upstream for a long time to come.” Yet, henceforth  India will no longer be a punching bag in the politics of others. Author is fully convinced that ”With each passing day it is becoming clearer that India matters because it is Bharat.”

This is S. Jaishankar’s second book, and his first book was titled India Way.-Strategies for an Uncertain World. Both the books, coming from a highly experienced career diplomat and a successful foreign minister, will be very important source of learning for the students of International Affairs.  And of course to those who evince interest in this area.