E-Paper
HT Picks: The most interesting books of the week
A look at India’s garbage crisis, a collection of business stories from some of the nation’s biggest entrepreneurs, and a novel about family
WASTED BY ANKUR BISEN
Urban India generates close to 3 million trucks of untreated garbage every day. If these were laid end-to-end, one could reach half way to the moon.
The need for attention to sanitation and cleanliness is both urgent and long-term. This book takes an honest look into India’s perpetual struggle with these issues and suggests measures to overcome them. Historically, we have developed into a society with a skewed mindset towards sanitation with our caste system and non-accountability towards sanitation.
Through stories, anecdotes and analysis of events, this book seeks solutions to the current entangled problems of urban planning, governance and legislation, and institutional and human capacity building. Wasted traces interesting relationships between urban planning and dirty cities in India; legislative and governance lacunae and the rising height of open landfills; the informality of waste management methods, and the degrading health of Indian rivers, soil and air.
Arguing that all current solutions of India are extrapolated form these flawed beliefs and structures and are therefore woefully inadequate, Bisen draws benchmarks from clean countries of today. Underlining the need for inclusive human clusters, specificity in legislation, correction of existing social contracts and governance frameworks, creating a formal resource recovery industry in India, and the pursuit of diplomacy around this industry, this book shows how these solutions could lead us towards a brighter future and better social developments.*
HOW I ALMOST BLEW IT BY SIDHARTH RAO
There’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. The market is flush with capital, and the internet and emerging technologies have lowered costs and nearly levelled the playing field. The Indian digital ecosystem is ready to explode. The romance of the start-up story fills media column inches.
But, for every new venture that made it, there are numerous others that didn’t. The untold story of the successes is that every one of them almost didn’t make it. Each one had a near-death experience, almost shut down, almost sold itself too short - in short, almost ‘blew it’.
How I Almost Blew It talks to some of India’s biggest entrepreneurs - Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Info Edge and Naukri.com), Deep Kalra (MakeMyTrip), Deepinder Goyal (Zomato), Ashish Hemrajani (BookMyShow), Sahil Barua (Delhivery), Girish Mathrubootham (Freshwoorks) and others -- to tell stories that shock, revel and inspire. Quick-thinking, astute decision-making and -- occasionally -- sheer dumb luck is what stood between them and the abyss. These heart-stopping stories of near-fiascos are industry wisdom, yes, but also critical life lessons.
*All copy from book flap
THE DUTCH HOUSE BY ANN PATCHETT
Danny Conroy grows up in the Dutch House, a lavish mansion. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her wit, her brilliance. Life is coherent, played out under the watchful eyes of the house’s former owners in the frames of their oil paintings.
Then one day their father brings Andrea home. Though they cannot know it, her arrival to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve’s lives. The siblings are drawn back time and again to the place they can never enter, knocking in vain on the locked door of the past. For behind the mystery of their own exile is that of their mother’s: an absence more powerful than any presence they have known.
Told with Ann Patchett’s inimitable blend of humour, rage and heartbreak, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale and story of a paradise lost; of the powerful bonds of place and time that magnetize and repel us for our whole lives.*
*Copy from www.bloomsbury.com
