He conducted India's first 3G spectrum auction and raised ₹1.06 trillion for the exchequer. He single-handedly blocked a major procurement scandal at BSNL. For four decades, IAS officer J.S. Deepak worked at the highest levels of Indian telecom, trade and diplomacy and dared to do things differently.I Dared to Dial Differently is the candid, compulsively readable memoir of J.S. Deepak, whose four-decade-long journey through the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) reads lik...

A visionary's bequest to the nationOn the way from Delhi to Jaunpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh lies the dusty town of Badshahpur. Even in this nondescript settlement, people receive money via mobile transfer from family members working in distant cities. There are computer-training centres offering diploma courses in Bhojpuri, Hindi and English. Badshahpur is an example of India's numerous remote towns that have skipped basic literacy and landed straight into the age of digital liter...

A timely call to reshape government through technology, from Nandan Nilekani and Viral Shah, two leading experts in the field.For many aspects of how our countries are run - from social security and fair elections to communication, infrastructure and the rule of law - technology can play an increasingly positive, revolutionary role. In India, for example, where many underprivileged citizens are invisible to the state, a unique national identity system is being impl...

India and its market are highly complex and even the native people face challenges in understanding it; leave aside the foreigners. India is a highly heterogeneous country with marked differences in everything, including business. It is quite usual for people to get perplexed and puzzled by the diversity of India and the variations existing in its market.A proper understanding of the history, culture, and society of a country is a pre-requisite for achieving success in doing busine...

Gautam Adani needs no introduction. One of the richest men in the world, he also helms a business empire that is now India's largest player in ports and renewable energy. He is also the country's largest private sector player in sectors like airports, city gas distribution, power transmission, thermal power, edible oil, and railway lines. Yet, look beyond these facts, and startlingly little is known about Gautam Adani, the maverick businessman; about his motivations and vision; about his l...

Making a Difference comes as a handy guidebook for IAS aspirants in the country. The preface is by Yogendra Narayan, a retired IAS officer and also the ex-chief secretary of U.P. The introduction is about the challenges and opportunities of IAS as a career. It also includes everything from the motives to join the IAS to the written exam to the personality test to the training required. The book also talks about the myths and realities about the IAS - interesting sections include questions ...

India may widely be acknowledged as one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world, but how can this vast, diverse and heavily populated nation sustain growth prospects? Game India offers a decisive answer.Through chapters, at once ambitious and engaging, it outlines seven key unrealized opportunities India can pursue to remain a leading player on the world economic superhighway: solar power; an enviable coastline and waterways; milk; agriculture; a huge population...

Parameswaran Iyer, former Secretary to the Government of India, is best known for leading the implementation of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship programme, which became the world's largest sanitation revolution.But Iyer is not your typical bureaucrat. With a far-from-usual career combining two distinguished tenures in the government and an eventful stint outside it, he likes to describe himself as an uncommon 'Insider-Outsider-Insider'....

Profiles in Enterprise, an inspirational book on the life stories of twenty-three Indian business leaders is a candid account of men and women who have added value to their businesses or professions and most certainly to India as a nation. From the importance of hard work to perfect timing, and from sharing wealth to the grit and determination to never give in; these profiles share stories of entrepreneurs, ever ready to take risks and on a path to a never-ending success.Enlighteni...

Concise, accessible, and indispensible, Doing Business in 21st-Century India is the perfect primer for anyone who's long on enterprise, short on time, and eager to profit from this fascinating new market.By now, you probably know that India has the second-fastest growing economy in the world. That the spending power of its middle class is rapidly increasing and its population is eager to acquire Western conveniences. And that new opportunities abound in it...

At the start of his career as sub-collector of Parvathipuram sub-division in north-coastal Andhra Pradesh way back in 1974, Subbarao learnt—the hard way—that tribal development requires more than enthusiasm; it requires, most of all, an understanding of poverty. Nearly forty years later, in 2013, as the governor of the Reserve Bank of India in the midst of a fierce exchange rate crisis, Subbarao learnt—once again the hard way—the harsh challenges of emerging economies in an unequal world. ...

Twenty-seven years in service and fifty-three transfers: that's an average of six months in each posting. Meet the forever-in-transit man of the Indian bureaucracy, Ashok Khemka. The IAS officer shot into the limelight in 2012, when he cancelled the mutation of a land deal between realty major DLF and a company which belonged to Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra. With the Congress party in power, most people called it a suicidal move. But, true to his reputation for...