Sri Aurobindo & The Literary Renaissance of India

गहन शोध और विश्लेषण पर आधारित ‘जीत मोदी शासन की: समृद्धि के अभिनव पथ पर भारत’ पुस्तक मोदी सरकार की प्रमुख पहलों, सुधारों और नवाचारों का व्यापक विश्लेषण करती है, जिन्होंने भारत के सामाजिक, आर्थिक और राजनीति क परिदृश्य को बदलकर रख दिया है। महत्वाकांक्षी ‘मेक इन इंडिया’ अभियान से लेकर वस्तु एवं सेवा कर (जीएसटी) के माध्यम से कर प्रणाली में बड़े बदलाव तक, हर अध्याय एक ऐसे नेता की कहानी को प्रस्तुत करता है जिसने दुनिया के सबसे बड़े लोकतंत्र में शासन के मायने ही बदल दिए हैं।

यह पुस्तक न केवल मोदी सरकार की उपलब्धियों पर प्रकाश डालती है, बल्कि उनके कार्यकाल के दौरान सामने आई चुनौतियों और विवादों का भी समग्र मूल्यांकन करती है। यह उन सभी के लिए एक आवश्यक पुस्तक है जो भारत में हो रहे परिवर्तनों और प्रधानमंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी की भूमि का को समझने में रुचि रखते हैं, जो देश के भविष्य को नया आकार देने में महत्वपूर्ण भूमि का निभा रहे हैं।

The Collector’s Mother is a story of grit and perseverance. An ‘unwanted’ woman from an underprivileged background is attacked and, along with her husband, dragged on the village road and humiliated, and the family’s land grabbed by a local land mafia. In the godforsaken village deep into the hinterland, such excesses are not uncommon, but her steely resolve makes her stand out. How she weathers through such soul-sapping encounters to beat all odds and inspires his son to become a collector is at the heart of this extraordinary story set against the backdrop of abject caste oppression, absence of rule of law, persistent traditional power structure, pitiable education system, food insecurity, drought, famine, lack of health care and communication, hatred and domination by fellow villagers.

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, Dr Bhargava, the director general of Indian Council of Medical Research, assembles a crack team of India’s most brilliant minds, including Dr Nivedita Gupta, Dr Priya Abraham and Dr Pragya Yadav. Together they mount a mission to save humanity from the unseen enemy. The challenges they face are daunting. They must navigate the treacherous waters of international diplomacy and deal with excessive bureaucratic control. Often enough, they find themselves battling against time and misinformation fuelled by fake news. Along the way, they are forced into moral dilemmas to make life-ordeath decisions that affect the nation and its people. As they work tirelessly to develop and distribute a vaccine against the deadly coronavirus that threatened to ravage India, they face opposition from foreign interests and intense scrutiny from the media. The Vaccine War is an inspiring tale of scientific ingenuity, perseverance and the triumph of the human spirit. It celebrates the heroes who fought relentlessly behind the scenes to protect their nation and offers a poignant reminder that unity and science can overcome even the most formidable challenges.

Desires, Dreams and Powers is a fascinating saga of the life and times of Tathagata Roy. Not many people may have traipsed into so many fields of life as Roy has. He has been a civil engineer, an encyclopaedic, a university teacher, a researcher, a contract lawyer, a politician, an author in two languages, an intrepid traveller and, lately, a history buff.

By writing about his times than his life, Roy covers truly eventful eight decades of a nation in transition, during which British rule transmogrified into the partitions of India and Bengal, the world around him transformed from writing with a quill pen to taming the personal computer and toying with AI, and politics from optimism to Naxalism to hope. His native West Bengal, the crucible of left ideology, finally exorcised the ghost of Marxism by overthrowing the Left Front united in 2011 after 34 years of unbroken communist rule. Through it all, he pranced into high school, segued into engineering college, got his first job with the Indian railways, taught at Jadavpur University, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and capped it all up by becoming the governor of three north-eastern states of India.

The book is as much about the trajectory of a nation on the move as it is about Roy’s life. The parallel is unmissable.

Evocatively titled, Of Newtons and Apples: Insights into 50 Great Minds in Human History does exactly what it promises. It gives us a glimpse into the professional and personal lives of 50 great personalities whose names, in some cases, are a part of everyday conversation, while in others, they are familiar names about whom we know little.

Just the way the falling of an apple led to major discoveries by Newton, this work tries to identify sources of the genius of the personalities across human history. These men and women were either creators or those who redefined the course of history in their field of work. Interestingly, each article focuses on a major achievement and one aspect of their personal lives. Such sharpness makes the articles short, engaging and, in many cases, poetic.

The classification of personalities into Building, Doing and Thinking gives us new eyes to look at them once again and debate within ourselves, the fuzzy boundaries that exist between these three primary human activities.