Columbus: Sought India, got America—got it way wrong

BACK OF THE BOOK

In 1961, D.C. Kaushish put his money on the line when he opened Sheila Theatre-with a 70-mm screen, the first of its kind in India-in Delhi. It was part of his vision to provide entertainment on a grand scale to the Indian viewer. Now, more than four decades later, his grandson Manu Kaushish has opened an online music portal based as an enterprise halfway round the globe in San Francisco. Once again, like his grandfather before him, he is driven by the urge to deliver state-of-the-art entertainment. This time, though, the transaction is in Indian music, and the service extends to not just the Indian diaspora, but also to Americans.

This factoid is not to be found in Thomas Friedman's latest book: The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. But, like the numerous other examples in the book, it sums up the power of globalisation, the theme that the three-time Pulitzer award winner elucidates in his latest treatise. As always, off to a very absorbing start, the book is essentially a bibliography of the globalisation phenomenon as it has unfolded over the last few years-especially with the emergence of China and India on the global economic map. It is in no uncertain terms an unabashed appreciation of globalisation.

The columnist for The New York Times is the foil to Lou Dobbs-with his daily fix on CNN titled 'Export of America'-and his xenophobic interpretation of globalisation. The book, therefore, takes us through the hectic but fascinating phase of change that has overtaken our lives in recent years. Powered by rapid technology change, the author argues that it has provided new opportunities to emerging economies-devoting vast tracts to chronicling the Indian success stories and how they have redefined most of the existing paradigms.

THE WORLD IS FLAT A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY By Thomas L. Friedman Penguin PP: 488 Price: Rs 1,660

In the new global economic order, Friedman would have us believe that the playing field is being levelled (hence the title of the book). That's true, if we overlook the starker political reality, wherein a seemingly legitimate claim by India-the largest democracy and projected as the next economic powerhouse-hangs by the veto power of those already at the high table. Or, as Iraq and Afghanistan-for good or for bad-have clearly demonstrated, there is no serious challenge to the world's sole superpower.

So, a reader looking for an unravelling of the complex questions-that marry the optimism of technology with the cynicism epitomised by the spread of religious terrorism-that plague the world may be disappointed. Instead, the book's strength is its lucidity and contemporary record of global economic change. Those among us who have been unable to stand back and take things in perspective, will find this book a wonderful asset.

To be fair to the author, the book does not purport to propound any Newtonian kind of theory or anything of the sort-which is where several critics have found it wanting. Instead, it rephrases a lot of the challenges and issues-similar to those posed by the seminal work by Frances Cairncross in The Death of Distance (1997)-that dog the world today, and addresses them in the context a vastly altered global outlook.

An additional intangible from the Indian point of view is that given Friedman's iconic status in many quarters in the US, it is clear that his ra-ra views on globalisation and outsourcing will find lots of takers. Sweet music to Indian ears?

-Anil Padmanabhan

INDIA IN MIND Edited by Pankaj Misra Picador India PP: 335 Price: Rs 275

Are reports of the death of distance vastly exaggerated? Who knows. But with the 'Incredible India' campaign on air, it sure pays to flip through some of the stuff long-distance travellers to India might possibly be reading about this fabled land. Suketu Mehta's Maximum City has made it to the 'must' list, so Mumbaikars have an idea of what first-time visitors might have half in mind while peering into dance bars. Pankaj Mishra's selection of India travelogues by famous writers, India In Mind, is not nearly as engrossing, but is rip-roaring fun in pinches.

There's E.M. Forster and all that. But the pinch-me passage of the book is Mark Twain's, with his polite attempts to-jest connect?-buckle under the influence of India. An India that's so much more than endless farms separated by mud fences, unbothered by doubt. The high point of this brave venture is the "bewildering collision of the impossibles" ("... and what is it that cannot happen in India?") that occurs when his new hire, the tablet-bearer he prefers to call Satan, gleefully announces a divine arrival at the door. "Who?"

That's Mark Twain in 1897. Before Bob Dylan. Before Reebok. Even before Letters From The Earth.

To sober up, have a go at Claude Levi-Strauss, the anthropologist who took Greek heroes apart by their constituent 'mythemes' for graven analysis. India's overflight landscape appears as an "old tapestry", "worn threadbare". After touchdown, he seems entranced by the dwelling units. It is in the "urban, industrial and bourgeois civilisation" of the Harappan ruins, particularly, that he detects a prototype of the modern metropolis, as he bemoans India's quest to prefab its way back to such dreary regimentation, signified by the pride taken in wearing western underwear (it's the 1940s). On surviving this, Levi-Strauss offers no obvious suggestion.

-Aresh Shirali

THE INVISIBLE CEO By A.G. Krishnamurthy Tata Mc Graw-Hill PP: 182 Price: Rs 250

Does he even exist? That's what adfolk were asking all those years that A.G. Krishnamurthy ran Mudra, the Reliance-promoted ad agency based in Ahmedabad. He was 'invisible', you see, never to be spotted at any ad hangout or do. That's not the only reason "the odds were really stacked against us", as he recounts. The agency's name was in Sanskrit. Ritual prayers were de rigueur. And Reliance actually snapped the umbilical cord of cash and control. The ironic part of this book is The Invisible CEO's take on people power (see The Power of Experience). He quotes Bill Bernbach saying that the ad promise must always match consumer experience-illustrated "beautifully" by 2002 Gujarat! Well, whaddyaknow.