Sunday, August 30, 2015

The Red Sari




Title: The Red Sari – A Dramatized Biography of Sonia Gandhi
Author: Javier Moro
Publisher: Roli Books 2015 (First published 2010)
ISBN: 9789351941033
Pages: 429

Sonia Gandhi is the most powerful woman in India for the time being. Though her party lost miserably in the 2014 general elections under the electrifying presence of Narendra Modi, her sway on the masses have not eclipsed much. The election results were deemed to be a verdict more on the incompetence of the son, rather than the mother herself. There are people who support her, politically or otherwise, and there are still other people who oppose her on all fronts. But no one can deny the suffering which she had gone through, first in the act of having to carry the bullet-ridden body of her mother-in-law to the hospital in the back seat of a car, and then, having to receive the mortal remains of her husband whose body was blown to smithereens in a powerful suicide bomb explosion that the coffin could not be opened at all. The emotional reserve needed to wade through these twin seas of misery is immense, and no ordinary mortal can handle the situation with courage and perseverance. Whether you are politically with her or not, she is obviously a daughter-in-law of the country and demands compassion and respect for the elegance with which she managed to course the family of Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi through turbulent times. In 2004, when Congress was returned to power in the elections, she could have assumed prime ministership, the Congress politicians were offering it to her in a platter. And you know how some of the former prime ministers of India, like Charan Singh, Chandra Sekhar or Deve Gowda would have behaved in similar circumstances. But she refused the coveted position, the chair that turned out to be fatal to her husband and his mother. Renunciation is a virtue and it is infinitely so, when what you are renouncing is the most sought after position in a country. The book, which is a dramatized biography of Sonia Gandhi, is written by Javier Moro, a Spanish author who is also the nephew of Dominique Lapierre. Readers are well familiar with the absorbing narrative of Lapierre. Moro is not quite up to it, but shows hints of a very promising career. The book was originally written in Spanish under the title El Sari Rojo, which is rendered into English by Peter J Hearn. It is evident that the author’s personal interactions with Sonia Gandhi was very meager in the preparation of the book, judging from the description which is mechanical at times and shows signs of being collected from other books – definitely not plagiarism at all. However, the book offers some candid moments in the life of India’s most prominent family for public view.

Foreign authors who don’t know much about India often express grave doubts about the country’s resilience to sail past some bottlenecks like communal violence or an assassination or foreign aggression. They see India as congeries of numerous languages, religions and cultures. They are familiar with and alive to the fate of such a nation had that been situated in Europe which possessed the varied dichotomies Indians take for granted in their everyday lives. Judging from their European experience, they feel that India is so fragile that even a remote threat is portrayed as something that has the potential to founder the nation’s smooth sailing through the history of the world. This book is also not immune from the stereotypical point of view of foreign authors. Moro worries about the potential of the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 and the Punjab pogrom in the years after it, to have the vigour to upset the country’s unity. He seriously considers the possibility of a military coup in the country whenever the democratically elected government is weak from corruption or internal squabbles. He makes Indira Gandhi ask her army general when they will be taking over power! Similarly, he presents Sam Manek Shaw, the army chief starting his day by listening to a newscast from BBC. The root cause of such faulty analysis is the lack of exposure to the Indian spirit, that only a very few foreign writers like William Dalrymple has understood well. Moro alludes to the 1974 nuclear tests as the outcome of dire internal political necessity, and never for once spares a thought about the need of it for a growing regional power. For Moro, India was, is and will be a third world country burdened with disease, poverty, illiteracy and what not! The tacit indicator is that Indians have no moral right to be prominent in the world today unless they solve those problems first. Moro forgets that no country in the world has completely solved all these problems. What we can reasonably expect is to obtain considerable progress on those issues that afflict the country, while at the same time marching forward to attain the position among the world powers which is her right.

Most of the book covers the period of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi’s reigns and mostly ignores the time when Sonia was in power without responsibility, first in the tenure of Narasimha Rao and then twice under the spell of Manmohan Singh. Only a fleeting narrative is offered for these periods. Moro’s observations on Indian politics sometimes go wide off the mark. The book has no reference to Kargil that was a turning point for the Vajpayee regime that effectively ensured that Congress sit in opposition for five more years. He raises the ridiculous argument that the train at Godhra, Gujarat caught fire from an explosion of a gas cylinder kept inside it. This attempt to negate a brutal massacre that was witnessed by hundreds of spectators is a rather bold one at misinformation. The book ends with an epilogue that generates a hopeful expectation for the family loyalists that Priyanka Gandhi may be able to steer the party to its lost glory after the last elections in which Rahul Gandhi’s methods brought disaster to the party and its government. It is an open question whether Moro offers Sonia any favour when he asserts that her decision to assume party responsibilities herself and her acquiescence to her husband becoming the prime minister of India was dictated by the hope of getting more police protection on the face of threats the family was running. She is portrayed to be in mortal dread about attempts on the life of her dearest ones. The book contains a good bibliography and an index.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Against Lord and State




Title: Against Lord and State – Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar 1836 - 1921
Author: K N Panikkar
Publisher: Oxford University Press 1992 (First published 1989)
ISBN: 9780195631807
Pages: 232

K N Panikkar, who is one of the prominent Marxist historians, analyses the factors behind the worst communal riot ever witnessed by Kerala – the Mappila Rebellion of Malabar in 1921. As expected, he assigns economic reasons alone for the outbreak. This incident had received much attention among scholars. Panikkar presents a factual presentation of the agrarian scenario that prevailed in Malabar during the 19th century, when the district came into British hands from the defeated Tipu Sultan of Mysore. A genuine picture of the relationship between the landlord and the tenant is given, but the book falls short of convincingly explain why the Hindus, who constituted numerical supremacy, didn’t rise up in revolt but the Mappilas did. Panikkar painstakingly compiles an exhaustive set of facts and figures to present his arguments on taxation. This is quite convincing, but don’t spell out why Mappilas alone were thrown into agitation, who then turned against their own brothers facing extortion from the landlord in equal measure. What commonsense tells us is to club the revolt in the category of violent jihad we see happening in countries like Iraq and Syria under the auspices of Islamic State. We read about the chilling repressive measures perpetrated in those regions against its religious minorities, like rape, pillage and killings. The comparison is eerily similar. We have to deduce that Kerala came very close to the establishment of an Islamic State in Malabar during the 1920s, which was foiled by British military might alone.

When the world was stepping on to modernity in mid-18th century, Malabar was still ensconced in the middle ages. Feudal relationships defined social interactions and there was no taxation on land. The three decades of conquest first under Hyder Ali and later under his son Tipu Sultan, had changed all that. Land was considered to be taxable and the fertile plots were assessed by the administration. But Tipu’s reign was interspersed with local and remote insurrections. The governor of Malabar found too little time in his hands for a proper assessment of land revenue than for preparing for another fierce battle with another chieftain. Consequently, injustice and incorrect estimation of the yield of some areas of land crept in. When Tipu was defeated in 1792, and the land changed hands to the British East India Company, the existing assessment was taken as such. Moreover, the British wanted to cultivate a social base all to themselves. They found the Janmis, who controlled most of the land, eminently suitable for the job. Whereas traditionally, the Janmi’s rights on the land was rather vague, the British erroneously equated him to the European feudal lord. Subsequently, the Janmis – most of them were upper caste Hindus – were made the owners of the land. The farmers who actually tilled the land were transformed overnight into tenants. As part of the establishment of Rule of Law, courts and police were constituted. This helped the Janmis enormously. They could evict the farmers toiling in their land in a laborious way previously, but found it far easier to obtain an eviction order from a court of law, as it recognized the Janmi as the sole owner. The tenants’ lives became precarious, since the Janmi could submit them to all kinds of blackmail to increase the rent or lease amount. Any gesture of opposition, however feeble, was enough to provoke the Janmi to get a court order of eviction. In this way, Panikkar sets out the background for peasant unrest in a very illuminating way accompanied with relevant statistics. The author has been successful in placing before the readers the desolate plight of the poor peasant of Malabar.

Even though the yoke of taxation was said to be repressive, British rule allowed peace to prevail and the Mappila population surged nearly 6 times from 1807 to 1921, increasing their share in population from 24% to 33%. Panikkar opposes the argument that Mappilas confiscated the land left vacant by Hindu landlords who flew to Travancore during Tipu’s invasion as “except general statements in official records about the flight of Hindu chieftains and their retainers who had opposed Tipu and hence feared punishment and of a few substantial Namboodiri Janmis, there is no definite information of a mass Hindu movement out of Malabar during this period” (p.55). Panikkar himself had declared earlier that only 8% of the landlords contributed 74% of the total land revenue (p.23). The book states that Unni Mutha Mooppan, Chempan Pokkar, Athan Gurukkal and others amassed considerable landed property during Tipu’s rule (p.57). So isn’t it logical that even though only a small proportion of the Janmis made the exodus, a large portion of the land came under Mappila occupation? When the owners came back, this created tensions. The British were initially more sympathetic to the Mappilas as evidenced by the scrapping of taxes like Purushantharam, which was a kind of death duty levied on them. But this attitude soon underwent change (p.56). This was when the authorities realized the sole driving force that animated the Mappila spirit – unbridled religious fanaticism and the desire to dominate other religions. We know the destructive role played by ‘fatwas’ issued by a religious leader during communal riots. But the author justifies even them as “the purpose of these fatwas appears to be the integration into the community of newcomers from the lower castes towards whom they were mainly directed” (p.62). The Mappila uprisings often resulted in indiscriminate killing of Hindus, including lower castes who were as severely oppressed by the landlords as the Mappilas themselves. Panikkar justifies the atrocities by nitpicking on the professions of the murdered. Regarding one person no such antecedents could be obtained and he concludes that the person was “in all probability a Janmi” (p.68). Most of the deductive reasoning in this book goes on this line of subjective and prejudiced mood. The Mappilas exhibited the ferocity we now associate with suicidal jihadi fighters now operating in Syria or Afghanistan. Official records describe them as “rabid animals than creatures possessing a spark of reason”. Panikkar downplays the desecration of temples on the ground of “food grains stored there and better fortifications” and destruction of idols as “only incidental”. The author’s double standard is evident as he trumpets the police search for arms in the mosque at Tirurangadi as desecration that rightfully agitated the Mappilas to begin violent insurrection.

Mappilas had no concern about the national freedom struggle and were obsessed only with the fate of the inept Turkish sultan, who was also the Islamic caliph. The author states that the main issues of the Congress’ Manjeri conference in 1920 were the Jalianwala Bagh atrocities, the Khilafat question and constitutional reforms, with Khilafat issue receiving precedence over the others (p.123). Forcible conversion of Hindus of all castes was a prominent item on the agenda of the rebels. Most of the conversions were sanctified and performed by Konnara Tangal, Abdu Haji, Abu Becker Musaliar and Moideen Kutty Haji, who were also Khilafat leaders (p.180). Sometimes, the rebels brought a maulavi among them to do conversion on the spot. Those who refused were summarily killed. In certain areas, the Mappilas began assigning Muslim names to the women of some prominent Nair families long before the rebellion actually began, in anticipation of their eventual conversion to Islam (p.179-180). The menfolk in those families were not so fortunate; they were destined to be dealt with the sword! Panikkar’s analysis of the situation hits the nadir as he cites the reconversion of the converted Hindus as one of the issues that further alienated the Mappilas! (p.190).

Being a leftist historian who blindly believes in indiscriminate application of Marxian theories of class struggle to every situation at hand, Panikkar does a bevy of intellectual somersaults to ‘prove’ the economic aspect behind the Mappila rebellion. There were definitely economic and agrarian concerns behind the mutiny, but the overarching reason was religion, in which the fanatics wanted to install an Islamic state called Mappilastan in Malabar. The leaders called their followers to do jihad till martyrdom, but tried to save their skins when the time came to test their own commitment. All the major leaders of the rebellion, including Ali Musaliar of Tirurangadi, Variamkunnath Kunhammad Haji, Chembrasseri Tangal, Konnara Tangal, Karat Moideenkutty Haji and Sithi Koya Tangal meekly surrendered to the police in the hope that they will be pardoned. While thousands of their followers were falling before British bullets and bayonets, the leaders were trying to save their necks even by dishonourable means. For instance, in a bid to prove their innocence, both Sithi Koya Tangal and Karat Moideenkutty Haji did not hesitate to give incriminating evidence against Chembrasseri Tangal and Abdu Haji respectively (p.163). The government’s retaliation was swift, strong and brutal. All the leaders faced the firing squad in a matter of months after captivity. The rioting Mappilas found to their dismay that the army resorted to the same inhuman practices which they were meting out to their Hindu brethren. Thousands of Mappilas perished in action and the brutality of Wagon Tragedy demonstrates the government’s commitment to hold on till the last perpetrator of crime is accounted for. It may also be remembered that there never was an uprising again in Malabar thereafter. The Mappilas may be late to learn a lesson, but they ingrain it exceedingly well that force is the remedy to extremism.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Thursday, August 13, 2015

The Tell-Tale Brain




Title: The Tell-Tale Brain – Unlocking the Mystery of Human Nature
Author: V S Ramachandran
Publisher: Random House India 2012 (First published 2010)
ISBN: 9788184002072
Pages: 504

A rare work of erudition that elevates man out of the company of apes and establishes his uniqueness among all life forms, yet having solid foundation on true science.

V S Ramachandran is a distinguished professor and neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego. He is best known for his experiments in behavioural neurology and has been called a latter-day Marco Polo by Richard Dawkins. He is a renowned author on neuroscience and is a recipient of India’s third-highest civilian award and honorific title: the Padma bhushan. In this book, Ramachandran narrates literally what goes on in the brain in our everyday lives. With inputs from his vast clinical experience, he tells about what goes wrong in the case of peculiar disorders of the brain. He does it in a careful way as to be comprehensible to lay readers, while at the same time not going down too low as to feel pedantic for those who have background knowledge. One fact that is clearly visible throughout the treatise is the amount of knowledge, or lack of it, that is accumulated over the years in the field. A neurologist is a person who can claim ignorance of many areas coming under his field of specialization, but can still get away with it. The purpose of the book is to expose the uniqueness of man among planetary life. Man owes his special status to his brain. Readers with special interest in the field will find this book to be of immense use in pursuing their aim further, while others get a sense of wonder at the literally mind-boggling aspects of the brain.

All books on the popular science genre treats man only as an advanced ape. Mere ape, as Ramachandran remarks sarcastically. The reason behind this forced mediocrity is that the creationists are breathing down their necks, constantly on the lookout for a slip of the tongue or an expression of wonder at man’s special powers which will then be blown out of all proportions as evidence for the biblical claim that God created man in his own likeness. That’s why popular authors invariably trumpeted man’s similarities with other apes at the risk of downplaying his unique characteristics. Ramachandran does a fine job of dispelling the notion of man’s humble pedigree. He takes the bull by its horns and categorically declare that man is unique and special. This book is a glorious narrative of the organ that makes man so outstanding – the brain. But he achieves this feat not by philosophical arguments alone. Quite fitting for a neuroscientist, he lists out several areas of the brain which are found only in humans. The Wernicke’s Area is seven times larger in man than in chimpanzees, which caters for comprehension of meaning and semantics of language. Similarly, the angular gyrus and the supramarginal gyrus are uniquely human (don’t ask me what they are, but the author knows it best). The greatest advantage of this book is its sole reliance on evolution as the route through which these peculiar features came to reside in our brains. It is often suggested that around 150,000 years ago, the human species’ speech and language skills experienced an explosive surge forward. Development of culture, civilization and science is rooted on this remarkable change which took place at that time. How can evolution, which operates through minor changes in each generation account for this sudden explosion of creativity? This is a tricky question, as even a tiny misstep or faltering would be construed as phenomena that can’t be explained by science by that horde of propagandists who go by the name of creationists or intelligent designers. Ramachandran states that even with minuscule amounts of change per generation, when these are accumulated in sufficient quantity to tilt a hypothetical balance in a new direction, such a rapid change is termed a ‘phase transition’. This defined a new paradigm that ushered in a strange new world that man ascended the ladder of progress with each passing generation until at last he wielded the power to destroy his own species.

‘Publish or Perish’ is a dictum ruling over the lives of research scholars. Even though this strictly means publication in peer-reviewed journals, catering to the general public doesn’t do any harm if the author is honest and the results genuine. Charlatans often bypass the peer review process and dive straight to the common pool where they can maintain a semblance of authenticity to their ideas which might not have any anchoring on facts. But Ramachandran is different and the pet ideas that are spawned from his painstaking research are presented in a lucid way. Synaesthesia, the peculiar disorder in which a person sees colour associated with a  number, sound or even an abstract concept is the author’s favourite. Some people visualize numbers with a colour tinged with it. Curiously, this disorder is said to be more pronounced in people having a strong bent to creativity, like artists, poets, or painters. The author has done extensive analyses of this trait and presents the results in a very simple way. It turns out that in those people’s brains, the areas that are responsible for differentiating numbers and colours have heavy crosswiring of neurons. These areas are adjacent too, resulting in cross talk between the regions and generating the illusion of seeing colour when it really is not there.

Language and art are exclusively human. No other animal has come anywhere near us in sharing these wonderful traits. Naturally this calls for the attention of neuroscientists to explain why. The author earmarks several chapters to illustrate his hypotheses and the logical conclusions that can be drawn from them. Readers readily agree with the propositions that are consistent and plausible. However, repeatability and falsifiability are two prime requirements for any scientific theory to hold its ground. The sample sizes of many of the tests actually conducted are very small, you can count them with the fingers of your hands! How can a theory be extrapolated for global significance when the number of people who had undergone testing is infinitesimally small? The author is not at fault here, as the disorder and its symptoms are so rare that it may take a lifetime of observation to arrive at a decent number of volunteers ready to undergo the rigorous examination. But when we move on to the realm of art, we get an impression that the narration is highly speculative and subjective. Ramachandran adores ancient Indian temple art and comes up with theories that purportedly prove that the abstract notions of aesthetics embedded in those sculptures follow universal rules of art propounded by the author himself. Educated Indians, who are otherwise normal, sometimes harbour illusions about the country’s great past that was imagined to be thriving with scientific knowledge and technological innovations that the West could catch up only in the post-Renaissance era. It is to be doubted that Ramachandran also entertains some minor illusions regarding ancient temple art – on a strict historical sense, his example sculptures are medieval rather than ancient, coming from the Late Chola and Khajuraho periods. In addition to the small number of test subjects, the results seem to be biased somewhat. A sketch of a prancing horse is shown on page 310 that are produced by a normal child, an autistic child and the great Leonardo da Vinci himself. It can be easily seen that the figure drawn by the normal child is very bland and hideous, while the picture made by the child with autism comes very close to the graphical richness attested by da Vinci’s. Then he goes on to argue that autism dulls many of the brain areas that control social interactions, but at the same time may enhance the regions dealing with art. This seems like jumping to conclusions, or at least may be thought of as not proved by the examples cited. How can you conclude that all normal children would draw in such an uninspired way or that all autistic children would come up with prized art?

The book is very stimulating and easily readable in the first half of it, but not particularly so in the second. While the author has maintained the right balance between hard to grasp neurological terms in the earlier half, he has shed all such inhibitions of keeping a check on outlandish names later on in the book. The most trying chapter is the last one, of course. However, the narrative is very witty and some of it very pointed indeed. The text eminently does its duty to grab the attention of its readers. Illustrating important concepts with the help of case studies is a potent combination to guarantee readers’ interest riveting on to it. There is a fine glossary and an extensive index which is grouped according to topic and we sometimes find it to be not much useful for looking up a word in a hurry.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Chasing Goldman Sachs




Title: Chasing Goldman Sachs – How the Masters of the Universe Melted Wall Street Down and Why They’ll Take Us to the Brink Again
Author: Suzanne McGee
Publisher: Crown Business 2010 (First)
ISBN: 9780307888310
Pages: 421

A great book on the American economy that does not economize on words!

Wall Street is the synonym of America’s financial muscle, where the most lavishly paid bankers and traders in the world decide the direction in which corporate enterprise moves. Occasionally, hiccups arise in the banking community which soon acquire dimensions that the government is forced to intervene in the market to set things right. Such a thing happened in 1929, which led to the Great Depression that had lasting influence on the further course of world history. Minor crashes and failures occur often, but an event that nearly matched the cataclysm of 1929 happened in 2008 when all on a sudden, major investment banks collapsed losing their own and public money. Nobody could see it coming and Wall Streeters found themselves stranded in a situation where liquidity was drained off the market, and calls for repayment of clients’ money were repeatedly made. Lehman Brothers collapsed, while Merril Lynch and Bear Stearns were merged with their competitors who were themselves propped up with federal funds. At no time in history was the free market enterprise of America had to swallow the bitter pill of the government owning major stakes in almost all of the behemoths that ruled over Wall Street till just a few weeks ago. Goldman Sachs, which was the largest corporation, didn’t fail, but was badly wounded in the bloodbath. Suzanne McGee examines the events that led to this sorry state of affairs. It narrates in shocking detail how the companies blindly emulated Goldman Sachs to beat them in their own game of making larger profits and offering greater returns on equity. Wall Street’s basic function was to provide capital for business and to handle mergers and acquisitions. This fundamental objective was ignored by bankers who wanted to make great profit from every transaction and to obtain astronomically high bonuses. This mad chase after Goldman Sachs finally stumbled on the sub-prime mortgage crisis, pulling the national economy itself to the brink of disaster. Being a financial journalist and having written for many Wall Street journals, McGee does a fine job of finding out what went wrong.

A valuable contribution of the book is its neat description of the changes that took place in the U.S. money markets over the decades that finally resulted in the 2008 crash. Even though the story is told backwards, the presentation is appealing and concise. Readers would’ve preferred the normal chronology, but a book on Finance is ought to retain some of the complexity and confusion of the parent field which it tries to open up. Most of the investment banks were operating on partnership basis in the 1950s and 60s. This had its advantages. Managers were very careful before taking big investment decisions, as they were playing with their own money. Such shrewdness was complemented by good work ethics and a cordial customer relationship. But the system put brakes on innovation. Cash was not easy to come by, for quickly finalizing deals and reaping large profits. The commission on trade was fixed across all firms and the companies need only to ensure the volume of trade for assured profit margins. In the 1970s, the stocks crashed and volumes dwindled. Government intervened and the commission on trades was made flexible. The customer was permitted to negotiate with the firms for a deal. This slashed the margins of the investment banks and resulted in cut-throat competition to gain and to retain customers. At this point, they transformed into equity-based companies and shedded their partnership vesture. Their stocks were also traded in the stock exchanges just like their clients’ did.

Becoming a limited liability company was a watershed moment in their history. Infusion of cash, particularly of the investing firms and public, threw away the lid on risk appetite. Managers could take riskier decisions which they were reluctant to pursue when their own money was at stake. At the same time, profitability turned out to be the prime concern. If a firm is unable to pay its stockholders a decent return on equity, its image was tarnished and people moved their investment elsewhere. The age old tools of trade like exchange of shares, leveraging and underwriting fledgling companies were not money-spinning opportunities. It was around the 1990s that first witnessed the emergence of high risk, high yield products such as junk bonds and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) that became popular among banks. All of them wanted to make money quickly. Investors were often kept in the dark about the exposure they were about to make in a high risk investment. In order to tide over the minor correction in the markets at the turn of the millennium, government infused greater liquidity in the market by reducing interest rates. More mortgages and home loans were disbursed, which gave rise to a market in derivatives of the loans such as CDO. More banks followed the leaders in picking up portions of this pie and the American economic system neared the edge of the precipice.

A detailed analysis of what went wrong is followed which rather looks like a post mortem examination. Greed, recklessness and negligence are attributed to be the root causes which acted on unlimited capital, limited liability and incentive compensation. If a surgeon had indulged in as much risk, he would sooner be denied his license and possibly would have had to face criminal charges of negligence. Unlimited funds were allotted for the bankers to sell mortgage backed securities that earned huge profits, but whose quality was very low. Being a public listed company, the liability was limited in case of a flop, but the financial incentives for the individuals and the company in the case of a flip was astronomical. We get to know about bankers who drew incentives which were more than 100 times their annual salary. The regulators were also at fault, as they couldn’t fathom what was going on down under and continued to enjoy the music while it lasted. In a setup like America where the budget of the regulators are sourced from the contributions of the companies they oversee, it is no wonder that the regulators as mute spectators while deals with ever greater profits to the originators made Wall Street a gold mine for the lucky few. There was a strong lobby that called for less regulation and more free trade, who counted on the creativity and innovation of the bankers to set the rules of the game. If the regulating bureaucrat was smart enough to understand the flow of business, he would have quit the government offering a measly pay packet and himself would have joined leading Wall Street firms, they argued logically. But the explanation of the meltdown raises other disturbing questions. If the reason for the catastrophe is the fear of getting behind the competitors and the greed for pecuniary benefits, these are the fundamental instincts of any human being, and how can we rule out the possibility of such a scenario occurring again in the future?

Readers feel that the author could have cut the number of pages by at least a quarter, without losing the force and flow of the argument. This book about economy does not in any way practice economy of words. But the diction is simple yet elegant, though interspersed with American slang. A decent glossary is given, but which is not readily accessible. Attached at the end of the main text, many readers get to know about the presence of glossary only after reading the text in full! It would have been better if it could be incorporated in the beginning of the book. A good index is a must for books of this kind and that which is provided amply serves its purpose.

The book is recommended for followers of the business columns and to laymen who plan to make some money out of the bourses.

Rating: 2 Star