Gurcharan Das · 432 pages
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“Good intentions are useless in the absence of common sense. —JAMI, BAHARISTAN”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“When individuals blunder, it is unfortuante and their families go down. When rulers fail, it is a national tragedy”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“When ordinary human beings err, it is sad, but when leaders do, it haunts us for generations.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“Although Manmohan Singh, the helmsman, got the credit, it was Rao who took the tough and aggressive decisions and provided the energy and political support. He was shrewd and knew how to deal with dissent. The manner in which he pushed through the industrial policy in the cabinet is an example. At the same time, the reforms would not have happened without Manmohan Singh. To the extent that there was one, he created the road map. In a brilliant move, he set up a set of committees—bank reform under Narsimhan, tax reform under Chelliah, and insurance reform under Malhotra—and they provided crucial intellectual sustenance and legitimacy for reform measures in these areas. It needed Manmohan Singh to come and change the nation’s mind-set to growth. But Manmohan Singh is a reticent man and cautious by nature. On his own, without Rao’s constant support, he would not have done it. The new trade policy would not have come about as speedily without Chidambaram. Varma was a terror as the head of the steering committee and he provided the momentum for the implementation of the reforms for two years. He knew the system well, and he played it in favor of the reforms. Varma’s crucial contributions, I believe, have not been understood or appreciated. In the end, all three—Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram, and Varma—derived their strength from Narasimha Rao.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“Sleeping in the park in a city is a form of civilization. First, you need a city with enough bustle and clatter to make a person yearn for a calm, green spot. Then you need a first-class park,”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“Modern India is a product of Hindu tradition, the religion of Islam, and Western civilization.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“Commerce they say, encourages the bourgeois virtues of thrift, hard work,self -reliance,and self discipline.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“The principle of competition is, as Hesiod pointed out long ago, built in the very roots of the world; there is something in the nature of things that calls for a real victory and real defeat. —IRVING BABBITT”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“Becoming rich has also become acceptable. Whereas a government job was the route to success in the previous generation, now the thing to do is to go into business. Money has replaced power and privilege. Older, traditional people are quick to condemn the changing attitudes. They call it “greed.” They are upset and see it as a threat to Indian culture. But the younger people defend themselves, saying that it is not greed but a desire for achievement. They want to “get things done,” to “produce results,” and business offers to them a stage to do so.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“Aditya told me that he produced staple fiber in Thailand from pulp that he bought in Canada. He sent the fiber to his factory in Indonesia for converting to yarn. He exported the yarn to Belgium, where it was made into carpets, and finally, the carpet was exported to Canada. “Here is Aditya Birla,” I thought, “an Indian, and yet India does not figure in this global value-added chain.” It did not because India had closed its economy. By closing it, it denied its citizens the chance to participate in the enormous expansion in global trade in the second half of the twentieth century. It denied its people jobs, technology, knowledge, and new ways of organizing. Thus, it deliberately suppressed economic growth.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“Poor teamwork is pervasive in India. Take any institution, scratch its surface, and one finds factionalism. Whether it is a company, a university, a hospital, a village panchayat, or a municipal board, it is beset with dissension, and it affects national competitiveness.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“We grew up in the smug belief that although the mixed economy was inefficient, it was better than capitalism because it preserved democratic freedoms.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“The greater benefits earned by a few could be justified, I realized, if the inequality improved the situation of the worst-off.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“The Indian intelligentsia was mesmerized by the apparent success of the USSR. It wanted big steel plants and not small factories which made clothes, shoes, toys, and bicycles—the sort of things that the masses could use. In those days, anyone in India who advocated greater investment in agriculture was branded an American agent.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“Merchants understand from birth the power of compound interest; they know how to accumulate capital. The Internet has also leveled the playing field, so that it seems sometimes that any mad, passionate Indian entrepreneur can write his own future.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
“Indian companies also had clear and numerous weaknesses. The most important ones were the inability to separate ownership from management; a lack of focus and business strategy; a short-term approach to business, leading to an absence of investment in employees and in product development; insensitivity to the customer, largely because of uncompetitive markets, but resulting in weak marketing skills; an indifference to technology; and, lastly, poor teamwork. Many of these weaknesses were the result of a closed economy.”
― Gurcharan Das, quote from India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age
Gurcharan Das
Born place: in Faisalabad formerly known as Lyallpur, India
Born date October 3, 1943
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“To leave the everpresent tension of Great Meadow was like shedding stiff, formal clothes or kicking off pinching shoes.”
― John McGahern, quote from Amongst Women
“Sure, I had gained a lot of weight...I had begun to fear that I would never lose (it) and would be forever confined to this foreign body. The problem was much more superficial - but easier to grapple with - than my real worries about being trapped in my broken mind... When I worried about being fat forever, marred in the eyes of those closest to me, I was actually worried about who I was going to be: Will I be as slow, dour, unfunny, and stupid as I now felt for the rest of my life? Will I ever again regain that spark that defines who I am?”
― Susannah Cahalan, quote from Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
“Kadınlar neden buna benzer bedenleri olmasını isterler bir türlü anlamıyorum. Ne kadar acayip görünüyor, onlar da kalkıp böyle bir bedene sahip olmak için deli gibi uğraşıyorlar, ne pahasına olursa olsun, diyetlere, ameliyatlara, iğnelere, açık saçık iç çamaşırlarıyla bu lanet olası şeylerden birini elde etmek için çabalıyorlar ve her şeyi deneyip de başarılı olamazlarsa sahtesini yapıyor o ahmak sürtükler. Pekala, burada bedava bir tane var. Gelin de alın pis orospular.
Neyin içine girdiklerini bilmiyorlar, belki bundan hoşlanıyorlar. Belki de bu bedenleri paranın çarkını döndürmek için kullanan kadınlar gibi hepsi birer pislik: Film yıldızları, mankenler, orospular.”
― Richard Brautigan, quote from The Abortion
“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.” Anna”
― Amor Towles, quote from A Gentleman in Moscow
“If we must have an enemy at the head of government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible.”
― Ron Chernow, quote from Alexander Hamilton
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