Read Of The Week (Feb 6 to Feb 12)

Indian Innovation Not Jugaad

As India turns 75, this book unpacks 100 ideas that transformed a young democratic republic into a complex and thriving nation of a billion-plus people.

Author Dinesh C Sharma writes of an India newly independent in 1947 after the British colonial powers left it to its own destiny, of its subsequent wavering journey through the decades all the way to a raging pandemic and of the small and big innovations that transformed the country along the way.

In doing so, he turns on their heads prevailing notions of innovation often propagated in a galaxy of books — the much used and abused narrative of jugaad that romances the idea of how the ‘poor’ innovate to get by. Covering policies, concepts, and institutions in areas such as, but not limited to, science, healthcare, education, governance, business, grassroots movements, agriculture, fashion, law and others, this is a book that aims to provide a better understanding of the country.

From software parks to shampoos sachets, jan sunwais to oxygen langars, Lijjat papad to mohalla clinics, the Chipko movement to Khabar Lahariya, this is also the story of the unknown, unsung people behind these innovations that are continuing to shape India as we know it.