The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman; Penguin Books; Price: Rs.720; 488 pp

In recent times no work of non-fiction has dominated the New York Times bestseller lists as consistently as journalist Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Globalised World in the 21st Century. That’s because it makes a determined and spirited attempt to explain a new borderless world- the astonishing and bewildering technological and social changes which during the past decade in particular, have forever transformed the world as we knew it.

Friedman’s insightful book advances the argument that massive breakthroughs in computer and telecommunication technologies have obliterated national boundaries and created a level playing field for entrepreneurs and businessmen worldwide. Thanks to the invention of the internet and the worldwide web, a businessman in India manufacturing, say automobiles, can source the cheapest inputs and materials from component manufacturers worldwide within a matter of minutes, import them and using cheap Indian labour, produce highly competitive automobiles, as indeed Tata Motors is in the process of doing. Likewise as we are only too well aware, a foreign tourist lost in the streets of Manchester, UK, is likely to be put on the right track by a call centre worker in Bangalore or Gurgaon equipped with a street map of Manchester and a crash-course faux British accent which may occasionally slip.

These telecom-driven changes in business management and processes are particularly astonishing for people in India who for almost half a century had been cut off from mainstream science and technology advancements by an isolationist, autarkic economic development model designed by a Soviet-style Planning Commission based in Delhi and staffed by textbook economists driven by punitive notions of austerity and self-reliance.

In particular the wiseacres of the Planning Commission who, I hate to say this, included incumbent prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh now widely credited as the author of India’s economic liberalisation and deregulation initiative of 1991, harboured an irrational prejudice against the telecommunication industry. Astonishingly the eminent economists, many of them educated in the US and Britain, who staffed the commission, regarded the telephone which was essentially designed to speed up business transactions, as an elitist luxury. Right upto 1995 obtaining a telephone connection was a herculean and expensive task for most citizens. For example the main telephone line of EducationWorld installed in 1995 required running the gauntlet of a string of rude managers of the public sector Bangalore Telephones, until a connection was magnanimously granted under the tatkal or fast-track scheme on payment of Rs. 30,000.

But since then the telephone has become a ubiquitous instrument in contemporary India with the number of mobile telephones at 10 million and counting, exceeding the number of traditional landline connections. Nor is it a coincidence that since then the Indian economy has been experiencing annual GDP growth rates of 6-7 percent and has broken the shackles of the so-called Hindu annual growth rate of 3.5 percent which persisted for over three decades.

Surprisingly, Friedman’s epiphanic awareness of the new reality of a flat borderless world dawned upon him in Bangalore, India (from where EducationWorld is published) while in deep conversation with Nandan Nilekani, chief executive of our own Infosys Technologies. “Clearly it is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the world and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world — using computers, e-mail, networks, tele­conferencing and dynamic new software,” writes Friedman, explaining why the world has been “flattened” by real time communication technologies.

But the real reason why Friedman’s book is a runaway bestseller is that it has sounded a warning to American industry and policymakers that because of these new communication technologies, there is a real prospect of American jobs being exported overseas, particularly to low wage countries with intellectual capital such as China and India. Today, as Friedman explains, a low productivity clerical worker in the US being paid the minimum US wage of $7 per hour can (and is being) replaced by a more qualified and efficient Indian or Chinese graduate ready, willing and able to work for $7 per day.

And this message which coincided with the US presidential election in which the Democratic Party candidate, John Kerry vowed to impose curbs upon American industry outsourcing clerical and other tasks offshore, has scared the American public. Hence the popularity of the book and the national debate in the US on how to maintain American industrial and technological superiority in the new era of outsourcing and real time communication technologies.

For thinking readers in India too this book despite its irritatingly exaggerated American folksiness, is mandatory reading. Particularly because Friedman explains in some detail the ten historical developments which have flattened the world (the fall of the Berlin Wall, the invention of the internet, development of open-sourcing, outsourcing, offshoring, supply-chaining, in-sourcing, in-forming, and the digital revolution)- all of which have since experienced convergence or integration.

But while Friedman’s thesis that international trade and business has become more competitive than ever and has enabled hitherto written off nations such as China, India etc. to challenge American industry, it glosses over the reality that within these countries the playing field is far from level. The learning, digital and socio-economic divides in these countries continue to be so wide that they lack adequate skilled manpower and technologies to provide real competition to American and western industry.

True the new digital world has become flat, but only for the few most enterprising businessmen at the very top of the social pyramids of developing nations. A real threat to American industry which has repeatedly exhibited a unique capability of reinventing itself, will manifest only when the benighted leaders of developing countries learn to nurture their huge human resources which languish in shallows and misery.

Dilip Thakore

Useful motivational guide

Discover Your Destiny With The Monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma; Jaico Books; Price: Rs.175; 220 pp

Though it can hardly be classified as a book-reading nation, “national bestsellers” are titles which sell a modest 3,000 copies, there’s no denying that India is a huge market for self-improvement books. Legend has it that the most successful title in Indian book publishing history is How to Improve Your Correspondence, first published in the 1930s and since reprinted hundreds of times. Cruelly denied half-decent education by an inherently unequal system of secondary and collegiate education, desperate youths in the vast hinterland lap up self-improvement books in a big way.

Into this scenario comes Discover Your Destiny With The Monk who sold his Ferrari, a sequel to the bestseller The Monk who sold his Ferrari authored by Robin Sharma. A US-based lawyer-turned-motivational speaker Sharma is ranked among the world’s premier self-improvement gurus and has authored six other books, including The Monk who sold his Ferrari, which reportedly sold over four million copies worldwide. Founder-CEO of Sharma Leadership International (SLI), Sharma is the star of his own PBS television show and lectures over 200,000 people a year at his overbooked international seminars which attract audiences of up to 10,000. He has also shared speaking platforms with high-profile individuals including former US president Bill Clinton, holistic healer Dr. Deepak Chopra, author Richard Carlson and counsellor Dr. John Gray.

Promoted as a handbook which offers seven steps to self-realisation, Discover Your Destiny is recounted as a narrative, detailing the story of Dar Sanderson, a 43-year-old successful entrepreneur who has a nice home, and a steadily increasing income but suffers on the personal and home fronts. Fed up with his odd timings and obsessive business overdrive, his wife walks out on him with their three children. Deeply depressed, Sanderson takes to drinking, loses his fitness and health and attempts a desperate suicide bid by shooting himself in a shabby motel room. Just as he is about to pull the trigger, he feels dizzy and collapses on the floor. As he lies writhing with fearful seizures he experiences a revelatory vision. “Your life is a treasure and you are so much more than you know,” intones a voice which pierces his deepest being.

Later a chance encounter with Julian Mantle- a hotshot lawyer turned monk who has learnt the secrets of lasting success from sages in the Himalayas- sets Sanderson upon an exciting and educative six-month odyssey to discover himself and reclaim the life of his dreams. As he journeys down the path to self-discovery, Sanderson learns about the seven paths every person must walk if he/ she wishes to experience lasting happiness and personal and spiritual development.

In the ten chapters, Sharma provides useful answers to questions that inhibit every mind and prevent people from innovating or undertaking great enterprises for fear of failure or ridicule. There are useful pointers on “How to trust in your limitless potential”; “How to avoid the crime of self-betrayal”; “How to realize the life of your dreams”; “How to transform fear into fortune”; “How to discover your true calling”; “How to turn events that test you into experiences that reward you”; “How to find the love you want”, among others.

I can’t help admitting that despite its folksy tenor, Discover Your Destiny provides a useful road map to self-improvement. This book could well be a catalyst for self-transformation and could stimulate readers to stop leading mundane lives by lighting a path for those lacking self-belief and wallowing in despair. It has potential to deliver the happiness, prosperity and inner peace to which everyone is entitled. Sharma has successfully combined eastern wisdom with western management principles in this absorbing practical guide, which offers the reader a simple blueprint for a beautiful life. A motivational guide, especially for the timorous and faint-hearted who lack courage to follow their dreams, it could, however have done with better typography and layout. But then Jaico is Jaico.

Srinidhi Raghavendra

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