I loved the description of Nandan Nilekani and the austerity of the CEO of a popular gold company based of Kera who by his account is a dollar billionaire and yet travels coach class and stands on queue and goes on great lengths to stop projecting his riches.
Verdict :
A one time read.It starts off nicely but soon gets a bit rambling.I loved his first book Serious Men more than this.
Memorable Quotes:
It is very cheap to be middle class in India. Becuase the poor subsidize us all. - pg 14
The tailor in the market alters trousers for fifty rupees;I have seen some people try to barigain it down. - pg 16.
As in love, so in society, people who do not have power are quite nice - pg.18
In my view, human beings are not intrinsically good or evil.I think they are intrinsically cautious - pg 19
India, in plain sight ,is a lot poorer than it is in reality - pg 20
Envy is a thing between equals - pg 21
People ,today, aspire to money and not class. They dont mind seeing the money of other people - pg 27
there is an aspirational quality to some kinds of vulgarity - pg 28
Every revolution is created and sponsored by the second rung of the elite to trounce their oppressor, nominally in the interest of things like equality and fairness. - pg 29
Most of the icone of the Indian freedom movement were from the highest caste, relegated to a social rung below the British - pg 29.
an unsung cause of human happiness is low standarsd - pg 30
The poor have shaped India in their own image - pg 33
And the disdain that Arundhati Roy has for Mukesh Ambanis's giant home -- wouldnt a malnourished tribal feel the same about Roy's affluent home in Delhi's prime Jor Bagh ? - pg 38
it is the rich who are in their cages, and it hs the classy who are confused about their ideas of home. Most of the nation belongs to the nobodies; it is a republic of nobodies - pg 55
why is it that after a short period of enjoying the rich world, they long to go back 'home' , to a place where there is order only when viewed from the aircraft ? - pg 57
Across our history, all master races created order while all the enslaved people craved to break it - pg 59
People underestimate how powerful it is to be what the world does not think you are - pg 81
He did not realize one thing about posh leftists,whom he tried to imitate or emulate. They transmit a lot of negativity but they go back to their aesthetic spaces - pg 82 (About Kanhaiya kumar)
India is rigged in such a way that apart from sports, the only other sphere where the talented poor can do well is politics - pg 82
a degress is a form of economic and social discrimination - pg 86
The nature of prestige is that its ceases to exist when the poor demonstrate that they can achieve it - pg 87
Across the world ,the poor and the lower middle class despise poor migrants, becuase poor migrants first compete for resources and jobs with the poor residents and not the editorial writers and the developmental econmists - pg 99
If at all there is something worse than poverty , it is the Indian jail and the Indian judicial system - pg 104
National is ofter someones regional stuff just like 'global culture' is the local culture of white people. - pg 111
Hindi cannot colonze the South becuase Hindi is useless. - pg 111
A language does not conquer through wars, its slowly encroaches through rewards - pg 112.
Observations is not the act of seeing. It is the act of remembering what has already been seen - pg 118
They hated giving their biometrics to their governmentr but routinely do that for an American or European visa- 121.
He is still intimidated by white waiters ,but not black waiters - pg 130
the elite of all Third world nations who live in the West are deeply in love with their homelands - 131
it is easier to demolish a mosque or build a temple than it is to enforce standardized intelligent road design across the nation - 139
the 'left ' is a monoculture of a European idea; the 'right' is culture - 143.
all elites are like parents- conservatives at home, where the stakes are high ,and liberal elsewhere, an abstract place that is nt as important as home. -143
there is no such thing as a global right. Anyting wond that is global will automatically be a left movement - 144
moral ideas like the importance of family , sacrifice, culture, religion , nation, and the idea that a community is more important than an individual , are ideas that primarily favore the rich but they are enticing to the poor who wish to emulate or imitate the rich - 202
Austerity is not a trick.It is a form of intelligence - 202
The state of wealthiness is not a caste;being posh is a caste. The poor despise symbols of money far les than symbols of class.
people aspire to money and not class, there is a perception that money is more gettable than refinement, some elemnets of vulgarity , like mansions... sedans are appealing. - 209
Austerity is possible only when one is able to affort everything it rejects. And what it rejects is most of the useless products that capitalisam creates for the super rich - pg 211
the true character of a new town is never in the new part;it is in the nature of its original population - 219
the 'joy of giving' is a pleasure that radiates from an emotional feudal system in which some people feel a sense of importance over the miserable . And that joy of facile self-congratulation can be an unmatched intoxicant - pg 249
To understand the true value of idelaists, it is useful to take the example not of the worst and the mediocre among them , but the finest. - 251
I believe intuitively that Ravish's monologues are more popular than Modi's. - 251
the charm of Ravinsh is in his state of defeat.He accepts that all resistance to the BJP is futile in the near future , and that nothing he says or reports will change that.In that way , his voice is the pathos of the underdog, and that is pure art. Such voices of lament, as of Ravish, convey to the poor that their concerns matter, that society, despite everything, has 'a moral compass' - 252
As an Indian, my stnadards are so low that my idea of exciting urban development is a Nitin Gadkari tweet. - 253
Verdict: 
