Foundations of Misery focuses on the blunders of the Nehruvian era, many of which still affect and vitiate India’s present. It is hoped that once there is an enlightened understanding of the past, free from the pervasive fiction, India would be better able to tackle its present and future. The book attempts to unravel the mystery and the truth in-depth on why India remains a poor, pathetic, third-rate, third-world country. How’s it that India got so left behind? What was it that India did, or did not do, after independence, that everything is so abysmal and pathetic? Why an overwhelming majority of millions of Indians continue to be condemned to a life of unmitigated misery? What are the foundations of this misery?
And why all this unmitigated misery despite the overwhelming advantage of India as a nation with first-rate people, plentiful natural resources, grand civilisational heritage, rich culture and languages, unmatched ethical and spiritual traditions, and relatively much better position in all fields—infrastructure, trained manpower, bureaucracy, and army—at the time of independence compared to many east-Asian nations who have since overtaken us? Why did India fail to leverage such rich assets of a gifted country?
Incidents, information and revelations would shock readers and make them exclaim: “Oh God, was this so? I didn't know!” Not that the facts or revelations are new; only they are not commonly known.
The book will appeal to a wide cross-section of people, especially those who are concerned about the framing and implementation of right policies for India’s development.
Rajnikant Puranik has been a physicist, a banker and a software professional. He joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur for Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics, but left after completing the course work to join service. He had been a National Science Talent Scholar during college. He did his B.Sc. (Hons.) and M.Sc. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
A number of software products have been developed under Rajnikant’s leadership. He has till date authored two technical (software) books, The Art of Creative Destruction on Software Testing and Maximum Oracle, with Oracle Best Practices; one novel, The Malshej Moment; and a non-fiction work, India After Nehru: From Lal Bahadur Shastri to Narendra Modi.
He blogs at rajnikantp.blogspot.in. His website is ww.rkpbooks.com, and his twitter account is twitter.com/Rajnikant_rkp.
