Friday, August 24, 2012

What Young India Wants

"What Young India Wants" ... the title caught my attention. I haven't read Chetan Bhagat's books in the past. However, I have heard from my friends that he is a great writer. Recently, I learned that the super hit movie "3 Idiots" is based on his fiction novel. That increased my curiosity to read his latest book "What Young India Wants".

Chetan has done a fantastic job of covering all the issues that plague our society. He says that the situation in India today isn't a result of bad politicians but due to bad citizens. We are the ones who select bad politicians. The engineer in him tries to give objective solutions to all the problems - while many of them are practical... some of them were completely out of the charts. For ex., his recommendations for moving government establishments and government guest houses to the city outskirts will create more problems than solving them. I love his idea of having institutions that develop politicians. I think that is definitely the need of the day.

He tries to play it very neutral. On one side, he criticizes one family running the country generation after generation. On the other hand, he is appreciative of what Sonia Gandhi & Rahul has done / trying to do to India. He equally criticizes the top 2 political parties in our nation.

For people who think "India cannot be changed... the situation will continue to be like this forever"... you should read this book once. There are chapters in the book that are very inspiring. I personally like the two short fiction stories at the end. Very entertaining and at the same time hard hitting. 

Great job Chetan Bhagat !