Tushar Mangl

The Indian book publishing has long been like a government department. Deep entrenched bureacracy, the authors dependent on the maai baap culture of the publishers, who for no fault of theirs had become government like babus. They all receive even today hundreds of manuscripts each week. So they naturally have got a huge discretionary power, which they at times delegate to their team. They can't really publish each and every work that comes at their door, but there can be no strict parameter to pick the best book of the lot. Hence the culture of babudom.And I can't even blame the publishers for that. Recently, I received an e-mail from Rashmi Bansal, a renowned author herself, (I had reviewed her blog youth curry here , in 2007) informing me about her new venture. I think, if implemented well, this could be a revolutionary idea. Even though self publishing has really taken off, it has created a glut of books in the market. So much so that many of them lie unnoticed fo

Punjab has just a handful seats in the entire Lok Sabha. Yet, this time around it has sprung up an interesting result, worth writing about. The debutante Aam Aadmi Party scored a wonderful 4 seats out of 14. Its only achievement nationwide. Bhagwant Mann, who had earlier been part of Manpreet Badal's People's Party of Punjab, worked really hard and used his earlier experiences with the PPP to deliver a spectacular verdict. Especially in Sangrur, where he himself won with a margin of over two lakh votes. Also notable was the fact that the Delhi group, the select coitre of people who actually run AAP were not so involved here, which actually helped the party. This election has also marked the final death nail for Manpreet Badal's PPP. He had started this party with lofty ideals and promise of a revolutionary change. He told his people of new ideas and new brand of politics. But soon he went allying with old ideologies like the CPI, CPM, BSP etc. Even that could not help