New Book: Lessons Of Violence

We all know, human society is a violent one, and there is nobody who is not concerned. Everybody has a remedy, and all of it borders on the abstract. I feel, a better approach is to learn something from it, and use the lessons profitably. If so, I find, some things and ideas we cherish as distinct human features stands to get axed. Published a  book.

Book Review: Lead To Beat

 Lead To Beat by Jonathan Escobar Marin

It begins by introducing a good and convenient tactic to ensure meeting one's goals - a brutal focus that directs one's strategy to success.

Next chapter talks about distributed leadership, which delivers through the focus, since it can ensure a seamless execution that transcends departmental boundaries and hierarchies. Winning one's goal is examined next, while underlining the need and suggesting ways to be constantly aware of the impact, one's strategies make. Come to chapter four and get introduced to the idea of a rhythm for one's journey to success. How it can eliminate things like political maneuvering, and focus energy on actual value creation. And the book concludes with a brilliant thought - legacy is not what you leave behind; it is the beat that evolves from it.

This is a book full of ideas that generate profound insights. It shows the way to move one's organization toward success, while proceeding straight forward and transforming potential into results. How to focus harder, empower better, move faster and aim higher, every single day. With aptly positioned keywords, tasteful quotations, exhaustive notes, and a useful index, this is a companion of immense value for study as well as for practical implementation.

Book Review: Tocqueville and Democracy in the Internet Age

Tocqueville and Democracy in the Internet Age by C. Jon Deloguge
This book is a critical journey through the reflections of Tocqueville on American Democracy. and questions practical adaptation of its ideals. Like, "how can living together work out to our mutual benefit?".
Chapter 1 explains Tocqueville's ideas, and the next one discusses the relevance of those in the present times. Further chapters examine questions like the meanings of democracy, its fate, and traces history of ideal democratic shakeups. Like that of accommodating racial differences, of voting rights to all, of women's issues like equal wage, discrimination, as well as of sexism and things like gay marriage. The Internet and its effects come next, which analyzes things like alternate reporting of events and issues, blogging, group polarization, easy surveillance, or cyber bullying. In this connection, the author also notes that people shall put up with the most oppressive laws without complaint, as if they did not feel them. But they are likely to reject those laws violently when the oppression takes a downturn. (Is this what really happened in the revolutions of the past?. If so, in present times too, it is a possibility, though yet to happen) 

I find the book's view on 'tyranny of democracy' quite noteworthy! 
Over its 'subjects', government shall assume sole responsibility for securing their pleasure and watching over their fate. It is absolute, meticulous, regular, provident, and mild. It would resemble paternal authority if only its purpose were the same, namely, to prepare men for manhood. But on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them in childhood irrevocably. It likes citizens to rejoice, provided they only think of rejoicing in the governments' way. It works willingly for their happiness but wants to be the sole agent and only arbiter of that happiness. It provides for their security, foresees and takes care of their needs, facilitates their pleasures, manages their most important affairs, directs their industry, regulates their successions, and divides their inheritances. Why not relieve them entirely of the trouble of thinking, and the difficulty of living?
Every day it thus makes man’s use of his free will rarer and more futile. It circumscribes the action of the will more narrowly, and little by little robs each citizen of the use of his own faculties. So, rather than tyrannize, it inhibits, represses, saps, stifles, and stultifies, and in the end he reduces each nation to nothing but a flock of timid and industrious animals, with the government as its shepherd. This is, what can be called a headless despotism.
What message do I get from this book?
All governments, whether democratic or not, stand to reach a point sooner or later, when, if some mechanism for self-correction do not act, a complete regime change shall follow.
or
When changes are not being implemented or have not gone far enough, the reform itself may become a catalyst for revolution. 

Book Review: Destroying Democracy

Destroying Democracy: Neoliberal Capitalism and the Rise of Authoritarian Politics 

Edited by Michelle Williams and Vishwas Satgar

Part One begins with an introductory chapter that traces the threats to democracy and rising authoritarianism. How neo-liberal capitalism eroded both the administrative capacity and state legitimacy of democratic states, by invoking both equality of opportunity and liberty to prevent state control, thereby undermining democratic systems' effectiveness.

Part Two of the volume explores the undoing of three democracies – the US, Brazil and India – through the lens of neo-liberal capitalism and its concomitant ecological devastation. How, Covid-19 worsened the tendencies towards authoritarianism, concentrating power and wealth with a few entities. For example, India is witnessing market-based development with a coercive majoritarianism, where populism fuels fascism. Or South Africa, instead of ensuring transparency, information-sharing, and accountability, chooses ‘enclosed structures, invited spaces, secretive deals, and unilateral decision making’. The book concludes by pointing out a dire need - one to enable citizens and movements to define political agendas and hold politicians accountable.

An interesting book, indeed.