The best seller book Middle of Diamond India, which outlines a new growth strategy for India in its Amrit Kaal journey has been topping the non-fiction books category for the last few weeks. The book has been authored by Shashank Mani and published by Penguin Random House. Shashank Mani is the founder of the Jagriti Yatra and the Jagriti Enterprise Centre – Purvanchal (JECP).
Middle of Diamond India is an audacious attempt to shift the economic, social and political centre of gravity of the India from the elite to those who can be called the emerging middle class. The author, Shashank Mani, proposes a revolutionary idea through the book – that India has long ignored its largest and most talented segment, the citizens in the medium and small towns – India’s Middle.
Middle of Diamond India unearths the hidden stories of those in the Middle who have been long overlooked owing to their location and language barrier. The book argues that by recognizing and awakening the entrepreneurial vitality of those in the Middle, India can create millions of success stories and catapult the nation’s economy.
The book, available at leading book stores across India and on Amazon, is spread over 13 chapters, outlining a new vision in India’s Amrit Kaal journey. Middle of Diamond India is built around four key pillars defined by the author Shashank Mani:
1. Diamond not Pyramid : The book shifts the common phrase Bottom of the Pyramid to Middle of the Diamond, arguing that this new way of looking at India and other countries like India is more empowering.
2. Udyamita and Enablement : The book suggests that the act of shining the Diamond shaped India is through a mindset of udyamita, which is a definition wider than the word entrepreneurship. It is a moral force as potent as satyagrah or sarvodya. To unleash udyamita, the book argues, the government must become enabling to release energies of our citizens.
3. New Modernity from the Middle : The book also makes an ardent case for India and its Middle leading to the creation of a new Modernity that is in sync with our culture and will lead to an environmentally sustainable path for development which can also be helpful for other developing countries.
4. Banyan Revolution : The book proposes a Banyan Revolution that will take the concept of udyamita and spread it through a methodical process of 4 dhams, the Middle of Diamond Institute as well as offices in each of the 240 districts in the Middle to create a renaissance as India turns 100
About the Author
Shashank Mani is the founder of the Jagriti Yatra and the Jagriti Enterprise Centre – Purvanchal (JECP). The Jagriti Yatra is an annual fifteen-day train journey, the world’s largest entrepreneurial one, to the four corners of India in the company of 500 young leaders. The JECP focuses on enterprise led development in Eastern UP. With a B. Tech from IIT Delhi, and an MBA from IMD Lausanne, Shashank has worked in both corporate and government sectors as a strategist and a visionary. A ghumakkad at heart, and a public man of action by temperament, he has circled India fifteen times on the Jagriti Yatra, energizing 7,500 leaders in the process.
Shashank Mani, A doting father, proud husband, friend and guide to the people of Deoria, Shashank lives and works in his ancestral village Barpar in eastern Uttar Pradesh. He is developing hisregion through udyamita, a definition of enterprise aimed at invigorating local economy and society.
