‘The Book of Aspiration’ foreword gives you insight into the idea that led to the book. It started from a simple thought that a book on social leaders’ life stories would be inspiring to read and more so for the youngsters. It took Ved Arya (SRIJAN) and Dhruvi Shah (CEO Axis Bank Foundation ) four years to collate, edit and share the 10 short autobiographical notes of social leaders. They promise to add to the first volume.
ASPIRATION means hope or ambition of achieving something. The author duo has dedicated it to the young people who may want to solve the social problems and aspire to become social entrepreneurs. That is a noble thought.
One may say, such short autobiographical stories could be better as one of the many video series doing the rounds. I love the concept as a book. It someway adds to the whole purpose.
The book of Aspiration has life-sketch penned by Apoorva Oza, Farhad Merchant, Geeta Goel, Dr Noorjhan Safia Niaz, Pankaj Ballabh, Pavitra YS, Dr Rajeshwari Narendran, Ravi Sreedharan, Suresh Reddy and Vivek Prasad in that order. For some reasons, it is in Alphabetical order, where a neat segmentation was a possibility. Maybe the author duo played it safe, not to antagonise any of the social leaders!
Anyway, the life-sketches gave me a superficial insight into their lives. A chance encounters or a life-changing episode seems to be the key to their interest and dedication to the social cause. Almost every life-sketch you can ou can feel the lack of resources and innovative efforts by the teams solving the social problems. They all realise what they are doing is so little. And they realise that beginning has to be made. Then you realise this insignificantly small efforts are significant enough in making a dent, an impact, that has the power to convert into a movement.
As a reader, I feel cheated with the book of Aspiration. The stories are crammed into few sheets each. They are too short for you to get an idea of the problems, intent, solutions and impact. Maybe the resource crunch affected the project.
Maybe the autobiographical style in the book of Aspiration, with each social leader contributing their story has given some flavour to the whole effort. As individually crafted, they follow different styles that do not allow you to settle down. They answer three questions. What transformed their life, what they have done as a social leader and what they envision doing in the next 10-12 years. And that makes it interesting.
I think more biographical storytelling would have created a far better impact. Maybe it would have allowed a better focus and remove the grandeur of modesty that each note suffers from.
Personally, I would love to read a few of the social leader’s story but deep dive into the works. Maybe I want to read case-lets focussing on problems, possible solutions, jugad design thinking, implementations process, Barriers, Facilitators, impact and learnings. Perhaps that will bring the right focus on the efforts and the entrepreneur aspect of the whole work. Maybe.
However, my Wishlist does not take away anything from the efforts of Ved Arya and Dhruvi Shah. Interested in social entrepreneurship and solving a social problem.
Ved Arya also dedicated ‘The Book of Aspiration’ to Prof Pradip Khandwalla, a former IIM Ahmedabad director. Prof Khandwalla, in addition to mentoring many social leaders, taught Ved the layered meaning of Tagore’s Ekla Chalo re’. I was looking forward to Ved explaining Tagore’s poem’s meaning but found it missing from the book.
‘The Book of Aspiration’ by Ved Arya and Dhruvi Shah, published by Notion Press. Price INR 150/-. Kindle edition- INR 99/- Order at Notion Press, Flipkart or Amazon.
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DECLARATION. Ved Arya gifted me an autographed copy of the book to read. Ved Arya is IIM Almunus 1981 Batch.
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