News & Opinion

Bestsellers Overseas

March 04, 2008

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Recently, I found a book called India's Century by Kamal Nath, that would be a great precursor to our listing of February's top sellers in other countries. Here's just a sampling of the book, from chapter five: In the foreign mind, it was Mumbai (Bombay), of all Indian cities, that used to be the best suited to evoke a vision of modern India. This was all the more evident when I, as the minister for the environment and forests, represented India at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development - the "Earth Summit", as it was called - in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1992.

Recently, I found a book called India's Century by Kamal Nath, that would be a great precursor to our listing of February's top sellers in other countries. Here's just a sampling of the book, from chapter five:

In the foreign mind, it was Mumbai (Bombay), of all Indian cities, that used to be the best suited to evoke a vision of modern India. This was all the more evident when I, as the minister for the environment and forests, represented India at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development - the "Earth Summit", as it was called - in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1992. In the course of the conference, which lasted 11 days, I got to know the representatives of a large swath of nation-states, many of them so new that I could barely locate them in a world atlas. Some of them had been born as a result of the breakup of the USSR; others were little specks of land strewn across the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. Many of these representative of new countries, as I could sense, had difficulty in placing New Delhi, the capital, on their mental map of India (unless, of course, they were told that it was close to the Taj Mahal, which brought a glint of recognition to every eye). But Mumbai was know to one and all. The Ukrainian or Moroccan knew it as the home of India's film industry. The man from the little island republic in Micronesia on the other hand, knew Bombay as a financial center, while the Trinidadian knew the city as the home of Sunil Gavaskar, the cricket legend.

Now, here is what was selling overseas:

# 1 Rules to Break and Laws to Follow - Denmark
# 2 Purpose - Bangladesh
# 3 How: Why We Do Anything Means Everything...in Business - United Kingdom
# 4 Smarts: Are We Hardwired for Success? - Mexico
# 5 Strengths Finder 2.0 - Australia

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