I always knew that India was a backwards poor country. But after my first visit to India, I left completely confused.

India has one of the richest cultures in the world - everyone wears the most beautiful colorful clothes, the temples are creative beyond the possibilities of my imagination, and of course it is the land of yoga, meditation, and infinite wise gurus that are now teaching the West about the meaning of life. The land is a tropical paradise growing infinite coconut trees, mangoes, papayas, endless spices, and all these other plants I’ve never even heard of before (I tried a jackfruit for the first time!). They have developed one of the world’s oldest holistic (“whole-body”) healing systems, Ayurveda! It is so easy to be vegetarian in India! The food is optimized for this diet and only works to further your health! Did I mention Bollywood movies?!!! And, maybe even more importantly, the people I met were truly amazing and very very smart.

So why is this country poor?!!! It made no sense!!! It should be the top world power!!!!

I tried reading a few books about India, but India Unbound by Gurcharan Das is the first book that finally was able to solve this nagging puzzle for me.

But this book is not just about India - it is really about the economy, political ideologies, business, globalism, entrepreneurship, governments, the future, and much much more. I found myself wanting to highlight the entire book! That’s because these complicated topics are explained with such simplicity (using India as the main case-study) that it all made sense. I think I tried taking an economics class in college, but I dropped out of it. If only it was taught by Gurcharan Das!

The book includes Gurcharan Das’s personal stories, history of Indian politics, world lessons from other countries, and many of the rollercoaster downs and ups associated with good storytelling. Despite the mistakes and bleak past, the book is ended with the most excitement, passion, and energy for the future. You can feel the author’s personal passion coming out from each page. After all, this is his personal view of the events and the world.

In today’s expanding global society, I think it’s important for everyone to read this book to really understand the dynamics of economy and democracy and how they work. Seriously, this book opened my mind to important concepts I ignored in the past because they seemed a so boring and complicated to look into. Wow!!