Author: Biz India

Authors: Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo Publisher: Public Affairs – 303 pages Book Review by Laxmi Chaandi It takes more than desire at the highest leadership level of a nation, even with an elaborate program, to fight poverty. For example Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s  1971 Gharibi Hatao (Abolish Poverty) program did little to alleviate poverty in that country. A Wikipedia article states: “All in all, Gharibi Hatao did little and accomplished less: only about 4 percent of all funds allocated for economic development went to the three main anti-poverty programs, and precious few of these ever reached the poorest of the poor.” With a lot of people (mainly politicians and local leaders) taking away most of the food and the funds before they reached the recipients (the poor) it is no wonder Gharibi Hatao was a dismal failure. This end result points out to the fact that there are many obstacles to overcome for a poverty-alleviation initiative to succeed. Lack of proper communication with and among poor people, counterproductive and fatalistic thinking, stubborn mindsets, and old, regressive habits of living among the poor have been found to be some of the difficulties revealed when one examines the causes of the persistence of poverty. Banerjee and Duflo, while being academics, have been studying the economics of the poor for a long time through other than just research and...

Authors: Anthony A. Miller, Albert F. Simon and Rachel A. Carson Publisher:  McGraw-Hill – 494 pages Book Review by:  Nano Khilnani This book is a study aid and practical guide for those individuals preparing to pass the Physician Assistant National Certification and Recertification Examination. It comes with a practice CD attached on the inside cover of the book. This nearly 500-page guide contains 1300 practice questions, correct answers to each, and explanations on why they are the correct ones. The questions are presented in the same multiple-choice format as seen in the national examination, which are the “one best answer – single item” questions. In that national exam, you are given a question and you have to pick the best answer to that question. The better your knowledge and understanding of that particular medical specialty, the more likely you are to pick the right answer. Be sure to read the Introduction of this book. It explains to you how to get the most from the book It explains to you the basics and structure of the exam and how to answer each question. Not only does it give you the correct answer to each question, it also explains to you why it is the correct one. It also gives you sources of in-depth information on that area of medicine that you can tap into, to further your knowledge. This...

Authors: Bahadir Inozu, Dan Chauncey, Vicki Kamataris and Charles Mount Publisher: McGraw-Hill – 319 pages Book Review by:  Nano Khilnani This is an excellent, one-of-a-kind book. It is the only book I know of on business that introduces the use of three outstanding management strategies – Lean, Six Sigma and Constraints Management – to maximize customer (and patient or client) satisfaction, minimize cost, and boost employee morale. Applied to healthcare, this integrated approach having the three components named above, and already being used in U.S. hospitals, helps managers identify the top problems in a given organization, analyze them, and provide effective solutions that have been proven to be successful elsewhere. As some of you may know, the Six Sigma system originated in the 1970s. It applied to manufacturing and business processes. Its goal was to minimize defects in products as well as to apply high standards in other business operations so that a company would have higher revenues and lower costs, without sacrificing certain requirements. In manufacturing the Six Sigma ideal is to have almost zero defects in products (99.99966% of defect-free products) that a company makes, or just 3.4 defects per million products. It utilizes the DMAIC process to maximize product quality and improve company performance. According to Wikipedia, the DMAIC project methodology has five phases: Define the problem, the voice of the customer, and the project goals,...

Author: Detlev S. Schlichter Publisher: Wiley – 267   pages Book Review by:  Nano Khilnanani Detlev Schlichter has rendered an invaluable service to us with this book by warning us of the dangers of printing paper money. Through five parts and 10 chapters of this book, he takes us on a journey from the basics of money, what purposes it serves and how supply and demand determine its value, to the harmful effects of paper money-creation unsupported by hard assets that are not unlimited and relatively cost a lot more to produce. He explains the fallacies about price levels and relates to us the legacy of failure in the history of paper money. Finally, he proves to us that massive money-printing will have no other outcome but a collapse of currency. Rampant printing of trillions of dollars has been going on in the last few years (particularly after early 2009) in the United States. No hard assets such as gold or silver have backed them up. Prior to 1971, each United States dollar printed was backed up with reserves of gold. When President Richard Nixon lifted the gold standard in 1971, presidents were no longer required to have gold backing up backing up paper currency. Occasionally we read reports in the business pages of newspapers about the Federal Reserve’s ongoing program of ‘quantitative easing’ but I suspect most people do...