Plunge into the Social and Political Verity of India: Subrata Roy’s Think With Me

The Think with Me summit featured a spectacular launch of Saharasri Subrata Roy’s second book from the Thoughts from Tihar trilogy − Think with Me. In this sequel to the bestselling book, he talks about five different forces that influence India the most: religion, media, education, electoral system and population. His previous book, Life Mantras, engaged the readers on a personal level and talked about life, human behavior and even planetary influences. Think with Me on the other hand, addresses issues that hinder India’s rapid growth collectively.

It begins with an interesting Preface, where Saharasri explains why he decided to touch politics in this book despite his corporate background. Don’t judge this book by its thickness. Think with Me presents the reality of the society with hard facts and easy analogies in just 111 pages. In one of the examples, he clearly explains the emotional spheres of an individual by contrasting the case of a soldier murdering enemies on the battlefield versus his personal vendetta against his neighbor following a land dispute. Both cases have different emotional spheres, where the latter was done on the soldier’s personal whim that made it a crime.

In another illustration, Saharasri compares the population of India with the USA. The land of opportunity is a prosperous nation even though more than half its land is inhabitable. Subrata Roy states that India would be a superpower if it had one-third its present population. USA has 18 people living per square kilometer, whereas in India 7,000 people are stuffed in the same place.

Think With Me book concludes with topics that push the national interest over divisive politics. Mr. Roy says: “I am of the firm opinion that the interests of the nation are paramount, and should always be placed above religion and all religious beliefs.”

This isn’t the case in India, regardless of the separation between religion and state.