3 Review(s)

Economist, environmentalist and urban theorist Sanjeev Sanyal brings the deftness of a polymathto explore completely new ways to think about India and its place in the world. The idea of constantly and organically updating one’s views/actions through feedback loops shows upin many places in my writings. This derives directly from the view that the real world is fundamentallyunstable and unpredictable (i.e., it’s not a matter of having a better forecasting model). The bestresponse to such a world, therefore, is to have a good grasp of what is currently happening and torespond quickly and flexibly to the evolving situation. My worldview derives from many sources ranging from religious philosophy and long-range history,to Chaos Theory and Network Theory—with many of them integrated under a broad CAS framework.Some of the foreign writers and thinkers who have influenced me include Friedrich Hayek, JosephSchumpeter, Daniel Kahneman, Lee Kuan Yew, Nassim Taleb, Karl Popper, Charles Darwin, SunTzu, Vidiadhar Naipaul and Jane Jacobs, to name a few. The Indian influences are even more varied and range from ancient texts, such as the Ramayana,the Mahabharata and Kautilya’s Arthashastra, to more modern thinkers, such as Swami Vivekanandaand Sri Aurobindo.