Connect with us

News Wire

HarperCollins is proud to announce the publication of CHARAIVETI: An Academic’s Global Journey by Pranab Bardhan

Charaiveti is more than just a memoir—it is a sharp-eyed look at where we have been and where we may be headed, as seen through the lens of a remarkable life.

Published by HarperCollins

Paperback | Non-Fiction | Biography | 376 pp | INR 699

Available wherever books are sold | Releasing on 29th November 2023

NEW DELHI, Nov. 20, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — 

“Pranab Bardhan is one of the pioneers of modern development economics. He has also had a ringside view of sixty tumultuous years and more, both for India and the field of economics. This is the story of those years, told in a voice gentle and yet incisive—like the author, always amusing and yet deeply humane.”

–  ABHIJIT V. BANERJEE, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

ABOUT THE BOOK

The word ‘charaiveti’, from an ancient Sanskrit hymn, means ‘keep moving’, in search of self-realization. The leading Indian economist and public intellectual Pranab Bardhan invokes this in his moving narrative of a personal and professional journey.

From his beginnings in a poor neighbourhood in Kolkata and the idyllic days in Santiniketan, from being home-schooled by his father followed by a vigorous student life at Presidency College, Kolkata and in Cambridge University, England, Bardhan rose to become one of the foremost development economists in the world. After serving on the faculty of MIT, Indian Statistical Institute and Delhi School of Economics, he finally settled at the University of California, Berkeley. In the process, he interacted closely with the likes of James Meade, Joan Robinson, Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow, James Mirrlees, Joseph Stiglitz, George Akerlof, Jerry Cohen, Jon Elster, Amartya Sen, T.N. Srinivasan, K.N. Raj, Ashok Rudra, Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri, Sukhamoy Chakravarty, Ashis Nandy and Romila Thapar.

In his memoir, he provides a fascinating account of his richly varied and widely travelled life, interwoven with thoughtful comments on politics and society both in India and abroad and on some major strands of international intellectual debates. These accounts are enlivened by a profusion of stories, anecdotes, and amusing incidents, and draw copiously from his interests in literature and films.

Witty, wise, and perceptive, Charaiveti is more than just a memoir-it is a sharp-eyed look at where we have been and where we may be headed, as seen through the lens of a remarkable life.

Pranab Bardhan says, “The conceit of writing a memoir for others’ attention is hopefully somewhat relieved in this book by the stress on observations on the politics and society in India and abroad and a discussion of more systemic issues than personal ones, along with a profusion of stories and anecdotes and amusing incidents more for the readers’ entertainment than for enlightenment.”

Udayan Mitra, Executive Publisher, HarperCollins says “Charaiveti, Pranab Bardhan’s memoir, makes for a delightful read. As we travel with Prof Bardhan from his childhood and youth in Kolkata and Santiniketan to his subsequent years of renown in Cambridge and then Berkeley, we encounter a series of interesting personalities and are regaled with one memorable anecdote after another. Charaiveti will bring hours of joy to everyone who travels with Prof Bardhan on his journey; we at HarperCollins are delighted to be able to bring this wonderful book to readers.”

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

“Pranab Bardhan is a man of exceptionally wide scholarship, of a fiercely independent turn of mind and one who has always been deeply immersed in literature and cinema. His observations of his times, in different parts of the world, and of the many people whom he has known, are always entertaining, his insights often profound. This memoir is a joy to read.”

     –  JOHN HARRISS, Professor Emeritus, International Studies, Simon Fraser University

“Economist Pranab Bardhan recounts, in engaging prose, his remarkable journey from childhood in a rough Kolkata neighbourhood to the high tables of the intellectual world in the West. The persistence of inequality in the world has remained for him an abiding concern.”

     –  INDIRA RAJARAMAN, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research

“Charaiveti is written with Pranab Bardhan’s customary charm and wit. In documenting his journey, he weaves together reflections on the world with recognizable themes from his academic writings and offers us insights into why he has been such an important figure in humanizing and broadening the discipline of economics.”

     –  TIM BESLEY, Professor of Economics and Political Science, London School of Economics

“Pranab Bardhan proves that he is not only an exceptional scholar but also an expert raconteur. He has written a fascinating memoir that is highly entertaining and full of insights about academia, economics, India—and indeed, the world at large.”

     –  DANI RODRIK, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard University

“In his “travels”—for that is how he describes his memoir— through fast-changing times, continents, cultures, economies and the portals of academe, or in his interactions with almost all the major economists of the time, Pranab Bardhan remains passionately engaged with the political–economic problems of India and other such “extremely unequal” developing countries: relentlessly seeking ways of redressal, and lovingly reliving and objectively unfolding his Kolkata of the 1950s.”

     –  SAMIK BANDYOPADHYAY, Editor, Translator and Film, Theatre and Art Critic

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pranab Bardhan is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at University of California, Berkeley. Educated at Presidency College, Kolkata, and Cambridge University, England, he had been a part of the faculty of MIT, Indian Statistical Institute and Delhi School of Economics before joining the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of seventeen books, including Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India (Princeton University Press, 2011) and A World of Insecurity: Democratic Disenchantment in Rich and Poor Countries (Harvard University Press, 2022). A collection of his Bengali essays has been published by Ananda Publishers in Kolkata in 2020.

ABOUT HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS INDIA

HarperCollins is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, having begun publishing in India in 1992. HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live! Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Harvard University Press, Gallup Press, Oneworld, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet. HarperCollins India has won the Publisher of the Year Award four times at Tata Literature Live! in 2022, 2021, 2018 and 2016, and at Publishing Next in 2021 & 2015. HarperCollins India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers.

30 YEARS OF PUBLISHING IN INDIA

At HarperCollins, we believe in telling the best stories and in finding the widest possible readership for our books in every format possible. We started publishing 30 years ago in India and a great deal has changed since then, but what has remained constant is the passion with which our authors write their books, the love with which readers receive them, and the sheer joy and excitement that we as publishers feel in being a part of the publishing process.

Over the years, we’ve had the pleasure of publishing some of the finest writing from the subcontinent and from around the world, and some of the biggest bestsellers in Indian publishing history. Our books and authors have won a phenomenal range of awards, and we ourselves have been named Publisher of the Year several times. But nothing has meant more to us than the fact that millions of people read the books we publish, and somewhere, a book of ours might be making a difference to someone.

As we step into our fourth decade, we go back to that one word – a word which has been a driving force for us all these years:

Read.

Photo: https://oyefilmy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/harpercollins-is-proud-to-announce-the-publication-of-charaiveti-an-academics-global-journey-by-pranab-bardhan-1.jpg

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2105077/4414220/HarperCollins_Logo.jpg

 

Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/harpercollins-is-proud-to-announce-the-publication-of-charaiveti-an-academics-global-journey-by-pranab-bardhan-301993101.html

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

News Wire

Reliance Digital Launches ‘Baaptaa’, a Father’s Day Campaign Celebrating the Many Expressions of Fatherhood

MUMBAI, India, June 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Reliance Digital has launched ‘Baaptaa’, a Father’s Day campaign to celebrate the many expressions of fatherhood. Built around a simple cultural observation, while “Maa ki Mamta” has long been a part of India’s collective vocabulary, there has never been a word that captures the distinct ways fathers express love, the campaign introduces ‘Baaptaa’ as a tribute to the many shades of fatherhood.

Conceptualised as an original music-led campaign, Baaptaa celebrates fathers not as idealised figures, but as they are experienced in everyday life, protective, dependable, emotional, quirky, practical, occasionally embarrassing, and always present. Through a relatable narrative, the campaign acknowledges the countless ways fathers care for their families, often through actions rather than words.

Watch Video: https://youtu.be/9XyUsJB33Ds?si=PM67vhxrzth1JEkz 

At the heart of the campaign is an original music video told from a father’s perspective, capturing the different roles he plays across life’s moments and milestones. The film brings to life the humour, warmth and unspoken affection that characterise father-child relationships, while giving a name to a form of love that many recognise but few have articulated.

The campaign stems from a simple insight: while motherhood has often found expression through familiar phrases and popular references, the unique language of fatherhood has remained largely undefined. Baaptaa seeks to fill that gap by creating a term that reflects the everyday gestures, practical wisdom and quiet sacrifices that fathers make.

Father’s Day communication often leans into familiar emotional territory, but Reliance Digital’s campaign celebrates fathers in a way that feels more culturally authentic and relatable. The idea for ‘Baaptaa’ came from a simple observation — mother’s love has been immortalised in a number of heartfelt, emotional songs, there needed to be an anthem dedicated to dad’s love. And thus was born Baaptaa – a love language that is often awkward, practical, protective, humorous and deeply felt, even if rarely verbalised. It’s a celebration of fatherhood in all its wonderfully imperfect forms immortalized by a song that you won’t be able to stop humming.

Shop for the widest range of electronics at Reliance Digital and thank your father for his Baaptaa.

Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/reliance-digital-launches-baaptaa-a-fathers-day-campaign-celebrating-the-many-expressions-of-fatherhood-302805505.html

Continue Reading

News Wire

Harper Collins Publishers India is Delighted to Announce the Recent Publication of ‘People We Love’ by Preeti Shenoy

NEW DELHI, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — HarperCollins Publishers India is delighted to share the recent publication of People We Love by bestselling author Preeti Shenoy. At once tender and sharp, this collection of stories offers intimate, truthful and relatable portraits of the people we cherish, the ones we lose, and the people we become.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The people we love never truly leave our story…

In these tender yet piercing stories, Preeti Shenoy returns to some of her most beloved characters to reveal who they were before they appeared in her bestselling novels It’s All in the Planets and The One You Cannot Have.

Aniket, a coder, carries the weight of a longing for Trisha that he cannot bring himself to act on. Nidhi abandons her corporate life to teach pottery, only to discover that clay is far more forgiving than the people she loves. A quiz competition sparks an unlikely romance between Aman and Shruti, one that must withstand parental disapproval and class divides. And Anjali, a journalist, is so busy chasing stories that she almost misses the one unfolding in her own life.

Set against the pulse of contemporary India, People We Love explores the tug-of-war between duty and desire, family and freedom, who we are and who we dare to be. Intimate and deeply felt, these are stories about love that stays, leaves and almost slips away … love that quietly and irrevocably shapes the people we become.

Preeti Shenoy, author, says, “People We Love is a collection of three long stories, prequels to my bestsellers It’s All in the Planets and The One You Cannot Have. If you have read those books, you already know how these characters’ stories unfold. But what you don’t know yet is where it all began, the loves they carried, the choices they made, and the people they were before life shaped them into who you met on those pages. Writing these prequels felt like returning to a home I hadn’t realised I missed, and discovering rooms I had never been in before.”

Rashmi Menon, Associate Publisher – HarperCollins India, adds, “Preeti Shenoy has an extraordinary gift for finding the heartbeat of ordinary lives. People We Love is a warm, wise and deeply humane collection of short stories that reunites readers with favourite characters from her bestselling novels It’s All in the Planets and The One You Cannot Have, weaving them into fresh, deeply satisfying narratives. These characters feel like people you know, and their journeys will move, comfort and surprise you. This uplifting, thought–provoking collection reminds us why we turn to stories in the first place. We couldn’t be more excited to share it with our readers.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Preeti Shenoy is among the highest-selling authors in India. She was featured on the Forbes longlist of the most influential celebrities in India. Her books include When Love Came Calling, Wake Up Life, Is Calling, Life Is What You Make It, The Rule Breakers, A Hundred Little Flames, It’s All in the Planets, Why We Love the Way We Do, The Secret Wish List, The One You Cannot Have and many others. Her work has been translated into many Indian languages. Preeti is also a motivational speaker, an avid fitness enthusiast, and an artist specializing in portraiture and illustrated journalling. Preeti lives in Bengaluru, Karnataka.

ABOUT HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS INDIA

At HarperCollins Publishers India, we believe in telling the best stories and ensuring they reach the widest readership. We publish around 250 new books every year across 10 imprints, adding to a diverse catalogue of more than 3,000 titles in print and digital formats, with an array of genres and voices that ensure there is a book for every reader. Our authors have won some of the most prestigious literary awards, and we are proud to publish many acclaimed writers, alongside new and emerging voices shaping contemporary literature. We are also the publishers of The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, winner of the Booker Prize 2008, and Girl in White Cotton by Avni Doshi, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020, and HarperCollins India itself has been awarded “Publisher of the Year” several times. In addition, we represent some of the finest global publishers such as Harvard University Press, Lonely Planet, Oneworld, Nosy Crow, Usborne, and National Geographic Children, bringing Indian readers access to world-class books and ideas. We are also proud to be certified as a Great Place to Work for two consecutive years, a recognition of our culture, people, and values that make HarperCollins India a truly inspiring workplace. 

PRESS CONTACT:

Nandini Tripathi, Manager – Marketing (Commercial)

Email: nandini.tripathi@harpercollins.co.in | Mobile: +91 9718928839

Photo: https://oyefilmy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/harper-collins-publishers-india-is-delighted-to-announce-the-recent-publication-of-people-we-love-by-preeti-shenoy-1.jpg

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2105077/4665143/HarperCollins_Logo.jpg

 

Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/harper-collins-publishers-india-is-delighted-to-announce-the-recent-publication-of-people-we-love-by-preeti-shenoy-302805348.html

Continue Reading

News Wire

Fulfilling PM Modi’s Dream of Atmanirbhar Bharat: India’s AI Writing Startup Kreativespace Incubated at IIT Kharagpur

  1. Kreativespace, an Indian AI-powered writing platform founded by Vinet Kakadea, has been incubated at IIT Kharagpur and recognized by SVNIT University, Ministry of Education under Bodhan AI Conclave also through the NVIDIA Inception Program, AWS Startup Program, and DPIIT under Startup India.
  2. The platform unifies 8 AI-powered writing tools, along with AI Humanizer and Message AI feature being the latest addition into a single ecosystem, so you can generate and refine content all in one place.
  3. The company reports more than 50,000+ signed-up users, 75,000+ anonymous users, and roughly 100,000 monthly website visitors, positioning itself as the only Indian company operating at scale in the global AI writing market.

SURAT, India, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Kreativespace, an AI-powered writing platform, is building out its position as the only homegrown alternative in a market long dominated by international tools such as Grammarly and QuillBot. Founded by Vinet Kakadea and incubated at IIT Kharagpur, the company has aligned its growth with the broader push behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India) initiative, which encourages indigenous technology development capable of competing on a global scale.

Kreativespace Incubated at IIT Kharagpur

As AI adoption accelerates across India’s education, research, and enterprise sectors, Kreativespace is among a small group of Indian startups building writing technology designed to compete directly with established international platforms.

Kreativespace’s progress has been recognized by several institutions central to India’s startup and technology ecosystem. The company has been incubated at IIT Kharagpur, selected under SSIP 2.0 through SVNIT University, and chosen by the Ministry of Education to present its work at the Bodhan AI Conclave. It has also been accepted into the NVIDIA Inception Program and the AWS Startup Program, and holds DPIIT recognition under the Startup India initiative.

Where many writing-tool users rely on separate subscriptions for content generation to refinement for grammar correction, paraphrasing, plagiarism checking, citation generation, and editing, Kreativespace brings these functions into a single platform as a super-app for AI writing tools. The company says its approach centers on affordability and accessibility alongside performance, aiming to make advanced AI writing assistance available to a wider range of users regardless of geography or budget.

The idea for Kreativespace took shape while founder Vinet Kakadea was studying at New York University and Marymount University in the United States, where he experienced firsthand how students, researchers, and professionals often need multiple paid subscriptions to cover writing-related tasks. That fragmented experience led him to build a super-app offering each of these capabilities together, at a more accessible price point.

Kreativespace combines 8 AI-powered writing tools with AI Humanizer and Message AI feature being the latest addition, allowing users to generate, rewrite, refine, and humanize content without moving between separate platforms. The product is available via web platform, mobile apps on the App Store and Google Play, browser extensions for Chrome, Mozilla, and Edge, and a Google Docs add-on.

Vinet Kakadea, Founder of Kreativespace, said, “Kreativespace’s vision is to digitalize the entire Indian education ecosystem to support PM Modi’s Atmanirbhar Bharat scheme.”

About Kreativespace

Kreativespace with the Motto of Making Writing Accessible for Everyone: Kreativespace is an AI-powered writing platform built to make AI writing tools accessible, affordable, and effective for students, researchers, educators, professionals, content creators, startups, and enterprises. Founded by Vinet Kakadea, the company is incubated at IIT Kharagpur and has been recognized by AWS Startup Program, the NVIDIA Inception Program, and DPIIT under Startup India. For more information, visit kreativespace.com.

Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/fulfilling-pm-modis-dream-of-atmanirbhar-bharat-indias-ai-writing-startup-kreativespace-incubated-at-iit-kharagpur-302804117.html

Continue Reading

Trending