Book Review Session

Department of Foreign Trade Management and PG Studies in Commerce and Management, organised a book review session on international bestseller ‘The World is Flat’ authored by Thomas L. Friedman, foreign affairs columnist with The New York Times, on Saturday, 7th August, 2010. The guest speaker for the session was Prof. N.D. Mathur, Head of the Management Department, Central University of Rajasthan.
Message of the Book – The ‘flattening’ of the world can be force for good – for business, the environment and the people.
The book focuses, primarily, on 10 flatteners of the world and describes major changes post- and pre- globalization in the 20th century. Among the flatteners, include New-age Creativity, New-age Connectivity, Workflow Softwares, Uploading etc. Prof Mathur discussed with students, various chapters of the book, and provided them with an insight into them. The chapters discussed were The Triple Convergence, America and Free Trade, The Quiet Crisis, The Unflat World, Globalization and 11/9 v/s 9/11.
The book makes use of case studies, interviews, statistics etc. to put forth its message, which is, “Be prepared because this phenomenon of change waits for none.” It also urges people to adapt to changes as it proposes that the world is moving faster than the most can keep up. At the end of the session, Prof. Mathur generalized the conclusions of the book by saying that people want to collaborate, compete, and share with others of different cultures, languages, and educational background. Also, that competitors, today, feel no bad to collaborate with each other.
The session with Prof. Mathur was very lucid and enlightning for the students as it acquainted them with the aspects of the globalized vis-à-vis the glocalised world.