This Man Is On A Mission To Transform India Through Entrepreneurship

In September this year, a book launch created ripples in economic think tanks and the corridors of power. Titled Middle of Diamond India and authored by Shashank Mani, the book is an audacious attempt to shift the economic, social and political centre of gravity of India from the elite to those who the author defines as “the emerging middle.” 

Through his best-selling book Middle of Diamond India, Shashank Mani proposes a revolutionary idea – that India has long ignored its largest and most talented segment, the citizens in the medium and small towns – India’s Middle. The book unearths the hidden stories of those in the Middle, who have been long overlooked owing to their location and language barrier. The book argues that by 

recognizing and awakening the entrepreneurial vitality of those in the Middle, India can 

create millions of success stories and catapult the nation’s economy. 

“My book shifts the common phrase Bottom of the Pyramid to Middle of the Diamond, and it  argues that this new way of looking at India is more empowering,” says the author Shashank Mani, who quit his job a partner with Price Waterhouse Coopers as India turned 75 and embarked on its Amrit Kaal journey and has vowed to devote his life to public welfare and society.  “The book suggests that the act of shining the Diamond shaped India is through a mindset of udyamita, which is a definition wider than the word entrepreneurship. It is a moral force as potent as satyagrah or sarvodya,” he added.  

Shashank Mani is the founder of the Jagriti Yatra and the Jagriti Enterprise Centre – 

Purvanchal (JECP). For the uninitiated, the Jagriti Yatra is an annual fifteen-day train journey, the world’s largest entrepreneurial one, to the four corners of India in the company of 500 young leaders. JECP is his give back to his hometown Deoria, which  focuses on enterprise led development in Eastern UP. Shashank now lives and works in his ancestral village Barpar in eastern Uttar Pradesh. He is developing his region through udyamita, a definition of enterprise aimed at invigorating local economy and society. 

The book, Middle of Diamond India, also makes an ardent case for India and its Middle leading to the creation of a new modernity that is in sync with our culture and will lead to an environmentally sustainable path for development which can also be helpful for other developing countries. The book also proposes a Banyan Revolution that will take the concept of udyamita and spread it 

through a methodical process of 4 dhams, a proposed Middle of Diamond Institute as well as offices 

in each of the 240 districts in the Middle to create a renaissance as India turns 100. 

Middle of Diamond India is available on Amazon and all leading book stores.