We indians really go ga-ga over self help books. This can be seen from the volume and range of self-help books that is now being stocked in your neighbourhood book store. They are all there....giving us 12 rules to be successful to .........10 ways to be rich .....or even The 12 rules to make us happy....and so on and so forth.But do they really help us--I do not think they do in any sense whatsoever.
If we start from the person who started it all- Dale Carnegie with his "How to win ....", I remember attacking it with gusto and though dissapointed after reading it, my resolve to start applying his principles. But I never did because the situations Carnegie describes just isn't practical in India. For example, there's this example of a motor salesman who puts his hand on the motor surface and turns truimphanly to the complaining foremen and says something like "Its not hot, Mr. Joe. The permissible temperature rise is 60 deg F" (This may not be very accurate as I read the book years ago). But ask any motor salesman in India and he will just laugh. No 1# unlike Mr Joe, Mr. Sen will simply not agree even if you show him the O&M manual No 2#Mr. Sen may agree but he won't take the responsibility and refer the matter to his boss Mr. Subramaniam...  ..and let's face it in most cases the salesman will not be able to place his hand on the motor anyway due to red tape. This same argument is also true for recent bestsellers like "Who moved my cheese?'
So, isn't it time we get out of this trap by supposedly management gurus of the West and revert back to our Indian guidelines again! Lets face it, if our system had really needed help, then our economy today would have been under recession and the US economy booming, instead of to the contrary.