Book review: The Yogic Manager

Expeditions, horses, penguins and fictitious planets have all formed the basis of management books in recent times. Each of them attempts to help the corporate world to build better leaders, retain talent and generate higher revenue.

Some are interesting and insightful, while many are just pointless books doing nothing more than taking up shelf space.

“The Yogic Manager” is quite unique as it takes up the ancient Indian philosophy of Vedanta as its core, a system that focuses on self-realisation.

Written in the format of a novel, the plot of “The Yogic Manager” is essentially a reworking of the Sanskrit epic of Mahabharata, a narrative on the consequences of greed, power struggles and partisan leadership. Its extrapolation to the business world of today sees similar struggles of conscience suffered by the main protagonist, who is reminiscent of the Pandava Prince Arjun.

Life is a constant struggle and navigating its moral minefield is extremely difficult, a familiar terrain to most of us. The book works on creating a pathway through that conflict, with lessons drawn from wisdom that is many millennia old.