Amit's Blog

The Good Earth: A Timeless Lens on Chinese Peasant Life, Cultural Universality, and Civilizational Divergences Prelude In the vast expanse of human literature, few works bridge cultures as profoundly as Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. Published in 1931, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel immerses readers in the rural heartlands of early 20th-century China, where the soil's rhythms govern existence. Through Wang Lung, a humble farmer, and his enduring wife O-Lan, Buck chronicles unyielding toil, fleeting prosperity, and the inexorable cycles of fortune. Raised in China by missionary parents, Buck lived nearly four decades among the peasantry of Anhui Province. Bilingual and deeply immersed, she drew authentic observations to demystify China for Western readers, challenging exotic stereotypes and unveiling universal truths. The novel's triumph—bestselling status and contribution to Buck's 1938 Nobel Prize—highlighted its empathetic power. Yet, this realism invites ...

From Table Bay to Union: Colonial Conquest, Indigenous Dispossession, and the Forging of Apartheid South Africa   The story of South Africa’s transformation from a land of ancient civilizations and decentralized chiefdoms into a unified settler-colonial state under British dominion is one of conquest, mineral-driven ambition, and racial engineering. It begins in 1652 with Jan van Riebeeck’s Dutch East India Company outpost at Table Bay—a modest resupply station that ignited centuries of displacement, starting with the Khoisan and later engulfing Bantu-speaking nations like the Xhosa, Zulu, and Sotho. Over 143 years, Dutch control remained regionally confined, but the British arrival—first in 1795 and permanently by 1806—ushered in an era of aggressive territorial consolidation. By 1910, through wars, annexations, and the exploitation of diamond and gold wealth, Britain had unified four colonies into the Union of South Africa. Crucially, South Africa was never “empty”; sophistic...

The Empire of Cotton: How War Capitalism Forged Modern Industrial Capitalism Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History revolutionizes our understanding of capitalism by revealing cotton not as a mere commodity but as the central thread weaving together the violent birth of the modern global economy. Beckert argues that modern capitalism did not emerge from peaceful market exchanges or spontaneous technological innovation alone. Instead, it was forged through what he terms “war capitalism”—a brutal system of state-backed expropriation, imperial conquest, and racialized labor exploitation that predated and enabled the Industrial Revolution. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, European states leveraged military power to seize land in the Americas, enslave millions of Africans, and dismantle thriving textile industries in India and China, all to secure a cheap, relentless supply of raw cotton for nascent factories in Manchester and beyond. Slavery was not peripheral but foundati...

Forging India’s Deep Tech Destiny: A Convergence of Vision, Capital, and Sovereign Strategy   Prologue: The Quiet Revolution in India’s Innovation DNA For decades, India’s global technology identity was shaped by its prowess in information technology services—building software for others, not foundational tools for itself. The nation exported talent, not technology; solutions, not sovereignty. But beginning in the late 2010s and accelerating dramatically through the 2020s, a profound metamorphosis has taken root—one that is redefining what it means to be an Indian innovator. No longer are Indian entrepreneurs content with iterating on existing global paradigms. Instead, a new class of founders is emerging—scientists turned CEOs, engineers turned visionaries—who are building ventures grounded in first-principles science , proprietary engineering , and patent-rich intellectual property . This is the essence of deep tech : innovation that originates not in spreadsheets, but in l...