My first book....

Well, everybody has to start somewhere, this is how I started....

My first book, published in 1986, was "Success Through Change - The Planned Approach," the result of my fascination with the emerging specialization of behavioral sciences. 

Behaviorists claim that man, and indeed any man-made organization, or system can grow, die or change by adjusting its positive or negative reinforcements.

Thus a dog when fed at a particular time every day salivates at that fixed time every day. This was studied by Pavlov in his classic "Pavlovian Salivating Dog" experiment.

Likewise human behavior and conditioning depends upon how an individual is given positive or negative reinforcements. A simple sample is the mother saying to the child, "Don't do that," and giving a pinch if the child does the forbidden act. The words and the act are negative reinforcements, the memory of which discourage such acts in future.

Planned change is a branch of behavioral science that deals with how change can be brought about in a planned manner. Any planned change consists of the following three steps:

1. Unfreeze - unfreezing a solid system
2. Change - changing a system
3. Re-freeze - refreezing a system

The model can be applied to any system regardless of size, shape or orientation. Thus a government that enforces a tough tax regime without any social benefits could be voted out of power. A dictatorial boss or ruler could be thrown out by the mounting discontent among the rank and file.

In this book I have pointed out these basic tenets of behaviorism and also reviewed India's system of planning for economic growth. I have analyzed the five year plans and suggested ways of improving centralized planning.

The book was moderately successful and sold about a modest one thousand copies, a respectable figure by Indian standards.