If for any reason at all he fails, virtually the entire public sector will have to be written off for the next twenty years, noted the panel that chose V. Krishnamurthy as the Business India Businessman of the Year in 1987. Management of a business enterprise in India is a lot more difficult than in other countries. There are far more uncertainties that an Indian manager has to encounter while performing his tasks-even more so in state-owned companies, often synonymous with inefficiency, than in private ones. But Krishnamurthy, through his exemplary stewardship of three enterprises, emerged as the pride of India's public sector in the 1970s and 1980s. At Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, he saved the company from imminent disintegration and dispelled Indira Gandhi's impression that Indian managers do not have the ability to manage large organizations. At Maruti Udyog, he was given the responsibility of not just manufacturing a car but of modernizing the automobile industry itself. Steel Authority of India was almost a sunset company when he took over but he shook up the organization from its very foundations and put it back in a leadership position. At the Helm is the story of how a boy from the temple town of Karuveli in Tamil Nadu starts out as a technician at airfields during the Second World War but goes on to script the biggest success stories of young India's fledgling public sector over the next five decades.

The professional memoirs (and insights) from a revered organization consultant. In this remarkable memoir, Richard Beckhard shares a lifetime of wisdom from his forty-five year career as one of the country's foremost organization consultants. Written in a highly readable style, this book offers an insiders view of how change management has evolved in the latter half of the twentieth century. Throughout the book Beckhard weaves his life story with the lessons he learned from his role as an influential ?agent of change.? The book thoughtfully outlines his principles of practice to show how they not only shaped his career but how they can be used as a model for anyone who is grappling with the issues of organizational change.

Dinesh C. Sharma is a New Delhi-based award-winning journalist and author with over thirty-five years’ of professional experience. He has written extensively on science and technology, climate change, health, environment and innovation for national and international media, including The Lancet and Wired. He has been Science Editor at Mail Today, and Managing Editor at India Science Wire and is currently the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow (2020-2021). His book The Outsourcer: The Story of India’s IT Revolution was awarded the Computer History Museum Book Prize in 2016. He has also been a visiting faculty at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Ateneo de Manila University, Manila. Dinesh Sharma tweets at @dineshcsharma