Prabhu Guptara’u book, Make the Best of Your Life:  Letters to Bahujan Youth, is in epistolary form responding to questions, which makes his work attractive and the topics lucid.[1] Born and educated in India, Guptara is a prominent Indian expert of global economics and international business. Guptara has lived in Switzerland and Scotland for years and teaches in various universities overseas, which strengthens his insights in global strategies and international trend. In these letters, Guptara aims at providing for young readers in Bahujan (the majority of the people) suggestions into three sections, including the topics of life, education and work.

In the first section about life in Make the Best of Your Life, the issues are ranging widely from how to communicate with parents to how to find a suitable partner, and to how to build up self-confidence and get rid of shyness. In the second section about the topic of education, Guptara emphasizes on encouraging his reader to broaden oneadener toptara about itto have disciplines in order to succeed in life, which is mostly not learnt by Asian students. In addition, he gives tips to the readers on how to write a good essay, which is concise and practical. Guptara also points out the problems of plagiarism, which were usually neglected by non-Western students and schools. In the third section about work, Guptara first shows the destructive result of Indian education, lt of Indian education,  usually negleout reflection). Then he continues to instruct readers in interview skills and how to become a good teamwork. He also talks about the issue of working abroad, which is increasingly happening in today’nterview skills and how to becomGuptara touches the hard problems of injustice within the caste system and shows how to face the tricky issue of bribing in offices.

Instead of prescribing statements for being brave and having vision in life, Guptara shows solid steps through which people could follow easily. With concrete methods, Guptara advices readers to read books from the topics about World civilization to economic, to sociology and global trends in order to expand their mind and experiences. Guptara shows compassions and sympathy to his readers betweens lines. For example, he deliberates the reasons why mostly one could hardly keep one asNew Year resolution and then encourages people with advices concerning keeping ones tdecisons. Also, he shows the advantages and disadvantages for a person and even for a nation in order to explain why one should not just copy othersasons why mostly one could hardly keep ing in todayof castes system and multi-cultures in India, nevertheless, Guptara tries to provide biblical rules to the readers. Besides numbers of strengths mentioned above, Guptara had hard time for dealing with bribing and casteism in India. His argument against bribing in working place seems difficult to practice for the lack of self-experiences or pages of the book. In sum, Guptaran IMake the Best of Your Life:  Letters to Bahujan Youth is highly recommended, especially for Asian students and even adults.

Li-Chiou Danielle LI

Holy Light Theological Seminary, Taiwan

[1] Prabhu Guptara, Make the Best of Your Life:  Letters to Bahujan Youth (New Delhi: The Marginalized, 2017).

Categories: Reviews