Back to resources

Negotiating Social Harmony – Uncommon ground – Rohini Nilekani

Uncommon Ground | Dec 5, 2011

No servant can serve two masters: for either he wall hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” From Biblical times, this has been the conventional wisdom.
But humbly correcting the dictum is philanthropist, journalist and activist, Rohini Nilekani, who is famous
for being one of the backstage players of Infosys, in UNCOMMON GROUND.
In the new world, where the distance between business and social spheres are blurring increasingly, wealth does not hinder one from pursuing social good.

View PDF

More like this

Uncommon Ground

Uncommon Ground - Do we see ourselves as citizens or consumers?

There has to be a fine balance between society, government and the market – samaj, sarkar and bazaar. I attempted to seek that balance through a dialogue between samaj and bazaar. In 2008, Rohini Nilekani, chairperson of NGOs Pratham Books and Arghyam, moderated an eight-part television series called ‘Uncommon Ground’. Conceptualised by Nilekani, a former […]
Oct 13, 2011 | Conversation

Uncommon Ground

Land wars: Anand Mahindra debates Medha Patkar

Rohini Nilekani’s Uncommon Ground: Dialogues between Business and Social Leaders (Viking, Rs 499) brings together titans of business and civil society who are often on opposite sides of the polarized debate over development. It offers her words, a rare “platform of reasoned discourse ” be it on job creation, food security, or the environment, and […]
Oct 19, 2011 | Conversation

Civil Society  |  Uncommon Ground  |  COVID-19

Covid-19: Securing the Present and the Future

This is the most serious crisis since World War II. Politicians must step up; voters must allow them to. Politicians are elected because they campaign in poetry, but voters don’t always account for the fact that elected representatives must govern in prose. That chasm between the promise and the delivery becomes more dangerous at times […]
Mar 30, 2020 | Article

Uncommon Ground

Uncommon Ground - Rohini Nilekani

This book of conversations between people holding different points of view has a deliberately misleading title. Because Rohini Nilekani has managed to show that in the most uncommon of grounds, between the most adversarial of positions, there can be found something in common if the two sides are willing to at least try and see […]
Jan 30, 2012 | Book Review