India Employment 20260904

India Insider: An Unfinished Economic Transformation

by with No Comment AssetsBen EzraCentral BanksCommoditiesExclusive ContentFeatured HighlightsIndiaInvestingUncategorizedWorld

Improving India's Education Strategy to Help Prosperity

Indian government officials, policy makers and journalists have all applauded the GDP April-June quarter data that came in 7.8%, compared to last year’s 6.9% growth. Although, the growth metrics are essential for understanding the results achieved in the broad economy, improved metrics should be applied towards the quality and conditions of life for citizens throughout India while comparing prosperity inequality.

Reading economic statistics without political or sociological factors becomes irrelevant. International trade agreements are often examined between capital and trade statistics, but in reality they are dominated by corporate lobbying and geopolitical powers behind the scenes calling into question results and assumptions.

Economists frequently discuss marginal propensity and disposable income elasticity, but in reality labour laws, union suppression and offshore workforce capabilities determine the wages paid to local employees. India like other Western countries, judges economic growth via headline statistics, without explaining the qualitative factors that determine a nation’s prosperity.

India Employment 20260904

Share of Informal Employment Comparison 2005 – 2025

Human development concerns via good housing, better roads, access to quality education for every child, and secure hospitalization in government run facilities are not covered in GDP data. India calculates GDP data with a production and expenditure approach. Meaning the production of goods and services in a given time must match the underlying expenditures of the overall economy. Since the Indian statistical office calculates expenditures from with a limited number of household surveys and proxies, it’s not prudent to conclude that all GDP data is correct.

Some analysts prefer to look at Gross Value Added, GVA, to determine the overall value created by the nation’s producers. However, this data observes the organized sector via corporate filings, GST (Good and Services Tax) data, industrial production indices, but leaves the contribution of India’s vast unorganized employment sector in the dark.

Informality in the Job Sector

Over the last few years, non-farm jobs which are crucial for diversifying the economy and providing stability are not growing as needed. The formal job sector which offers security, benefits and fair wages is also stagnant. This lack of job creation is pushing more people into unpaid or informal work (the latter constitutes around 90% of the work force) where people struggle to make ends meet.

India Rural 20260904

Kallakurichi District in Tamil Nadu State

The National Statistical Office ( NSO) under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), performs periodic labour force studies, including household consumption and annual questionnaires of the unorganized sector, but they are sample based surveys and taken only as a proxy due to a lack of available data.

However, these sample based household surveys allow observations of the unorganized sector via snap shots. The agricultural sector traditionally seen as a last resort for employment in rural areas, witnessed a resurgence after the Covid-19 pandemic. Unbelievably, about 80 million people rejoined this sector (including women in rural areas who had exited agriculture jobs after 2004, as a periodic labour force quarterly survey shows) between mid 2020 and mid 2024. This increase in employment continued into 2025, not because of farm growth and modernization, but due to stagnation in the industrial and services sectors.

India’s major challenge in the coming decade is to create enough adequate non-farm jobs in order to accommodate new entrants and for those who are want to leave agricultural employment. Meanwhile, India has one of the lowest rates of work participation of women in the world. Yet, some studies argue that there is a close link between the female labour force participation rate and manufacturing employment. To help GDP growth rates move qualitatively upwards, India must absorb more women from farm work and into manufacturing.

Population size matters and because of India’s large numbers if rising labour productivity is accomplished the nation will not only continue to become one of the largest economies, but will have the the capacity to influence the world’s GDP growth rate positively. The impact of one policy (for instance to promote economic growth) on another (i.e: income poverty reduction) crucially depends on the level of a third variable like the improvement of human capital via better skills, knowledge and health. In other words, growth will be more successful in reducing income poverty if economic value is well developed and more equitably distributed for individuals.

Increasing the capabilities for those who want to be employed and form the base of a country would facilitate the creation of improved formal jobs, labour productivity and real wages. However, the reality is complex. During the Covid-19 pandemic and in its aftermath workers who had earlier left agriculture for better earnings in the first half of the noughties shifted back to agriculture instead of moving to more productive or formal jobs in non-farm activities. In other words, India has seen an odd reversal of structured change that normally characterizes economic development.

Education for the Entire Population

The only upward mobility for Indians predominately is to educate their children, so that they can get comfortable jobs and lift their families out of poverty. For decades especially after the post independence period, India’s higher education remained an elusive dream for millions of historically marginalized people from Schedule Tribes, Schedule Castes and many struggling communities. 

Unfortunately, the gates of universities and colleges were mainly opened to only privileged students belonging to the upper caste elites. Young ST or Dalit students in remote villages faced layers of disadvantages regarding poor schooling – including financial strains, social stigmas, etc. This is in contrast to students from the privileged social groups who often inherited aspirations and the access to higher quality education that comes with an expensive price tag.

While the door for higher education opportunities has been opened for all, it was much wider for those privileged groups, and it remained relatively narrower for the marginalized communities. As the data suggests, In 2023-2024, only about 6.8% of STs and 8.6% of SCs aged 24 and above had attained education up to the graduation level and above, while 12.5% from the OBCs and a striking 23% “others category attained the same”. This hierarchy pattern suggests that STs are the most disadvantaged, followed by SCs, and then OBCs with others at the top, suggesting structural barriers based on caste and historical exclusion.

Aspirations and Sustainable Quality Growth

With a large segment of population stuck in informal or low skilled work, their purchasing power remains soft, weakening aggregate demand. India doesn’t value GDP using an income based approach, because of the same informality. Therefore the failure to ensure equitable access to higher education does not simply reflect social injustice, it also directly weakens India’s growth aspirations, inclusiveness and sustainability. 

Inequality in classrooms today becomes inequality in income tomorrow and eventually a drag on the nation’s economic growth. Instead of rejoicing over the quarter to quarter GDP growth comparing to last year, India must sincerely look into real problems that need to be solved and use its demographic dividend to create better results for all. A sociological and political lens is important to devise policies and strategies for next decade’s growth.

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India Insider GDP Savings and Investment 20260408

India Insider: Education, GDP and Personalized Growth a Difficult Balancing Act

by with No Comment AssetsBen EzraCorporateExclusive ContentFeatured HighlightsFinancial InstitutionsIndiaWorld

Is India Still 'The Country of the Future'?

In 1991, when India’s foreign exchange reserves had dwindled to barely three weeks of import cover, the government pledged its gold to the Bank of England. It was a moment of humiliation and, paradoxically, of liberation as the crisis forced an opening that three decades of socialist planning had resisted. Fast forward into 2025: India is a $4.1 trillion USD economy, the world’s most populous nation, with a moon rover, a thriving startup ecosystem, and a digital payments infrastructure the developed world now studies with envy.

This article asks if India is still ‘the country of the future’ using the same growth determinants framework applied by Professor Manoel Bittencourt to Brazil, and argues that the answer lies not primarily in corruption (though it matters), not in policy failure (though that matters too), but in two structural features that resist easy reform: the vast informality of the Indian economy, and the depth of its inequality.

Does Growth Matter? The 70/g Rule Applied to India

Before diagnosing India’s problems, we must appreciate what it has already achieved. Using the 70/g rule which tells us how many years it takes for income per capita to double at a given growth rate – India’s average GDP growth of roughly 6.5% since 1991 implies a doubling of income every 11 years. That is extraordinary by historical standards.

But averages mask distributions. If growth accrues predominantly to the formal sector – the top 10% of earners who hold formal employment, own financial assets, and participate in the organized economy, then the 70/g rule tells a story of elite enrichment, not a broad based development. This is India’s core dilemma.

The Eight Growth Determinants: India in the Data

Bittencourt’s framework identifies eight standard growth determinants: savings, fertility, rule of law, government consumption, trade openness, education and health investment, inflation, and finance. Let us examine some of each through Indian data, with Brazil as our comparator.

Savings & Investment

India’s gross savings rate has historically been a strength hovering around 30–32% of GDP through the 2000s and 2010s. But the investment picture is more troubled. Fixed capital formation has declined since its peak around 2011–12, driven by a stressed banking sector, weak private investment appetite, and an infrastructure gap. Brazil shows a similar pattern of savings-investment divergence  but India’s gap has widened more sharply in recent years.

India Insider GDP Savings and Investment 20260408

Gross Domestic Savings and Fixed Capital Formation. India vs Brazil. 2000-2023

Education & Health Spending

Perhaps nowhere is India’s “policy-delivery gap” more apparent than in social spending. India spends approximately 4.5% of GDP on education and just over 3% on health, and both figures are well below what comparable middle income countries invest. Brazil, despite its own fiscal struggles, consistently outspends India on health as a share of GDP. The consequences are visible in learning outcomes: the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) consistently finds that a significant share of Indian schoolchildren cannot read a simple paragraph or perform basic arithmetic.

This matters enormously for growth. An economy hoping to absorb millions of workers into formal, productive employment each year needs those workers to arrive with usable skills. When they do not, informal low productivity employment becomes the default  and cycles of informality perpetuate.

India Insider Public Education 20260408

Government Spending on Human Capital. India vs Brazil. 2000-2023

The Thesis: Informality as Structural Trap

Bittencourt identified corruption as the growth killer in Brazil. For India, the more precise diagnosis is informality and the inequality it both reflects and reinforces.

Consider the arithmetic: approximately 80% of India’s workforce is informally employed who are working without contracts, without social protection, without access to formal credit, and largely invisible to the tax system. This informal mass produces perhaps 50% of GDP. The productivity gap between the formal and informal sectors is staggering, and it does not shrink naturally with overall growth.

India Insider Formal Education 20260408

Share of Workforce in Formal Employment. India vs Brazil. 2000-2023

Brazil is itself a country with significant informality, but its formal sector share has grown meaningfully since the early 2000s, driven by the expansion of the Bolsa Família program, minimum wage policies, and labor formalization drives. India, by contrast, saw its already small formal sector shrink as a share of total employment after demonetization in 2016 and the disruptions of COVID-19. The gap between the two countries on this metric is instructive.

Inequality: When Growth Passes People By

India’s Gini coefficient – a standard measure of income inequality – has risen over the reform era even as aggregate poverty has fallen.  It shows the signature of unequal growth. The bottom quartile has seen real income gains, but the top decile has captured a disproportionate share of the growth dividend. Recent estimates suggest that India’s top 1% now hold a larger share of national income than at any point since Independence.

India Insider Income Distribution 20260408

Income Distribution India vs. Brazil.

Compare this to Brazil, which, despite its own severe inequality, pursued deliberate redistributive policies through the 2000s with Bolsa Família reaching 14 million families at its peak and a concerted minimum wage policy. India’s equivalents – the MNREGA rural employment guarantee, PM-Kisan farm payments are larger in coverage but smaller in benefit size at this stage, and reach informal workers imperfectly.

The Structural Complications

A purely data driven analysis, as Bittencourt himself acknowledged for Brazil, understates the depth of the challenge. India’s informality is not simply a policy failure, it is rooted in structures that predate modern economics.

The caste system, legally prohibited but still socially persistent, has historically sorted populations into occupational roles and those at the bottom of the hierarchy were systematically excluded from property ownership, formal education, and credit. Colonial de-industrialization destroyed the artisan economy that might otherwise have been a pathway to formal employment. The fragmentation of the federal system with 28 states running effectively different labor markets, land acquisition regimes, and social programs means that a policy that works in Tamil Nadu may fail in Uttar Pradesh.

These are not excuses. They are explanatory variables that any honest growth analysis must include.

What Does Growth Theory Tell Us to Do?

The prescription is not mysterious. If informality is the barrier, then the priority is to make formal employment more accessible through labor law simplification, portable social insurance that follows the worker rather than the employer, and a genuine skill based learning infrastructure that reaches the rural poor.

If inequality is the barrier, then the priority is redistribution that enhances human capital at the bottom – not cash transfers alone, but the quality of the school your child attends and the clinic your mother can access. India has the architecture of such systems; it does not yet have substantive results.

The demonstrators on India’s streets – whether farmers in 2020-21, or youth protesting paper leaks, or contract workers demanding permanence – know this intuitively. They are not asking for charity. They are asking to be absorbed into the formal economy that has prospered around them.

Conclusion: Is India Still the ‘Country of the Future’?

The answer to the question is Yes, and it is both an achievement and an indictment. India has built a moon program and yet cannot reliably staff a primary school. It has produced the world’s most used digital payments system and left 200 million people without bank accounts until recently. It exports software engineers to Silicon Valley, while its domestic labor market cannot absorb graduates at scale.

Brazil, our comparison, has struggled with its own version of this duality longer. But Brazil’s welfare state, however fiscally stressed has created a floor. India’s floor is thinner, and the drop beneath it steeper.

Informality is not the destiny for any developing economy. South Korea was deeply informal in the 1960s, China was an overwhelmingly rural agrarian nation in 1980. Both made transitions through deliberate, state led investment in human capital and formal employment creation. The path is known. The question for India in 2026 is whether the political will exists to progress via focused programs, or whether fifty years from now someone else will write another article illuminating the same structural problems.

Article Notes:

Data sources include the World Bank World Development Indicators, ILO Labour Statistics, Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, ASER Centre (India), UNESCO Institute for Statistics, and IMF World Economic Outlook. Growth determinant categories follow Barro (2008) as synthesized by Bittencourt.

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India Insider: Women in Agriculture Need Manufacturing Power

by with No Comment Featured HighlightsIndiaInvesting

India Insider: Women in Agriculture Need Manufacturing Power

India has long been a society that has neglected Women’s Empowerment. While various states pursue proactive policies to enhance the role of women in society, their inclusion in the job market and ability to have financial independence is still lacking.

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Small Scale Farm in Tiruvannamalai, India

In the suburbs of Tiruvannamalai City, in Tamil Nadu, Mrs. Revathi runs an agricultural farm where she grows rice, flowers, and vegetables. She sells them to local commission agents or directly to customers from her farm. Mrs. Revathi, who lost her husband in 2019, has two daughters, both of whom are educated and working. One of the daughters is getting married. She said that although agriculture helps her family earn money, it does not lift them out of the poverty trap because of uneven flower cultivation. The land is becoming less and less suitable for irrigation – a matter that worries her greatly too. Flowers are one of the major sources of income for many farming families in Tiruvannamalai City in Tamil Nadu.

This is just a small example of the challenges faced by women working in agriculture.
According to recent Periodic Labor Force Surveys, 64.4% of women in India work in agriculture, compared to only 36.3% of men.

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Labor Workforce Percentage in India per Gender

Self employment and Access to Credit is not the Solution:

Many argue that self-employment and steady access to credit via microfinance institutions will help women become entrepreneurs and create movement up the social ladder. This is true in some cases, but many women struggle with raising families in their husband’s absence, and when working on farms where agricultural productivity is lopsided or unfit for growing vegetables or corn, times remain difficult.

First of all, why do women choose agriculture and remain small-time sellers? Because they are not able to find employment easily in formal sectors like manufacturing or other service oriented businesses.

Even within related agricultural sectors, women employed in vegetable processing plants, or value-added goods like masala manufacturing and tomato sauce production companies earn higher wages.

Unfortunately, low productivity and long spells of inactivity render agricultural workers significantly underemployed periodically. They are stuck, with nowhere else to go. Unlike in East Asian nations, which created mass employment through dynamic exports of manufactured goods, the Indian manufacturing sector’s low productivity makes it globally uncompetitive.

Manufacturing as a Solution for Women Empowerment:

Across Asia manufacturing has proven to be a powerful driver for upwards mobility. Incomes have risen, poverty has declined, and women are central parts of this transformation. In Vietnam, where a factory boom has been especially momentous, more than 68 percent of women and girls over 15 years of age are working for pay in some capacity, this according to data compiled by the World Bank. In China the rate is 63 percent, in Thailand 59 percent, and in Indonesia 53 percent of workers in manufacturing are women. Yet in India, less than 33 percent of women account for the workforce in recorded in official surveys.

In a pattern demonstrated in many industrializing societies, when more women gain jobs, families promptly invest further in education for girls. Manufacturing also lifts household spending power, fueling economic expansion that encourages investors to build more factories, providing additional jobs and reciprocal wealth creation. India is missing out on this dynamic manufacturing growth and is failing to broadly participate in the spread of improved industrialization which has helped bolster fortunes in many Asian economies and benefitted families. A vital component for a stronger Indian economy necessitates the empowerment of women.

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AMT Warning: Many Brokers Do Not Care if you Lose your Money

by with No Comment Behavioral SentimentFeatured HighlightsForex

AMT Warning: Many Brokers Do Not Care if you Lose your Money

Sounds like the title has been written wrong doesn’t it? Reads as if the editor clearly doesn’t understand the nature of the financial markets and how they work. Certainly anyone who offers their services to you would like to see you make money, or so you would like to think if you are an idealist who remains innocent and trusts all people.

Unfortunately, the title of this artcle which has lured you into reading this WARNING is not wrong. It has been written as cautionary advice for new and even experienced speculators. Many of the ‘financial’ websites and people you are considering to engage with via their day trading platforms and ‘expert’ systems are not worthy. Many do not care if you make money and some in fact are planning on ripping you off.

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Blackjack Betting and Sitting at the Table with Too Much Leverage

Volatility is in the eye of the beholder, brokers like when day traders without deep pockets use leverage, because they expect their ‘clients’ to get wiped out. Yes, brokers are not your friends in many cases, in fact they are rooting against you in the back rooms of their trading operations. Why? Because they are not actually putting your trade into the cash markets, they are allowing you to trade virtuallly. Think of it as entering a casino.

The casino wants you to bet outrageous sums of money, because they know statistically most gamblers will lose. Again, you have been warned. Your use of leverage is music to the ears of your broker, because they know the volatility of the market will knock you out of a trade if your margin trading is too high and the slightest of technical reversals will produce a losing position for you. Then they will ask you if you want to make another wager. You can continue to sit at the ‘blackjack’ table or walk away.

Learn To Trade Without Getting Ripped Off

The first thing you might want to ask and acknowledge when you begin to trade is how much money can be lost? The answer is all of your money. If the answer being given to you is that there is minimal risk and that you are guaranteed profits – immediately close the website you are looking at and find another. Guaranteed profits equates into assured losses for unsophisticated traders most of the time.

If you are speaking to someone on the phone and the person keeps asking you how much money you want to make, please hang up the phone and speak to someone else. Self proclaimed gurus should be shunned. As someone once said, people tend to use the word guru, because the word charlatan takes too long to spell.

Yes, even in the most reputable and best of companies who provide trading platforms, you are going to lose money sometimes. The art of speculating and successsful trading is a delicate balance between losing money and making money. It is probable if you are a new trader, that unfortunately you are going to lose money and you will become uncomfortable. Sure you could get lucky or be a prodigy who is supremely talented, but you should understand many folks lose money in the beginning. There is a learning curve for day traders and you need good teachers. You also need a calm emotional state of mind.

Finding a Pro to Trade for You

You might want to consider letting someone that you trust and who has a proven track record with verifiable clients you can authenticate to invest your money. However to have a pro trade for you, the amount of money as a minimum you will need for them to consider trading your cash is likely sizeable. It doesn’t seem like a fair question from a social perspective, but are you wealthy enough to allow someone to trade for you?

If you find a person that is reputable to trade for you, make sure they have explained their modus operandi and you agree with their outline. In other words have them discuss their plan of attack and how they perceive complexities within the markets. What sectors do they invest in, what is the break down via percentages regarding the amounts of money they put into various financial assets? Asking questions may seem a bit impolite, but reputable fund managers and family offices should not get flustered by your questions, and they should have answers that are easy to understand. Do not let them talk over your head with fancy words and equations. Clear and concise language is necessary.

You shoud ask how often they rebalance their portfolios and if they issue a quartertly report. Importantly, ask for an example of transparent accounting which shows transaction fees that will be charged in full, including services they are charged by other financial providers within your account. Commission and banking fees can add up quickly. And then ask the magic question regarding drawdowns, and what are the allowable losses in a trade and in an account that can happen before they have to stop trading. You should get clear explanations regarding all of your inquiries.

But You Likely Still Want to Trade for Yourself

If your emotions do not let you take into consideration that there are going to be negative days, perhaps declines for weeks and bad months – simply put, trading isn’t for you. Learning to handle your money and investing should not be a speculative adventure, this is not about having fun. Oh you will certainly experience thrills, but you should try your best to limit crises. Risk management is a way to curb the elements of gambling which every day trader is undertaking.

Will you become a professional investor? What is a professional investor? Nothing like semantics and flattery to get the juices of a prospective investor going. Do not be fooled by flattery. Do not be fooled by the fact that you have a degree. There are folks who do not have high school graduation certificates looking to take advantage of you, some of them are great traders and will eat you alive. Education at the best of colleges or universities is no guarantee you will become a good trader. There is a difference between paper trading and having skin in the game.

The marketplace is waiting for you to enter and anticipates taking your money. Brokers are trying to get you to come to their trading platforms because they want to make money from your transactions and wagers if they are not reputable. These brokers actually do not believe you will make money. Until you prove you know what you are doing you will be treated like a ‘mark’. When you do prove you know what you are doing you will be treated differently in more ways than one, and it might prove difficult to withdraw your winnings.

Trust is Important, but Facts and Regulations Help

You must deal with people and companies you trust. Make sure to do a deep examination of the folks you are about to forge a trading association. Trading virtually via digitalized CFD and Forex houses that are not regulated can lead to financial disaster. And ask where your broker is regulated, and then check on the mandates of the entity and government which has written the rules for brokers – are they legitimate supervisors and who do the regulations favor? There is a lot of work involved before you trade, you must practice due diligence.

AngryMetaTraders wants you to understand the game of trading. We talk about sports often because the world of trading can be closely compared. If you are good and lucky, perhaps the world of investing awaits your success. If you suffer a learning curve like many, you can compare yourself to an athlete that must train to beat the best. You will need patience and dedication. Surround yourself with reputable firms and people to asssociate your speculative endeavors with in order to get solid results long-term.

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The Intended Goal is to Make Money, but in an Honest Manner

by with No Comment BooksBusinessFeatured Highlights

The Intended Goal is to Make Money, but in an Honest Manner

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Book Corner: I’ll Make You An Offer You Can’t Refuse, written by Michael Franzese

Who says gangsters have marketable skills? Michael Franzese says so. Brooklyn-born Franzese, a former caporegime (which is a mobster who is second in line under a Mafia capo) and made-man in New York’s Colombo crime family, went legit following a religious awakening during an early ‘90s prison stretch. Franzese left behind a life of crime and became a motivational speaker, Mafia analyst for the media, writer, commentator, and even actor.

In this book – one out of seven that he’s written – Franzese argues that despite the criminality that he now abhors, gangsters have skills in running businesses that if copied, can put the average business or corporation ahead of the pack. I’ll Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse is divided into eleven standalone sections, or rather lessons. In contrast to his former life, Franzese discusses running your business with honesty, transparency, and integrity.

He stresses the importance of choosing a good crew and surrounding yourself with capable people, starting your day as early as possible, proper planning, eliminating clutter, seeking counsel only from the wise, customer service, listening more than talking, learning from failures, etc. For example, one interesting section deals with the importance of effective negotiations – the famed “sit-down” as known to anyone who has seen The Sopranos and most other gangster portrayals in TV shows and movies.

Franzese informs us that unlike the sensationalist portrayal of crowded rooms, and long meetings with tempers flaring, sit-downs are short, sober, curt meetings attended by very few where the intended goal is to reach a mutually-acceptable compromise as soon as possible. After all, time wasted in long meetings is time better served making money, right?

At 160 pages, this book is relatively compact, nor does the author re-invent the wheel. Franzese’s skill is not only taking material that might be part of stuffy business textbooks and delivering it to the readers as filtered by his experience, but peppering the book with illustrative examples that keep them within a known cultural framework. As a result, the book comes out easy to digest.

Overall, we may not agree with how Franzese gained his business knowledge, but the lessons in I’ll Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse are valid. His former crew would probably agree.

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The Despair of Ice and Ability to Lead People through Storms.

by with No Comment BooksCultureFeatured Highlights

The Despair of Ice and Ability to Lead People through Storms.

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Book Corner: Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer, written by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparel

There is a vast library on offer for readers who want to study leadership books from historical figures. Shackleton’s Way adds to the fray and our knowledge by analyzing the famous 1915 Antarctic Endurance expedition of legendary explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) for his leadership skills.

A word about Shackleton. Born in Ireland and raised in London, he cut his teeth on the Discovery expedition with Captain Robert Falcon Scott that explored the Antarctic regions in 1901 – 1904, one of the most brutal and inhospitable places on the planet. Later while leading on his own, he garnered international fame for a further series of Antarctic expeditions where he set distance records. Although in his lifetime he was considered a key figure in what is today known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, he died in debt and fell out of the public eye for many years.

In the late 1950s, a series of books began to appear around Shackleton’s exploits, and his achievements began to be celebrated by a whole new generation of enthusiasts, leading to documentaries plus biographical TV miniseries (1983 and again in 2002, the latter featuring Kenneth Branagh). He has been acknowledged by the US Navy, and major universities have given management courses where his unique leadership style has been analyzed and promoted.

Shackleton’s Way tells the story of the Endurance expedition with an odd, but interesting, spin. For some background, the ship got stuck in ice and Shackleton was forced to abort and then lead his men to safety, with dwindling supplies, in the frigid wilderness. Morrell and Capparel analyze the expedition not as a success – which it wasn’t – but how Shackleton’s excellent leadership abilities saved his men and brought them all back alive and relatively unharmed (one man, however, lost his foot).

The Endurance story is told chronologically through eight sections, each highlighting a different leadership skill and how Shackleton embodied it, such as Creating a Spirit of Camaraderie and Leading Effectively in a Crisis. Each section concludes by focusing on a modern leader – from such diverse fields as business, education, and government – and how they in turn have been influenced by Shackleton and embody his style in their respective fields.

Shackleton was calm under pressure, led from the front, broke down the rigid hierarchies that were the norm on these expeditions, created cohesive and bonded teams, and was a master motivator. His crew respected and worked hard for him, and had full faith in his abilities. He had uncanny interviewing skills, creating a tight, professional team out of thousands of applicants with seemingly unconventional questions.

Shackleton was a fascinating man, and the lessons contained within this book are pure wisdom. The story itself is really an exciting adventure and you’ll get hooked after a few pages.