Gobbledygook

Most readers' eyes will glaze over at this point. But is Rajan, himself an IIM-A alumnus, just spoofing the banal reality of corporate life? Of all the things that people do—fall in love, play, sing, eat, make babies, kill each other—work is the greatest personal drudgery, the least interesting to outsiders. For most, work is simply what they do to make the rest of life possible. But over the next 240 pages it becomes clear this is not a spoof.

IIM—>G is just the most recent iteration of MBA-lit, in which corporate types assume the tedious details of selling confectionery or detergent are as deeply fascinating to readers as it is to them. Even such longuers might be forgiven if the writers bothered with matters like plot, style and character development. Instead we get facile drivel like this, where some boring, stereotypical people wear gaiters over their shirts, get "tensed up", "avail of" opportunities and "sell off" things. And no, a rather overwrought sting-in-the-tail doesn't really do much to elicit either character sympathy or plot coherence.