Title: Factfulness
Author: Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling & Anna Rosling Ronnlund
Publisher: Hachette
Price: Rs 499/-
Pages: 342
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, is the one book which every thinking Indian must read. If those who are in the current government can read the book, they will help themselves a great deal.
This book was the last battle of Hans Rosling in his life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance and his final attempt at making an impact on the world. Hans a medical doctor died in 2017. Ola and Anna are Hans’s son and daughter-in-law. And this book is the output of 18 years of their intense work.
Melinda Gates has to say the following about the book: “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.”
I totally agree with the above assessment. Hans has presented a new way to look at the world. He proposed four income groups, with the largest number of people living on level two. One billion people live on level one. He says: “This is what we think of as extreme poverty. If one is on level one, he survives on less than $2 a day and gets around by walking barefoot. His food is cooked over an open fire, and he spends most of his day traveling to fetch water. At night, he and his family sleep on a dirt floor.”
The four levels are just one of many insights in Factfulness that helps one understand the world better. In fact, on Hans’s persuasion, World Bank dropped the division of nation as ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ and opted to divide the world in four groups, as suggested by him. The UN and other global organization have not made this change yet.
The book makes some small, but impactful points, for example, “Illusions don’t happen in our eyes, they happen in our brains,” or “Just 20 years ago, 29 percent of the world population lived in extreme poverty. Now that number is 9 percent.” Or “the data shows that half the increase in child survival in the world happens because the mothers can read and write.”
Hans makes a solid argument as to why “Western domination of the world economy will soon be over.” The book gives an insight into the rise of the ‘feminist’ movement and corporate connect. Just for example, ‘every pregnancy results in roughly two years of lost menstruation’, which is bad for the business of makers of sanitary napkins. The book talks about 10 instincts that keep one from seeing the world factfully. These range from the negativity instinct to the blame instinct.
It is an outstanding work, which will be used for a long time in future. It is a research-based work backed with detailed reference and notes. It shakes every common belief that one might have.
