Book Discussion: UNCODED: A TECHNOLOGICAL HISTORY OF INDEPENDENT INDIA with Meghaa Gupta and Vinayak Varma Champaca, Vasanth Nagar | 23 August, 5:30 PM

Join us on Saturday, 23rd August, for a thought provoking conversation around Uncoded: A Technological History Of Independent India, Meghaa Gupta’s fourth novel. In this novel she explores how India, a country that sorely lacked technology at the time of its independence, has turned into a nation that is renowned for its software companies and space program. 

Meghaa Gupta will be in conversation with Vinayak Varma, as they discuss the policymakers and scientists that have made today’s India possible. It explores how a nation used science and technology to rebuild itself against all odds. 

Here are the details of the event:

Date: August 23 2025, Saturday

Time: 5:30 PM

Venue: Champaca Bookstore, Vasanth Nagar

About the book:

From factories to farms, battlefields to boardrooms, clinics to classrooms―in the years since Independence, modern technology has swept through all corners of Indian life.

But back in 1947, this seemed impossible. Low literacy, poverty and lack of expertise meant that newly independent India was unable to afford the mighty technologies of World War II that were reshaping the globe. Yet, a determined team of far-sighted policymakers and scientists dared to make the impossible possible. Today, India is home to leading software companies and a world-renowned space programme. 

Uncoded: A Technological History of Independent India is a story of one of the greatest technological transformations in the modern world. Blending a unique narrative with illustrations, trivia, anecdotes and an informative timeline, it explores how a nation used science and technology to rebuild itself and reimagine its destiny against all odds.

About the Speakers: 

Meghaa Gupta’s books are the outcome of an irrepressible urge to contextualize the challenges of the present with the past and make greater sense of the times we live in. She works in children’s publishing and firmly believes that all change begins with getting children to read books that demystify the world and its infinite possibilities. She is the author of the widely-acclaimed Unearthed: An Environmental History of Independent India and After Midnight. She is the co-founder of 'Literature across Borders' a transnational exchange for young people's literature.

Vinayak Varma is the author-illustrator of The Sunshower Song, Angry Akku, and Jadav and the Tree-Place, among other picture books. He was the editor of the science fiction anthology Strange Worlds! Strange Times!, and the founding editor and art director of the science magazine Brainwave. His artwork has appeared in magazines like Interzone, Soup, and Dark & Light, and in various books for Penguin, Harper Collins, Hachette, Duckbill, Scholastic, and Pratham Books, among others.