India, Jan. 17 -- One of the first novels I read after moving to Birmingham in the UK in September last year was David Lodge's Nice Work. Lodge's eighth novel, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1988; it lost to Peter Cary's Oscar and Lucinda. (Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses was shortlisted in the same year.) Though some parts Lodge's novel might seem a little dated - such as a controversy in Cambridge over literary theory, or the effects of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher's policies on industry and academia - others, as we shall see, are pressingly relevant even now. Are universities too inefficiently run, or too altruistic and obscure to have any relevance for the common citizen? Is industry doomed because o...