On March 25, 2015, Vice President of India M Hamid Ansari launched the book Faces and Places, written by famous economist and former Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University Prof. Deepak Nayyar. The book collects a selection of the author's images over the last four decades. Its title encapsulates the dual theme's central premise. The emphasis is on individuals going about their daily lives and on tourist attractions.

This book collects a selection of the author's images over the last four decades. Some go much further back in time. It's a picture book in the sense that it has appealing graphics that captivate the reader merely by flipping the pages, but not in the traditional sense.

These images are about the world we live in. Its title, in fact, encapsulates the essence of its dual concept. The emphasis is on individuals going about their daily lives and on tourist attractions. There are portraits of individuals that reflect life in its most mundane, intriguing, startling, or even humorous aspects. There are images of locales that vary from the lovely and magnificent to the harsh and astonishing. The images are not just from India, but from all across the world.

This geographical diversity, in combination with human diversity across continents in space, is possibly what distinguishes this collection from others. The parallels and contrasts are both intriguing.

Deepak Nayyar's biographical information:

Deepak Nayyar is an economics professor at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. He's spoken at Oxford University, Sussex University, the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), and the New School for Social Research in New York. From 2000 to 2005, he served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Delhi. Professor Emeritus at Honorary Fellow of Balliol College in Oxford, Deepak Nayyar is an accomplished economist.