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A Manthika book

The New Nuskas

This book is for your learner, from Class 6 to Class 12.

Two of the seven books are written.

Who it is for

This book is for your learner, from Class 6 to Class 12. There is one part for each class, written at that class’s own reading level — the first for an eleven-year-old, the last for a seventeen-year-old. Your learner is the reader; nothing in a chapter speaks to you. Nothing is assumed beyond their own school year, so a learner can start at the part for their class without having read the earlier ones.

The problem it answers

School teaches the subjects, but leaves out how the world actually works. No board’s syllabus in India carries the handful of ideas that explain how people, chance and systems behave. People respond to what pays them, including whoever advises them. An unusually good or bad result is partly luck, and the next one drifts back. An action has effects beyond the first one. A cost already paid should not decide what comes next. Adults without these ideas buy them back later, from the self-help shelf.

What changes for the reader

Your learner learns to see these ideas at work in real life. A learner who finishes a part can meet a new situation and name the idea inside it. In the bad test after the great one, they see results drift back towards normal. They ask who pays the person giving the advice. They notice a fee already paid being used as a reason to continue. By the last part, they can also work five of the ideas with numbers. The book makes no promise about marks.

What is inside

Five units, every class.

People: incentives, fairness, persuasion, markets, contracts. Chance: probability, evidence, knowing, how sure to be. Systems: feedback, growth, bottlenecks, the feed. Self: body, perception, memory, training. Future: your choices, and their effect on your later self.

The chapters that keep your learner safe.

Some chapters are safety rules, taught as plainly as the rest: oral rehydration, that drowning is silent, heat illness, a crowd crush, never sharing a one-time password, the chemist’s shelf, and the contract a minor cannot sign. Each is taught once, then restated two classes later.

Seven classes, each its own year.

Class 6 is fairness, school and home. Class 7 is the phone and money. Class 8 is the chemist and health. Class 9 is choosing a stream. Class 10 is the board year. Class 11 is the first contract your learner can sign. Class 12 is the vote and the ideas worked with numbers. In all, 127 chapters; an idea taught once returns later.

Figure: Seven classes, each its own year.

What a page looks like

Each chapter opens with a situation your learner already knows. It is drawn, and lets your learner recognise the idea inside it before the chapter names the idea and states the belief it replaces. Two more situations follow, with a line on where the idea returns later. Each chapter closes with one thing to do at home that week — such as asking the chemist what the line on a packet means. It is always a question the learner asks, never a correction they deliver to an elder.

What it is not

This is not a civics book, and not general knowledge. It is also not a study-skills book — that is a separate book, How to Study. It carries no practice questions, no marks, and no alignment to any board. There is no parent’s guide inside it, and no stories of toppers. Every idea in it is checkable, and the book’s own last pages say where each one comes from and how sure it is.

Where the book stands today

Status as of 26 September 2026. Two of the seven books are written. As of 25 September 2026 the Class 6 and Class 7 books are written and built, eighteen and twenty chapters. Two Class 6 chapters can be read free on this site, in English and Hindi. Classes 8 to 12 are listed chapter by chapter and are not written yet. No release date and no price have been set. On the Manthika platform the chapters are presented in order from the Class 6 book to every member.

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