Vinod Rai is not just an accountant

Book Review: Non-fiction/Not Just an Accountant: The Diary of the Nation’s Conscience Keeper by Vinod Rai, Rupa, 267pp; Rs500 (Hardback)

Vinod Rai is not just accountant – he is an impulsive writer too who writes diary to keep the conscience of the nation, as confirmed by him through the title of his truly sensational book. He has been a newsmaker even before publicly turning a diarist, unlike Anne Frank who could put forth her jottings only for invisible readers away from Nazi Concentration Camp.

Comparisons between the authors are like chalk and cheese, but one feature is strikingly common: both resisted the extreme tendencies of a ruling regime even though in different time, characteristics and conditions.

When the reader finishes Rai’s book, it is hard to miss the feeling that this account was written to contest former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s silence when the UPA-II government was limping from one scam to another. At peak of those free-wheeling scam days, Prime Minister Singh stated: “I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media. I feel somewhat sad, because I was the one who insisted that spectrum allocation should be transparent, it should be fair, it should be equitable. I was the one who insisted that coal blocks should be allocated on the basis of auctions. These facts are forgotten.”

The nagging question is, how kinder history would be to Manmohan Singh. Rai, who scrutinized the government’s performance in those scam years as the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), obviously thinks that the then Prime Minister’s silence and apparent inability to prevent those scandals were a giveaway. By sharing the clue in glaring details, he probes why India’s thriving telecom business will be in mess after a shady allocation of spectrums right under the nose of Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

The earlier press coverages on the whole mess and now this book give enough indications for Mr. Singh to come forward and reciprocate with his autobiography in no time, where he could make a stand clear about the lapses happened during his stint. After reading Rai’s book, one concludes that this is a good way for the former Prime Minister to redeem himself if he wants to get history’s judgment.

Rai examined the inappropriateness in the allocation in 2G telecom licenses and coal mines, both of which defrauded government money. This book documents all his findings, which show the then PM was not clueless of what was going around him. But he did little to stop the misuse of power, and no damage control was attempted. That was a scandal of its own. The scars of those scandals tainted not only his government, but himself, too.

Rai reminds that through a piece of his communication with PMO: “You (Manmohan Singh) engaged in a routine and 'distanced' handling of the entire allocation process, in spite of the fact that the then Communications Minister A Raja had indicated to you, in writing, the action he proposed to take. Insistence on the process being fair could have prevented the course of events during which canons of financial propriety were overlooked, unleashing what probably is the biggest scam in the history of Independent India.”

These few lines are enough to establish a policy decision like spectrum licensing could not be made without having green signal from the country’s highest office, PMO – also that the role of PM should not be reduced to a passive by-stander. Therefore, even though Singh is still considered a man of high integrity, his tenure as India’s chief executive was feckless and tame. That is the damning impression Rai's book conveys.

K Natwar Singh’s One Life is not Enough,TSR Subramanian’s India at Turning Point,Bimal Jalan and P Balakrishnan’s(ed) Politics Trumps Economicsand Sanjay Baru’sThe Accidental Prime Minister are the prominent critiques of the UPA government. Now, Rai's book adds to the wealth of uncomfortable truths about the UPA's 10-year rule.

Making predicament more obstinate, the hibernation is prolonging inside the Congress Party. Its old or new school lieutenants are lost without causes – having been not known to live in opposition, they seem loosing their edge with pen and mind as well.

So, let’s hope more such unfriendly books about the yore days – and all those to be not answered from privileged heads of India’s oldest party, now marginalised below the ground. An accountant could be an effective multi-tasker, Rai has proved it. To know the capital trails, this book too would be in essential list!
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in INCLUSION)

The downstream of Indian democracy

Book Review: Non-fiction/Rogue Elephant: Harnessing the Power of India’s Unruly Democracy by Simon Denyer, Bloomsbury, 440pp; Rs599 (Paperback)

Denyer captures our nation’s inverted spiral from a rapidly aspiring country to a land of dejected sentiments

The common and uncontested perception is that the foreign correspondents stay in merry state with privileged dining, wining and roving spree into their assigned territories and usually write predictably crappy pieces, mostly passable.

However, there are exceptions and Simon Denyer has been proving it ever since his stint in India as the bureau chief of Washington Post—through his reports, public speaking sessions and avidly watching this truly wonderful and complex democracy.

Not in distant memory, his Washington Post piece on the weak show of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went viral and that was not an exaggerated phenomenon.

This book under review is the extension of Denyer’s keenly watched downward trajectory of India—from a rapidly aspiring nation to a land of dejected sentiments.

As the book recounts, India has travelled a long way in the last decade. But that exciting boom time is on wane now with slew of deformities haunting the core of system—corruption, populist politics, indecisiveness, policy paralysis are but few of them, counted time and again.

Rogue Elephant: Harnessing the Power of India’s Unruly Democracy is an outcome of extensive field research and Denyer’s interest in knowing about the changing India, which is infact a quite challenging task to accomplish.

But he does it successfully, as his book is written in conformity with the mass sentiment and never appears like an out of touch commentary.

From rising economic story of the last decade, to a survivor of global economic meltdown to being in self-defeating mode—the book sees India in natural continuance and without slapping any negative tag that would make the readers believe in any ‘fallen from grace story’.

The book is what India is today. There is not much to argue as we all know the politics in India has seen in recent years: a shady bonhomie amongst cronies with commercial interests.

It is continuing or perhaps growing: so various chapters of the book tend to justify their compartmentalised existence. Crony capitalism, dynasty politics, fall and fall of institutions, and, above all, the question mark put on the functioning of the prime minister’s office, which resulted in the easy passage of scams and tainted dignitaries – all these have changed the India story.

In its underbelly lie the forgotten issues like poverty, alarming shortage of employment, recklessness of policy maneuvering and immediately punishable corporate plundering of resources.

These result in sagging sentiments—and with the general elections in progress, voters still have no choice to opt for a party with different and better policy inclinations.

Rather, they would be voting based on frivolous opinion or opium of badly maligned birth identities. The end result would not be ven remotely progressive. This element has vanished long back from our political turf, with politicians enjoying contradictory existence.

This book has covered the mass outrage of people following the brutal gang rape and murder of Nirbhaya and also the movements against corruption.

Denyer puts that in proper context: how the suffering masses with lack of basic facilities and unwavering scams mobilise to register an unprecedented protest against the ruling authority in Delhi. Later as Aam Aadmi Party comes into existence with brief but noticeable success in Delhi, hope floats, briefly.

Sadly, this reactionary party born out of people’s desperation at existing political functioning hasn’t been able to forward coherent views about its own role or politics at large. Its ‘failure’ might result to greater desperation for citizens and Indian democracy.

In patches, this book showcases how initial good works by the two-term UPA government lost its sheen in last few years, with dramatic rise in scams coming to light and failure of governance to cure those maladies.

Indian democracy in peril is really not different from a rogue elephant—who has impressive size but no command over itself. That is an unsustainable condition, which should not be allowed to go on.

Unlike the recent books written with a ‘betrayal or sycophancy syndrome’, Denyer’s departs from those easy alternatives. The readers would judge it by the pages, where a passionate account of India by a restless journalist exudes maturity and sense of purpose.

This should be an essential read for all, who believe both in the idea of India and its countless weaknesses as well.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Millennium Post on April27,2014)

India at turning point:Interpreter of curable maladies

Book Review: Non-fiction/ India at Turning Point: The Road to Good Governance by T.S.R. Subramanian, Rainlight/Rupa, 274 pp; Rs595 (Hardback)

T S R Subramanian – with an insider’s insight and outsider’s rage – has made a frontal attack on the ills of Indian government and bureaucratic setup in his latest book India at Turning Point: The Road to Good Governance.

This is remarkable since Indian babus, in general, are not known for practicing forthright polemics and coming out with scathing criticism of issues plaguing their own bastion, the bureaucracy.

What is even more striking about the book is Subramanian chooses not to pepper the narrative with recollections of his own foregone privileges as a civil servant. Evidently, he doesn’t think much of those hallowed yet conceited ‘benefits’; hence, quite rightly, his narrative does justice to the underlying intent of writing this much-needed book.

The essays are incisive, and the compilation as an anthology – covering wide ranges of political and administrative issues – works at many levels.

Subramanian’s experiences travel well and far, not only into the power corridors of the Capital, but in fact, journey into the hinterlands and gather spectacular wisdom. While recalling different stages of his career, he, fortunately, doesn’t come across as either a white or a brown sahib.

Instead, he turns out to be someone who has learned his way up, cutting through the grinding formality of official procedures and the unnecessarily encumbered and slow-moving wheel of Indian administration. There are, of course, the occasional tributes.

But what really hooks you to these well-written pages is his pointed criticism of the system as well as the policy movers and shakers. Frankly, the unputdownable elements add a dash of fun and frolic to this weighty hardback.

Particularly, when he chooses an eminent politician like N D Tiwari to detail how high-ranked former cabinet ministers pick their itinerary, preferring to go Thailand and roving around in the city after sunset! Of course, flouting security and other protocols.

As an ‘India book,’ this one starts with gloom and reaches the opposite end with optimism. Primarily, India at Turning Point seeks to highlight the factors – Parliament, intelligence agencies and even cricket – for keeping governance in check and good health. The argument develops further: why our perfectly ‘curable maladies’ are not being treated?

Since 1947, India as a nation has made significant strides. However, those were not enough. The realisation is growing stronger, as democracy is deepened everyday. Despite having followed a ‘reluctant revivalist’ tendency for over six decades, now, in an increasingly technocratic situation, the overall ‘governance discourse’ is gaining ground to charter something as desired by the people and emerging directly out of the compelling necessities.

This book will be in circulation for strong reasons, foremost among them being its timing. India is passing through an unprecedented cusp of changes and really calling it the ‘turning point’ makes perfect sense.

But hope is not on the wane in this book or the atmosphere it tries to capture. Irrespective of tough challenges, the tribe of ‘incorrigible optimists’ still fires up the engines of its centre and periphery. As Subramanian asks if India has stopped following sustainable political and economic principles, we wonder if his question has an answer at all.
-Atul K Thakur
Mail: summertickets2gmail.com
(Published in Millennium Post on March2,2014)

In praise of new Bihar

Book Review: Non-fiction/The new Bihar: Rekindling Governance and Development by N K Singh and Nicholas Stern (edited), Harper Collins, 387 pp; Rs799 (Hardback)
Among India’s states, Bihar has long been considered something of a ‘political laboratory’, owing to how, during the anti-colonial movement of the 20th century or in the decades post-independence, it had hosted a series of political movements with overarching effects.

Most noticeable among these had been the JP Movement, which resulted in a national emergency, the imposition of which was proof of the intolerance of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for a new kind of reactionary politics, led by arch socialist and close friend of Nehru’s, Jay Prakash Narayan.

The movement produced many other leaders over time, including Lalu Prasad Yadav, Nitish Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan—three individuals who have been at the helm of Bihar’s politics in the post-Mandal Commission era.

In the years between 1990 and 2004, Bihar had dropped alarmingly low on the developmental indices. But change was at hand when the people brought Nitish Kumar and his allies to power. And it’s the immediate impact of that shift, and the policies that made it possible, that the book The New Bihar: Rekindling Governance and Development, edited by NK Singh and Nicholas Stern, deals with. Comprising the input of well-known developmental economists and policy experts, this anthology aims to highlight the Bihar model of development.

In the 1990s, Lalu Prasad Yadav, an early beneficiary of Lohiaite socialism, had made Bihar a ‘governance-free’ entity of sorts. The state had been set on a downhill trajectory then, which was further sped up by Yadav’s conviction in a fodder scam, following which he passed the mantle to his politically clueless wife. In those years, India was growing at an unprecedented pace, but Bihar appeared to be losing out.

Then came Nitish Kumar. Unlike his predecessors, he took major initiatives to improve governance, infrastructure, education, health, power and agriculture—the reason why, in the last six years, Bihar has achieved such accelerated development compared to other states in the country.

In the book, eminent economists like Amartya Sen, Kaushik Basu, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Meghnad Desai, Shankar Acharya and Arvind Virmani analyse the remarkable turnaround witnessed by Bihar, while policy experts Tarun Das, Deepak Parekh, Lord Billimoria, KV Kamath and Isher Judge Ahluwalia speak of the opportunities and challenges ahead. Most pieces are written in praise of Nitish Kumar, particularly the steps taken in the initial five years of his governance that ensured the functional mainstreaming of the state.

The New Bihar comprises 29 essays altogether. Among these, Sen, who also heads the Nalanda University Project in the state, looks into its distinguished past; Basu, in brief, skims over the fall and rise of Bihar in the last few decades; Acharya, Virmani and Desai discuss the state’s journey to such high economic growth; and Ahluwalia stresses on the importance of urbanisation—although her remarks don’t really seem adequately well-informed regarding Bihar’s ground realities.

Also included is a piece by Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar, among the earliest endorsers of Nitish Kumar’s work, who identifies the critical role of leadership in shaping the developmental agenda against the many odds.

We also have Rukmini Banerjee, who follows the grassroots efforts in uplifting education around the country, and her essay incorporates a lively first-hand account of Bihar’s exceptionally well-functioning primary and girl education policies.

All the accomplishments enumerated in this book paint a picture of a state that was in shambles only a few decades ago, not just in terms of infrastructure, but also how firmly it was in the grips of identity politics back then. But Nitish Kumar and his friend Sushil Modi were able to take an almost bankrupt Bihar and turn it into a state of surplus revenue.

Maintaining this momentum, and reaching the next level of inclusive development, however, is a different story, and the book also touches upon what is to come. The Bharatiya Janata Party is no longer with Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), and it appears unlikely that he will be able to return alone after the assembly poll that has been scheduled in 2015.

However, it is certain that he will remain a key political figure in the state, and the legacy he leaves—particularly the notion that good work earns the good will and trust of the masses—will hopefully keep successive governments from straying too far from the development agenda.

Indeed, whatever Kumar and his ilk have done in the first five years of taking over Bihar have been extraordinary to say the least. He is an acclaimed leader, whose celebrity has stretched beyond India’s boundaries as well. Time and again, for instance, he has tried forging an understanding with Nepal on issues concerning the state and adjoining areas beyond the borders.

However, in a federal polity like India, the head of a state has limited say, more so when the centre is ruled by a different political entity. But there is much Nepal could take away from Bihar’s story—for a country that has been grappling with political deadlock for so long, and which has resulted in a sagging developmental track record, the Bihar model offers up a great many suggestions on how to bounce back with an eye on progress.

The book essentially recognises the passion and effectiveness of a doer, who did not take the luxury pass to power. But it’s also careful not to over-glorify, and stresses time and again on the hurdles ahead for the state and others like it.

The majority of the pieces in The New Bihar are engaging and thought provoking, and will no doubt take the Bihar story, and the story of Nitish Kumar—a ‘thinking politician’, as historian Ramachandra Guha was inclined to call him—to wider audiences than ever before.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Kathmandu Post on April12,2014)

India’s tryst with democracy

Book Review: Non-fiction/Battles Half Won: India’s Improbable Democracy by Ashutosh Varshney, Penguin, 415 pp; Rs599 (Hardback)

Ashutosh Varshney has long been considered a formidable scholar of South Asian politics and his latest book is a significant addition to his repertoire, particularly at a point in time when Indian politics is undergoing transformations of an unprecedented nature. Battles Half Won: India’s Improbable

Democracy is a compilation of several pieces that seek to trace India’s political trajectory, from the time of its birth to the modern day. What is at the heart of the book is the idea that India is struggling to establish a deeper, more definitive democracy. Varshney has well-captured the centrist tendency in Indian politics, particularly at the national level.

In the states, he says, identities of various sorts still rule the course of political action and outcome. Great use is made of facts and figures to prop up his ideas, testifying to the author’s skill as a truly effective political scientist.
India is presently at a stage wherein the expectations of the electorate are quite diverse, apropos of how the system and its representatives respond to them.

But still we see a Narendra Modi seeking to make his party, his government in Gujarat, and in imagination, the country, an overt extension of his personality. It was the same mistake, in fact, that Indira Gandhi had committed almost four decades ago, making the Congress party her territory.

For a party that had been shaped by a standard democrat like Nehru post-independence, and still carrying some notional attributes of the anti-colonial movement, this had proved a major setback. Varshney emphasises that without the freedom movement, India’s nationhood would have been inconceivable, which means democracy
too would’ve been inconceivable.

He focuses especially on the consolidation of national democracy after 1947, calling it the next remarkable event after India’s independence—where the decisive leadership of Nehru played a major role. It is appreciable that while doling out these analyses, the author is able to keep his personal biases on hold, one of the many strengths of his writing.

The book touches upon, at one point, Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, a radical piece of work. While stressing on Gandhi’s political preferences, Varshney adds, “It is noteworthy that Gandhi himself was not very fond of representative government, his ideal polity was one that had local village republics, more in line with direct, non-representative democracy.” Does this mean then that the Aam Aadmi Party of today is following Gandhian principle?

I suppose that is unlikely, as the AAP, in core, doesn’t oppose representative politics, nor is it its express objective to make representatives accountable. Rather, what the AAP is pursuing is the ‘trivialisation of representation’, visible in the way it has vested the Mohalla Sabha (meetings among residents of a ‘mohalla’, a smaller partition of a ward) with such supreme power.

Given its heavy-handed political maneuverings so far, the party’s plan to contest the general elections in a big way will be much messier, of course. But its strong emergence in the scene has certainly brought democracy under close scrutiny. Varshney offers substantial space in his book for present-day politics, new bases of coalitions, governance and economic reforms—all elaborated upon in his signature style, now become quite popular through the means of his widely read column in the Indian Express.

Like he tends to do in many his opinionated writings in newspapers and academic journals, his book too draws out the differences between the “quality of democracy and existence of democracy.” He envisions India as a mature democracy that has a deeply unstable core, thanks to the socio-economic inequalities and challenges it has encountered with regards to its territorial integrity, making the battle for “deeper democracy” the need of the hour. And the AAP, for Varshney, is an example of the forces within this battle.

For the most part, Battles Half Won analyses the factors behind the deepening of Indian democracy since 1947 and the challenges these have created. The book broadly traces the forging and consolidation of India s “improbable democracy”. The essays delve into themes ranging from caste politics and ethnic conflict, and Hindu nationalism to the north-south economic divide and the politics of economic reform since 1991—issues that have consistently tested the calibre of Indian democracy.

The book also highlights the adverseness of not relying on “intelligent economics”; AAP ideologue Yogendra Yadav, for instance, has made his party’s intentions clear on that by shifting the political and economic agenda away from the “shackle of isms”.

Of course, this is merely in principle so far, and it remains to be seen what the execution will actually be like. But the potential impact of new politics, championed by the AAP—the way it has encroached on the traditional turf of left or right-leaning forces, by injecting flexibility into economic policies and matters of governance—is something that greatly interests our author.

Given the Anna Hazare campaign, which proved so popular a while back, and now with AAP’s swift rise in the power circle, Varshney feels that the bulk of citizens in India are now eager to participate in the overall political process.

While examining all these changes, the book also indicates the next course of development as far as democracy in India is concerned. In Varshney’s view, Indian democracy is the sort that becomes more progressive the more unsettling changes it comes across. After all, time and again, all kinds of political hiccups in India have been solemnised—although with varying degrees of success.

Then again, the stakes are much higher at the moment, and forward-looking Indians can no longer trust a government that offers less than a two-percent job growth rate, for example. Now is the time for political parties to be as prompt in terms of their actions as their electorates are with their expectations. Overlooking that would be detrimental for success in the political fray as other countries in South Asia have evidenced.

Articulate and authoritative, Varshney’s book offers fresh insights into several crucial areas, elements that have shaped India into what it is today, whether that be the complex set of relations under the country’s federal system, the challenges of territorial/cultural diversities, and the contradictory outcomes of economic reforms, among others. Battles Half Won looks back very diligently on successes and failures of India’s tryst with democracy—which despite having many flaws, is charting its course with no full stop.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets2gmail.com
(Published in The Kathmandu Post on February22,2014)

The Height of Clamour

Book Review: Non-fiction/ A Great Clamour: Encounters with China and its Neighbours by Pankaj Mishra, Penguin, p.325; Rs499 (Hardback)
Pankaj Mishra’s A Great Clamour comprises a significant commentary on contemporary China, an examination of the contradictions and potency that shape and define the country

In the earlier work titled From the Ruins of Empire, Pankaj Mishra had conducted an effective analysis of the western model and presented reasons why he believes Asia has a better chance in the new world, set free as it is from the complex constructs of its colonial past. Mishra’s latest book, A Great Clamour: Encounters with China and its Neighbours, once more, and just as winningly, challenges the burden of western influence on Asia.

In the course of writing these two books, the author has traced the journeys and ideas that contributed to the building of Asian solidarity—first through intellectual engagements and later via trade collaborations. But in the wake of decolonisation and emergence of modern states, based on western political ideas, that solidarity, he believes, has become somewhat incoherent.

Mishra, who calls Mashobra in Himachal Pradesh his home, has intermittently spent over two decades there. Living in such proximity to the mountains, on the other side of which lies Tibet, meant that it was natural that China would figure a big part of his research, a country he deems as complex and possessing a comparable degree of civilisational attributes as his own.

Another factor that threads India and China together, in Mishra’s view, is the role they play in global capitalism. The upward mobilisation from rural areas to big cities is a visible trend in both, with varied internal effects, of course, including the springing forth of a new kind of politics which necessarily focuses on issues related to unequal access to resources and lack of accountability in governance.

But beyond borders, as Mishra puts it, the common experience of modern capitalism offers new grounds for fraternity. Then again, the author does express reasonable concern towards the impediments that continue to exist on the path of solidarity—as in the case of China and India, the contradiction within their respective political systems and economic interests.

The book attempts a frontal attack on capitalism and western notions of modernity; the last part of the volume, for instance, takes into account five other Asian countries—Japan, Taiwan, Mongolia, Malaysia and Indonesia—as sufferers of these very forces.

In doing so, Mishra often seems to be penning a report cart of sorts on these nations, with taglines like “Japan’s aged modernity” and “Shanghai’s garish newness”, among others. As interesting as these are, however, given the fact that he doesn’t list any viable alternatives to replace the western model, they prove a bit aimless in the end.

A Great Clamour can be considered, for the most part, a significant commentary on contemporary China, supported by fine observations on crucial antecedents. Though very briefly, the book also explores the controversial issue of Tibet, as well as the dismal state of Nepali migrants in the booming towns of a “very aggressive China”.

This isn’t, of course, the first time Mishra has touched upon Nepal in his works; his Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India has a detailed chapter on the country, wherein he captures the sense of disillusionment among the masses incited by both the monarchy and Maoist rule, at a time when royals and radicals were the biggest players in national politics and the path ahead was still murky.

As for the subject of Tibet, it is appreciable that Mishra has chosen to write on it, given how under-covered it still remains in the mainstream press, in terms of real, qualitative research that is built on anything other than a western perspective. Although commentaries and books can be found, there are very few works among these that are able to evade personal judgment to offer a more objective view, something Mishra is clearly hoping to remedy.

The author, who has emerged a major thinker in recent times, further demonstrates his competence with this latest release. In the last few years, Mishra has spent a considerable amount of time in the West, and he’s used the experiences gained therein to challenge the ‘western wisdom’ in circulation around the world, a stance already made crystal clear in his much-hyped spat with Niall Ferguson and Patrick French, during which he accused the first of being racist and the second for overlooking elitism in India.

Mishra’s last two books had aimed to highlight the apathy of Asians towards their own history, and investigate why it is that the western model—ridden with crises of idea and direction—is still being religiously adhered to in Asia. Most likely, he argues, this is because the world has now a more or less undivided economic vision—beyond symbolism, even a country like China is afflicted with the consumerist agenda. The weakening of radical political ideologies and failure of existing leftists to find an alternate route regarding ‘intelligent economics’ has turned the scene dangerously idle, he says.

A Great Clamour largely shows the double-wheeling of the Chinese regime, sans democratic provisions like fundamental rights and transparency. The surging cities, unprecedented aggression on Tibet and calmness of citizens—it’s a country that is expanding with countless contradictions within its belly. But China is a world unto itself; other worlds on the outside have no clear access to this land. And over the decades, it has placed itself in the unique position to be able to play strategic ‘hide and seek’ with entities within and beyond its physical fortress.

India has a rich tradition of wandering scholars, and Mishra appears to be next in line, behind the likes of Rahul Sankrityayan ,Nagarjun, Nirmal Verma, travelling and writing on alien lands. The man, who loves isolation and working outside of the public glare, is greatly suited to unravel the realities of unexplored terrains. Throughout his career, he has been promising with his chosen themes, and this new book too is certain to be read and liked widely.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Kathmandu Post on February1,2014)

Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan

Book Review: Non-fiction/City Adrift: A Short Biography of Bombay by Naresh Fernandes, Aleph, 168p; Rs 295(Hardback)
It’s a moving commentary on the city which is at ease with its state of chaos
A city like Mumbai cannot be described in a few words; so to attempt to etch a ‘short’ biography of this historic, vibrant city is in itself a daring act. However, Naresh Fernandes’s City Adrift attempts to override such realities, with a moving commentary on the city, which is at ease with its state of chaos.

In an excellent narrative, this book reveals the prominent temperament of Mumbai — its unusually configurative set of urban islands, its tryst with commercial history, and its mixed sociological set-up. The book represents the city neither as a ‘maxim’ nor as a unit ‘toying with minimum spirits’. It engages itself with the changes that made Mumbai a mismanaged locale.

It would be wrong to say that the city inspiringly transcends beyond political rhetoric, nevertheless; and in patches, the author pragmatically delves into the political paradigm shift in the city from progressivism to ‘identity-assertiveness’.
Since Mumbai is India’s first cosmopolitan city, the entrepreneurial tradition developed here with Europe’s growing interest in sea trade during the late medieval times. The primarily business communities such as Gujaratis and Parsis were some of the first beneficiaries of this rising global trade alliances. Even today they are the formidable players in commerce.

However, business operations have renewed methodology now and have segregated many of them from social affiliations. Fernandes, as a writer and resident of Mumbai, ponders over the same through his book and locates significant results. He narrates the history of Mumbai and portrays its existing state, with a deep sense of attachment and concern. His personal sentiments are also evocative in his depiction of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

The security lapses happened, the most inhuman killings took place, but sadly Mumbai’s security structure has not improved as it should have had. A single downpour can turn the city into a living hell. The dwindling housing facilities don’t constrict one to live decently unless one is facilitated by an obscene amount of earning!

The book reflects upon how the new ‘demonic structures’ in the city has made it more corrupt-looking and indifferent to the shortage of basic civic facilities all around. Today, Mumbai needs a complete geographic reconfiguration, emancipation from ‘chauvinistic politics’, and its citizens’ active participation. Only that would justify the city that has the best corporate services in social domain. The Parsis and other businessmen of the gone era were different from India’s neo-rich, who are ‘absurd’ beyond the limit.

The book could have been lengthened, so that it could detail the painful transition of the city, but it still carries a pertinent research on India’s “most cosmopolitan” city.
-Atul K Thakur
Mail: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Pioneer,on December29,2013)

Frontiers of insecurity

Book Review: Non-fiction/ India at Risk: Mistakes: Mistakes, Misconceptions and Misadventures of Security Policy by Jaswant Singh, Rainlight/Rupa, p.292; Rs595 (Hardback)
The review discovers Jaswant Singh’s genuinely comprehensive and informative account of major security challenges facing India over last six-and-a-half decades
This is Jaswant Singh’s eleventh book, and in this, the former foreign minister has opted to keep his focus intact on ground level experiences rather than rhetoric to deal with the complex design of India’s security challenges.

With India at Risk, Singh justifies his long eventful overtures in public life and also as an avid researcher, who spent decades getting familiar with India’s security establishment from close quarters.

Primarily, this book poses the question why India has failed to respond adequately in meeting challenges to its national security? Singh contends that during the past crises, existential challenges were overt but the responses remained surprisingly limited.

Jaswant Singh appears perturbed on the conceptual fault lines and misdirected governance, particularly in the handling of security affairs. The mismatch of challenges and responses has been far too huge to be ignored by any thinking mind—and Singh is certainly more conscious among others. Hence the vindication of the title: India at Risk: Mistakes, Misconceptions and Misadventures of Security Policy.

Having directly handled the responsibility of managing a whole series of security related challenges, Singh genuinely informs and analyses the major security issues, which the nation has faced in the last six-and-half decades. The book is written with a clear sense to capture the mistakes as well as follies from past, to tread safely in 21st century.

Unlike the books written by politicians, here a complete shift in narrative is obvious - in parts, where the author leans to recall the grave policy failures of the Nehru era, he does it with great care. He reminds us that Nehru, a believer in humanity with a broad mind, was much vulnerable before the dubious Chinese leadership. So, hardly surprising what happened in 1962.

This shows the comprehensive grasp and a firm stand that could have been adopted only by an ex-serviceman MP and the only person to have simultaneously held the portfolios of the Minister of External Affairs and of Defence, in addition to also having been Minister of Finance.

That is remarkable for this trusted and most respectable lieutenant of the BJP - as a veteran politician, he could have easily spiced up the debate (earlier he has not refrained doing that, the case in point is his book on Jinnah) but has chosen not to so.

Examples of faulty democratic practices resulting in challenges to our national security abound: Assam and the Northeast, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Sri Lanka, the birth of the Maoists and the concomitant challenges. The question that brings us back is: ‘what goes into making democracy as efficient instrument of governance?’ Exactly that which enables a country, any country, to achieve the essentials of national security leadership.

While progressing towards the misadventures of Pakistan, Jaswant Singh recounts its aims and planning of 1965, as:

The strategic backdrop of this 1965 conflict was the politico-military situation created in India as a consequence of the 1962 defeat. The signals that emanated from India thereafter, particularly after Nehru’s death in 1964, and the consequent battles for political succession were not reassuring. (page-76)

Obviously, Pakistan read the inherent message wrong and foolishly faulted in seeing Kutch and further Jammu and Kashmir, as the grounds exploitable with their severely undisciplined military and political regime. The book dwells further on this to overview the nature of Indo-Pak conflicts. Overall, this makes for an insightful read, that has much to offer to both the novice and the trained mind.

The birth of Bangladesh happened in 1971 and India played a formidable role in redrawing the map and political discourses of contemporary South Asia. Noticeably, this happened just after 22 years of the earlier partition, which shook South Asians in an unprecedented manner. Singh recounts how Pakistan fought two wars that time, one internally against East Bengal and another with India, it met well deserved failures in both.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Millennium Post on December22,2013)

The Making of the Mahatma

Book Review: Non-fiction/Gandhi before India by Ramachandra Guha, Penguin/Allen Lane, p.673, Rs899 (Hardback)
When India’s leading historian Ramachandra Guha writes on Mahatma Gandhi, the nation’s father, the account is naturally steeped in the wider discourse. After all, the writer of India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, one of the most incisive commentaries on India’s tryst with nationhood, certainly has the authority and command to touch upon the main currents of India’s modern history. For over two decades, Guha has brought historiography within his purview, proving to be unprecedentedly receptive to greater social ideas.

On that basis, he has covered the history of cricket, environmentalism and the overall emergence of India as a young nation with old civilisational characteristics. And Guha’s new book, Gandhi Before India, which aims to inquire into and showcase Gandhi’s metamorphosis into the Mahatma over the years, is yet another significant addition to his body of work. Meticulously researched and richly detailed, the book is characteristically humane—a reflection of the fact that Guha has long been a most devoted scholar of Gandhism.

Attempting to explore lesser known facets of the life of Mahatma Gandhi, this first book of a two-part biography project focuses on the time between his birth in Porbandar in 1869 till his departure to India from South Africa in July 1914. “Before I come to the argument about the man, I thought that I should first understand the man. During my research, I realised that virtually everything written on Gandhi was in Gandhi’s own words, all that he said or wrote. I wanted to go beyond Gandhi’s point of view, everything that he wrote on including caste, culture, and religion,” Guha has stated.

The configuration in Gandhi Before India is between India’s greatest man and a scholar. The book’s content proves how majorly Guha has been influenced by the life of Mahatma Gandhi and his worldviews—and there are very few who could’ve penned it in the same spirit. For there have been many an attempt to evaluate the great man, but few have been truly successful—some works oversimplify the narrative while others falter when pushing forth unreasonable doubts.

What is visibly amiss in such cases is an interest in Gandhi’s diversified persona, which is difficult to reject, even in the course of a subversive analysis. Based on archival research in four continents, Gandhi Before India gives an account of Gandhi as an individual and the world he lived in, a world that was apparently constructed of sharp contrasts, such as those witnessed during his movements between the coastal culture of Gujarat to High Victorian London and then to empire-ruled South Africa.

The book is tastefully directed to explore Gandhi’s experiments with dissident cults such as the Tolstoyans and vegetarians, his friendships with radical Jews, devout Christians and Muslims, his enmities and rivalries and his failures as a husband and father.

All these had, after all, contributed to the process of his becoming the man he would forever be known as around the world, a mass mobiliser for the emancipation of humanity. Gandhi’s biggest triumph thereafter was probably his determined reliance on non-violence to fight the brutality of the racist regime in South Africa and the colonial occupation of India.

In the course of time, after plenty of blood, sweat and tears had been shed, the erstwhile colonies became free democracies—and Gandhi’s role also deserves to be seen in the context of his championing of a better western idea.

Although a democrat to the core in action, principally, Gandhi had backed the conception of ‘nation and nationhood’ without sliding from the backup of conventional wisdom. He was part of a vital stream of tradition and modernism. So, as Guha understood it, revisiting Gandhi should take consideration of his personal beliefs as well as his dealings with the world. For he was foremost a man of immense integrity, one who never denied his weaknesses, and who rose to inspire the ethical consciences of millions.

Guha is able to do justice to his chosen theme, depicting Gandhi as simultaneously a fallible man and an unparalleled reformer who changed the entire course of history. The basic contention of the book reasonably notes that Gandhi was not born great but that it was his honest overtures with unusual circumstances in alien lands that had befitted him for the purposes of activism.

He soon emerged a great visionary, a beacon of hope for all the pockets of colonial oppression around the world, one who was intent on sticking to the path of non-violent revolution in order to curtail and diminish the might of imperial power. His approach was not hard-hitting as such, but his conviction and ability to communicate was forthright with effect. A great writer himself, Gandhi linked activism to the pen and peaceful demonstration—a phenomenon shift in the medium of protest in the post-industrialised world.

Guha’s book allows readers to be informed on all counts—including on the many inconvenient truths and misnomers surrounding Gandhi’s legend. Unlike most other attempts, this book does not intend to mystify; it aims instead to make Gandhi accessible to the greater masses, an admirable effort towards what is called the ‘democratisation of historiography’. Gandhi Before India is thus a beautifully written book that will no doubt create anticipation among readers for its sequel. And Guha, reportedly, is already at work on the same.

Even after 66 years of independence, the fog that surrounds Indian history is still quite dense—bizarre given how we’ve had generations of historians who’ve been scrabbling to find the pulse of significant events from the past. Unlike many of them, however, as a free thinker, Guha is probably in a better position to write the new history of modern India, or its ‘social history’. Gandhi Before India pays testament to his skills therein, and his capacity to shape an accessible and engaging narrative with remarkably gathered facts and balanced perspective—quite a rare achievement when it comes to something as complex as India’s history.
-Atul K Thakur
Email:summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Kathmandu Post on Novemver30,2013)

Wealth of the nation

Book Review: Non-fiction/Before and after the Global Crisis by T T Ram Mohan, Gyan Publishing House, p.352; Rs990 (Hardback)
T T Rammohan makes a brilliant diagnosis of what’s currently ailing the political economy of India

T T Rammohan is an academician of repute from IIM Ahmadabad. But unlike the rest of his creed, his writings are diverse and are meant for all kind of readers. Besides academic and consultancy overtures, he has been a widely-read and admired columnist with India’s leading pink paper for over two decades. With hundreds of articles on macroeconomic policies and other significant issues to his name, Rammohan is amongst the formidable scholars of his generation.

Before and after the Global Crisis is a collection of articles Rammohan had written during the 2004-12 period. Taken together, they add more value, and help tabbing the pulse of Indian economy in the post economic reforms years. This book enriches the understanding of India’s political economy and reads very well. Particularly, the chapters on how Indian economy stood in pre and post world economic crisis of 2008, are worth reading.

His earlier book Brick by Red Brick: Ravi Mathai and making of IIM Ahmadabad was a tribute to Ravi Mathai, who outgrew personal aspiration for shaping an institution and finally nation-building. The work is a biography with a difference, as it dealt with two institutions of different dimensions, IIM-A and Ravi Mathai. It got well deserved attention from readers and critics and the new book opens another round of idea exchange, focussed on the state of Indian economy.

This book is divided into five parts. The major areas covered under this are: macro economic variables, economic reforms, fiscal consolidations and disinvestment policies. The essays place rational arguments by allowing opinions to contradict the flawed current policy mechanism of the government. At some points, the author does not hesitate to approve the good works being carried out by the centre. He knows the beauty of keeping balanced views.

The next part of the book deals with banking sector reforms. The essays make the case for proper human resource development, besides favouring the prospects of inclusive banking. As the new bank licencing is imminent now, the chapter on financial inclusion has high relevance.

The third part of the book takes stock of world economy, particularly, the genesis of global economic crisis and role of international banking in the whole episode. Spread on a broader spectrum, the complex issue of ‘economic recession’ is still a puzzle. one among the formidable reasons of that has been the ‘shady regulation’ of Anglophone financial markets.

The lackluster regulatory approaches had prolonged the adventure of unsustainable financial businesses—and things hardly changed, even after the west suffered unprecedentedly through Subprime Crisis to the mass failure of banking structure.

T T Rammohan, a keen observer of global economic policies, naturally appears a very insightful narrator through his first hand experiences. As at the heart of this book is to unleash the background and foreground stories of world-wide economic crisis, the author’s specific leaning on the world economy, is justified. The world still has not come out of the grip of economic recession and although bank collapses are rare now, still the old confidence in financial markets is hard to be seen. Somewhere, it reflects the bigger mishandling of governance and regulation.

The timing of the book could not have more apt than now, when India is really passing through a tough time, by relentlessly witnessing a downward trend in its growth curve. And without growth, the principal stand of economic reforms would falter in no time. Rest, the provision of ‘redistribution of wealth’ is living uncertainty.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Millennium Post on November17,2013)

Train to partition

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten by Rajmohan Gandhi, Aleph, 432; Rs695 (Hardback)
From Aurangzeb to Mountbatten, the history of Punjab is replete with uncomfortable events, but Rajmohan Gandhi provides a compassionate account.
Normally, we hear of Punjab and think about the partition that horribly divided it into East and West. The scare is permanent, as one of the world’s bloodiest human exodus took place in its terrains in 1947.The leadership was incompetent then, and sadly things have hardly changed even after close to seven decades.

Rajmohan Gandhi, a gentleman and scholar has his argument well placed. He believes in the potential of ‘course correction’, which could happen with different groups making honourable compromises and settlements. Though his genteel wishes never ignore the realities of historical setbacks, which turned the region into the centre of bloodbath during Partition, Gandhi keeps his chin up when he speculates on alternatives.

An unprecedented wave of killings and suffering was the byproduct of virulent political-religious agenda. Gandhi’s Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten has a message, however. ‘Partition could have arrived with proper settlement and talk, though it arrived with a bit of uncertainty and terrible violence that uprooted millions’, he says. So, during those uncertain times, even the promise of democracy could hardly deter the ‘wildness of few!’

From Aurangzeb to Mountbatten, the history of India is replete with uncomfortable events—Rajmohan Gandhi has chosen to dwell on them and elucidate the bygone times with his own findings through years of years of tireless research. Gandhi’s love for history and research is exemplary—his last two works being A Tale of Two Revolts: India 1857 and The American Civil War, outcomes of his erudite devotion to the past.

This book, too, heavily relies on the facts—and not all are in circulation as far as mainstream ideas and ideologies are concerned. At places, facts do justice with the plots but the thin appearance of perspectives tilt the balance of the book closer to academic studies. In that, it reads well. The book etches in detail throwing light on the history of undivided Punjab and the life and times of the ruling classes. Apart from that, it also brings out the untold story of the Punjabi Muslims.

So far, stories of Punjabi Muslims have been mostly neglected by historians. Surprisingly, there isn’t much historical records even from Pakistan in this regard. Contrary to the trend, Rajmohan Gandhi covers almost 250 years of undivided Punjab, from Mughal, to Sikh to British rules, with a sound back up of research into what can be called the ‘subaltern egoes.’ His findings on the diversity amongst the Muslims of undivided Punjab and their cordial living with Hindus and Sikhs are both refreshing and substantial.

The need, however, is to ponder more on that phase of history in order to defy the lateral ‘hate base’ created before Partition, which has not halted yet. The Punjab has seen an endless wave of invasion and experiments with dangerous politics, which have turned this otherwise mild land into a zone of ceaseless tragedy.

Today, the two divided Punjabs on both sides of the border are weaker on all counts. But the book is hopeful of a better time ahead, and indeed it is possible—even if only few leaders in India and Pakistan would realise the follies of staying perpetually at loggerheads with each other.

Rajmohan Gandhi recalls a very turbulent past of Punjab, to pave way for a humane discourse on this land. Instead of pursuing obsessively high-decibel diplomacy inevitably mixed with ugly battles—the Indo-Pak relations would only improve through such softer sides of exchange.

The Partition story and preceding times need a thorough reassessment from historians and public intellectuals alike. Gandhi’s truthful interpretation of history will open a new chapter of understanding—both India and Pakistan need it urgently.
-Atul K Thakur
Email:summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Millennium Post on October13,2013)

India in sepia tint

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Mofussil Junction by Ian Jack, Penguin/Viking, 323p; Rs599 (Hardback)

Ian Jack’s Mofussil Junction is a treasure trove of scintillating sketches of a bygone time, when he traversed and documented rural heartlands of Bharat.
For the veteran Guardian journalist Ian Jack, India is not just a subject close to his heart, but a second home. The compilation of his essays, written during his active days as a journalist/traveler in pre-liberalised India, emphatically announces at the outset the impossibility of collating India at the altar of coherence. This volume deserves far wider reading by those born after 1991, when the ‘enigma of reform’ finally arrived at the slumbering power corridors of Delhi.

India decided to go another way in early 1990s, not because of the Indian leaders’ newfound love for the verses of Victor Hugo, but to escape a wretched existence, wherein wealth creation had become really tough. So, it was then that ‘an-idea-whose-time-has-come’ kind of prose came into prominence and shifted the entire India narrative, turning it inside out as the country embarked on an unprecedented journey.
Ian Jack is no Max Mueller — he has real feelings for India. Unlike the German Indophile, Jack keeps himself at arm’s length from hypothetical arguments. However, he is a superlatively articulate journalist. Jack has seen much and the result is this volume, a treasure trove of scintillating sketches and travels by road and rail through the length and breadth of India, with the spotlight on rural heartlands of Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. From metropolitan India to mofussil Bharat, he appears to be a neutral observer of a changing nation.

Going against the Western trend to look at the East through either rose-tinted glasses or shambolic poverty-goggles, Jack comes across as a moderate polemicist, especially when he’s writing on Bombay or George Orwell’s Motihari, where, to his dismay, few knew the acclaimed Englishman. Similarly, Jack’s essays on the Bhagalpur incident, or the Mansi Railway accident, break the convention of traditional journalistic reportage that eschews opinionating. Knowing it to the bone, Jack’s intuitive grasp on eastern India, which he has seen and felt like no other Western traveler, spellbinds even some of the most astute readers.

The essay on Tagore confirms it, where he diligently recognises the Bard’s unmatchable fame and how that has become a myth in itself, available for popular regression. It is another thing that now Bengalis, and other Tagore-scholars, have developed many, often conflicting, sets of opinions on the Nobel laureate, but none of those challenge his supreme authority in the cultural affairs of the clan. So, while Jack confronts their obsessive side, which hinders the dogmatic Bengalis to see merit in others, he also strikes a resonant note when he asks why Tagore has suffered in translation, and why his preeminence within the Bengali cultural superset is not without its reasons.

Jack’s essays on good English-speaking people like Sonny Mehta, or his landlord in Delhi, Sham Lal, have greater symbolic value, as they were written in simpler days, when speaking mannerisms and accents accrued greater degree of appreciation than the real content. On the Gandhi troika – Indira, Sanjay and Rajiv — his pieces seem to give primary information. I would like to believe this hardly showcases his limitation; rather, it allows us to believe, blissfully so, most of us are perfectly enlightened about the precious and trashy details of our political first family.

But Jack is an old horse at narrative journalism, and it’s humanly not possible to keep the inner perspicuous observer in him hidden behind the reluctant annalist of the Indian dynasty. On 1984 Delhi riots, he provides fresh perspective. Notwithstanding the fact that it’s an old issue and India has, unfortunately, had periodical bouts of turbulence, violence and bloodshed since then, the 2002 Gujarat pogrom being one, Jack’s eyes discover new details that had gone unnoticed in the deluge of politically-motivated accounts of the ugly chapter of modern Indian history. As a democracy, India has been ceremoniously plagued by the ‘culture of riots’ and the fertile ground of hostility is right inside the polity, and partially, Jack, too, hints at the unpalatable truth.

The book has a fleeting subcontinental touch as well. It becomes evident in his recollections of Benazir Bhutto and her mother, who once danced with a white politician, interestingly, which even Oxford-educated Benazir couldn’t do, that there was more to the embrace of modernity and Western ideas than the South Asian mind would like to admit. On Benazir’s reluctance or refusal to dance with a white man, Jack muses whether it was because she was a determined conservative who had learnt Urdu to use it for embellishing both her slang offerings and fiery speeches, which we most of us have heard at some point of time.

Jack’s essays are musings, repositories of collected memories — memories which are personal but have huge relevance for the larger audience, whether Indian or Western. At a juncture, when the incessant drone of breaking news clogs off the sieves of mind, and few are left with a proper appetite for narrative journalism, essentially, which is the better part of the trade, Jack’s work comes as a whiff of cool breeze and refreshing change. Mofussil Junction is here to buck the trend and is a delightful addition to your library, big or small.
Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Millennium Post on 1September2013)

For making growth agenda sustainable!

Book Review: Non-fiction/ An Agenda for India's Growth: Essays in Honour of P. Chidambaram bySameer Kochhar(Edited), Academic Foundation/SKOCH Group, 267 pp; Rs1095 (Hardback)
The year 1991 brought reforms at the center-stage of India’s economy. Then it routed more as compulsion than a policy choice, for immediate handling of the grave balance-of-payment crisis and other sagging economic fundamentals of that uncertain era. But in further course, it shaped up in delicate natural progression and that with overarching effects on India’s macroeconomic scenario.

There were five catalysts in action for making it happen. In political circles, one of the most notable advocates of that epoch-making change was P Chidambaram (then the Union Commerce Minister). His advocacy was next only to the then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh.

Two others in the core policy team—C Rangarajan and Montek Singh Ahulwalia— equally championed the cause through making economic planning truly forward-looking and compatible with the demand of new condition, which India did configured recently.

The book under review is a compilation of 14 essays by accomplished experts of their respective spheres. They recall the reform saga with honouring the contribution made by Chidambaram behind those historic shifts in policy outlook. Even the bitterest critics of economic reforms — and who have little to offer by way of a workable model for growth with equity—feel not shy in acknowledging this man’s success in changing the course of Indian economy.

In recent times, Indian leaders have been steadfast in their belief that economic freedom is linked not just to higher growth and incomes, but has greater bearing on socioeconomic empowerment and good governance. The wind of change came with few young leaders in the 1980swho thought beyond the over-formalism in vogue then. Chidambaram was one among them.

An eloquent advocate of economic freedom, he spearheaded the reform processes by clearing the fog of implementation on many crucial junctures.From bringing reforms in the UPSC, drafting the revolutionary trade policy document that liberalised India’s export and import policy, presenting the ‘Dream Budget’ in United Front government, steering the Indian economy clear of the impact the global financial crisis generated, solving internal security gaps post 26/11 and now in commanding the difficult task of keeping the economy growth-oriented: in all these tasks, he remained unrelentingly tireless as a policymaker.

The essays of this volume and a thorough introduction by the editor are written with higher expertise, and not in flat polemical order. They cover with meticulous analyses a wide-range of issues: fiscal and monetary policies, strengthening financial inclusion, revitalising agriculture, buoying stock markets, policy on natural resources, external trade reforms, urban infrastructure renewal and security aspects to growth. Moreover, they forward a growth-oriented, inclusive agenda for the country's future leaderships.

Through their anecdotal accounts of the reform story, C. Rangarajan and Montek Singh Ahluwalia try to recast and reorient the challenges and opportunities the whole architecture of economic reforms presents. They also recollect the memories of working with P Chidambaram in various capacities at different times.Their narratives are naturally significant on the delineated theme.

On the other side, essays of Vijay L. Kelkar, M. Govinda Rao,Parthasarathi Shome, N.K. Singh U.K. Sinha,Duvvuri Subbarao, Y.S.P. Thorat,Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Tarun Das and Ashok Jha streamline the memories of the initial days of reforms to the challenges country is facing today on multiple fronts. However, they all articulate their emphatic impression and opinion about P Chidambaram of being a firm and steady hand in government.

This festschrift has two other remarkable pieces.Sameer Kochhar’s Banking for the Last Mile and his jointly written piece with a strategic expert Gursharan Dhanjal,Security: What Chidambaram Changed,expand the opinionated horizons of the book.

In Individual capacity and through Skoch Group, Kochhar is known for his formidable works to make India—socially, financially and digitally inclusive. His earlier piece affirms it, while second one touches the status of internal security through sharp insights—with taking into account the precedents and what had changed since Chidambaram took charge of Home Ministry after the terror attack in Mumbai in 2008.

The book is about India’s good and odd experiences surfaced since 1991—that year, a generation of change agents in Indian Parliament had seen the merit in French romantic poet, Victor Hugo’s visionary line: “A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas”. They reckoned it and given greater legitimacy to Manmohan Singh, when he finally pronounced that: “No one can resist an idea (that was the beginning of reform) whose time has come”.

Later the economic goals were squinted and found a less-travelled path to follow-on. With all hues and cries in its opposition—economic reforms succeeded in India. It is true—its outcomes are not reciprocating the resurgent needs at absolute level—but few can doubt that the New Economic Policies have given an unprecedented confidence to the Indian economy. Nevertheless, much is required to be done, where the growth and equity can actively transcends each other—the book has overt concentration on this.

It is a complex phase of history, where the ideological shackles, built in 18th century alone wouldn’t work for solving the issues of present time. India especially is a unique case with civilisational status but young as a nation—so, our policies should see the merit of both the prominent economic models: Socialism and Capitalism. Embracing good spirits from all the camps, will give nation a hope, hitherto never seen in recent decades.

This book is a rattling good read and infuses new energy with lots of inspiring tales, which can make the ground of policymaking much more enthused and accountable. The spectre of gloom cannot fix India’s growth story, until the command of economy is in hands of duty bound intelligent leader.

The world should see the ‘writings on wall’ that is favouring India’s medium and long term prospects—even in the short phase, this appears not less promising than the saturated terrains of developed world and other instable developing economies, from different subcontinents!
-Atul K Thakur
(Published in Rising Kashmir,on 15July2013)

Bhutan: The kingdom of hope

Book Review: Non-fiction/ The Kingdom at the Centre of the World by Omair Ahmad, Aleph, 231p; R 495(Hardback)
I have been aware about Omair’s project on Bhutan since it was in ideation state but once I read it, I am better suitable to say he has written the political history of a tiny and insignificant nation with a pathbreaking articulation.

When the mad rush of the mainstream world is increasingly lured by misnomer like—‘things should be constructed too big to fall’,

Bhutan —the subject of this book opposes it with its indifference with popular notions of development and attached essential degradation. So, it’s not growing in general terms—and that is for good sake. With mastership over narration and facts —Omair is probably the best enthusiast on this small, sparsely populated kingdom at the eastern end of the Himalayas.

The book comes out in good spirit under the influence of same strong fundamentals and his incorrigible optimism directed in efforts. It justifies, in light vein too — the sense for history can flow very easily.

Omair’s The Kingdom at the Centre of the World speaks much with its name —even if not set asiding the subtle variation. It refers Bhutan has been a part of epoch-making transformations in Asia. Nevertheless it was never shown with degree of temptations to get aligned with the political-cultural conviction of the power mongers.

The book begins in a sort of travel writing format, and later goes deep inside the events of modern history without biases or contempt about the historical truths. It begins with an informed commentary over Padmasmbhava’s epic work, written to establish Buddhism in this unusual hilly kingdom.

Later, the book travels long to recall how Bhutan has emerged as an independent Buddhist nation in the 17th century under Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal. The coverage of Jigme Namgyal makes this book a perfect guide to know difficult tussle was between Bhutan and British empire —and the nasty motives of empire were crushed by a very humble nation.

The Wangchuk monarchs and their accomplishments are placed safely inside the pages by the author. These kings, with different royal outlook have ruled Bhutan for close to a century. In separate contexts, the book in great deal looks back on the past events, mattered heavily for this undersized but sovereign nation.

The prominent among them are —the ups and down of Tibet-Mongol and British Empire—the complicated spread of Nepali-origin people across South Asia—Sikkim’s dramatic loss of sovereignty and its convergence with India, and the highly conflicting territorial ambitions of India and China.

With the sufficient background of details, the book ventures out to inform—Bhutan alone promises high for an alternative way of inclusive governance and moderate progress. In a terrible uniform world—Bhutan opts Gross National Happiness (GNH) over Gross National Product (GNP). This gives hope for a world away from frantic compulsions.

Bhutan faces the challenge of unsettled issues of refuges on its land —also it is coping to track a mean path while retaining its cultural distinctiveness along with the ideals of ceremonial democracy. But the good thing is—with or without money, Bhutanese are the happiest human species in the world.

It inspires to see the beauty of small but sustainable happiness, which cannot be marginalised with sudden influx or downward spiral of global economic order. The happiness matters, this book tells it and with it, offers the suffice food for thought for freethinkers and also to the official polemics.

With few books to recall on Bhutan—this one deserves to be called remarkable and its author should be known for it, by the reference. It’s a terrific entry in this years’ non-fiction category and exudes the elegance, for that Aleph is much appreciated and known.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets2gmail.com
(Published in Rising Kashmir on June16,2013)

Anatomy of a Warmonger

Book Review: Non-fiction/ The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone& Peter Kuznick, Ebury Press, 750p;$30(Paperback)
Filmmaker Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick give an uncompromising and riveting account of America’s disconcerting history...
In their book, while Oliver Stone, filmmaker par excellence and Peter Kuznik, renowned academic, study the period from the beginning of the twentieth century right up to the present regime of Obama and highlight, the extent to which democratic ideas have been abandoned by world’s largest democracy, what they really do is to create an academic space, wherein the systematic war crimes of America are out in the open for people to deliberate on.

By the early twentieth century witnessed the democratic ideals of Lincoln, Jefferson and William Bryan had ceased to exist in America—the country was now obsessively focussed on becoming a world power by building up a strong military and diplomatic capacity. Interestingly, unlike the usual thematic history books from the US, this one dwells, more obviously, on the decline of American empire rather glorifying the shining phases of its history. The authors debunk the view that the US is strategically pure, visionary and infallible.

Stone and Kuznik elucidate how the follies of America’s action have nothing to do with the military capacity—modern American history is unmatched in terms of such blunders. The ‘introduction’ of this book belies the misconceived but popular notion that war, equaled ‘glory’.
The book discusses, in the chapter, ‘Roots of Empire: War is a Racket’— the commercial interests driving the neoliberal empire and marks a departure from conventional history of the Unites States, as it is. This makes the book all the more remarkable and valuable for the serious readers of global strategic history.

The book begins with the brutal suppression of the Filipino struggle for independence by the US. Further, it studies the two World Wars, and cites the leverages, acquired by the US by its interventions on foreign soil and by making ‘local issues global’, which it later sorted out inappropriately to its advantage.

In the post Second World War era, the US single-handedly controlled and exercised influence over several Latin American, Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Its newly found pastime was to make elitist dictators the heads of the state and achieve a dangerous equilibrium in nexus with smart terror operatives. It was responsible for the jihadi cells in Islamic countries, which eventually made the world less safe—thanks to the US.

The other power block and equal stakeholder of the Cold War—USSR was not really keen on its territorial expansion, as ideology had not suddenly fallen from grace there.

Stone and Kuznick dwell on the atomic policies of the US with unflinching courage. While doing this, they encounter the biased historiography that favours American action in various wars. They remind the readers that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally and militarily unjustified and provide a balance perspective of these sensitive issues.

The US loves war and that gives it its strategically unparalleled stature. Its nuclear arsenals are on hair trigger alert and can end the world in no time, and yet it hypocritically opposes nuclear proliferation. And its efforts for peace, on many occasions have brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
This double standard is now an established norm in American policy circles, which makes their strategic choices complex and oriented towards narrow self-interest. The book gives several instances when US presidents and diplomats, on many occasions have violated the spirit of American Constitution and international laws. The fatal leaning on arms over the decades has made the US, more a security state than a real democracy. This is shocking—as the world’s biggest triumph of democracy is appearing like a cunning empire, and without having any justification for such blunder.

Stone and Kuznick’s take on Woodrow Wilson has great clarity and in great detail, they show how his moves consolidated colonialism, rather help democracy. At best, his utterances were mere rhetoric, and his conflicting opinion delayed American action to address the threat posed by the opposition camp consisting of Germany, Italy and Japan in the 1930’s.

The Second World War would not have happened, had the US acted cautiously and promptly against three countries. As opposed to all the hyped up commitment to democracy, even at that time, the US was working to increase its clout in the changing global geopolitical order. It succeeded, but at the cost of unprecedented devastation, the world has ever seen and suffered. The authors provide mature insights on the past for the readers.

Stone and Kuznick praise Franklin D Roosevelt for acting promptly against fascism. They also give an account of the horrific choice of bombing Japan’s cities and getting into a long spiral of hostility with USSR, and the famous -Cold War. This made the world, less safe and stable forever—Afghanistan and the other disturbed Islamic countries are a prime example of this.

India experienced the dire effects of the Cold War in Kashmir. For long, it remained a parking lot for jihadis under the aegis of the US. The US deserves criticism, much more than USSR—as later was avoiding long strategic tussle.

The failure of USSR in 1991 was a project successfully completed for the US defence and diplomatic establishments. In subsequent phases, the US kept denying the existence of global terrorism till 9/11 attacks on its soil—only after that, it accepted, the world has threat from organised terrorism .Only after 2001 did the US started accepting the challenges posed to India by cross border terrorism.

The book offers fresh perspectives on the unexpected rise of Harry Truman and the positional saturation of Henry Wallace in American politics after the demise of FDR. The authors are oversympathetic to John F Kennedy, and his assassination is termed by them as a great blow to the efforts of peace undertaken by him. But truth was something else, as usual.
Atul K Thakur
Email:summertickets2gmail.com
(Published in Millennium Post on September08,2013)

Walking with Lions

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Walking with Lions: Tales from a Diplomatic Past by K Natwar Singh, Harper Collins, 211; Rs299 (Paperback)

K. Natwar Singh has been an articulate diplomat as an Indian Foreign Service official or in general. He was born royal, but grew up with a taste for democratic politics. In a memorable career, spanning over six decades, he has been indeed “walking with lions.” This book, which is a compilation of his 48 essays written for an Indian newspaper, forwards the chances of overture with few secret and mostly impressive known facts about him.

In the author’s unwavering belief in constructing high sense through small sentences, this book opens many sensational episodes from the non-Congress ruling years. On Congress and its leaders (especially with Nehru-Gandhis), his take is more neutral and appears to follow an invisible, but esteemed protocol. A protocol chosen, rather than forced from somewhere. On Morarji Desai’s regime, one can be enlightened by reading this book, which does not overlook follies or hyped wisdom.

Indian diplomacy in post-independence days could not delink from the shadows of its immediate colonial past. Even today, we see our diplomats behaving in an alien way, either at home or in the territory of their assigned mission. But India sailed on those, who exceptionally cued from such ideological draining.

Natwar Singh was among the ablest of them; he served in the mission of Western Europe and Zambia with equal vigor. That was and is a rare scene. He is of those few who have seen the trend of Indian politics since the days of Nehru.

Instead, he had to leave the Ministry of External Affairs much earlier and only to foolishly satisfy a lobby, active to tamper with India’s trade and policies at large. He was an obstacle before those interest groups, so sidelining him came as the easiest option. His successors have proved their disastrous capacity of non-interference, so things are walking a calm path - unfortunately, no distraction is foreseeable.

For long, I have been following Natwar Singh’s writing and his public life and also have the privilege to edit an upcoming anthology, for which he has contributed a very remarkable essay on India’s Foreign Policy (more as an independent writer, than a Congress member). I know him in many ways, though mostly for his scholarism that is above suspicion in all the cases. He has a fondness for letters and he justifies it, when he turns orator or writer.

The essays of this book, have been written on a weekly basis and they seem trying to reach a consensus of memory. This is by a person who has lived many roles in his life and career, and who also epitomizes the beauty of intellect in distinguished public life. His grip over the diverse domains of knowledge spellbind, but it adds on the wider spectrum of knowledge, so nothing gets complicated.

This book is a good read, and offers the reader to come across the hidden or stated events from the past. A diplomat/senior politician’s diary of this standard and in such frankness is an uncommon phenomenon in India, and still I doubt I’ll see a similar stock of opinion coming frequently from the veteran’s league.

They are or would be kept writing for the Gymkhana Club or other ghost club’s members, who unfortunately are the tribes of the past, still destined for a “colonial-hangover” rather than the “much changed destiny.” With this book, see the world (even though momentously) through Natwar Singh’s eyes - you will never feel lost.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in India America Today on March30,2013)

In an Antique City

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Calcutta: Two Years in the City by Amit Chaudhuri, Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Books India), 320; Rs599 (Hardback)

In all humbleness, Amit Chaudhuri admits, he knows Calcutta not like a native but through his personal interaction, happened infrequently with this city. A major writer of his time, Amit Chaudhuri is known for writing most natural prose in English-the reason was, his first book- A Strange and Sublime Address (collection of a novella and a number of short stories), won the Betty Trask Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and also was short listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize.

With his first book, he descriptively presented the richness of Bengali culture and with his latest-Calcutta: Two Years in the City, he explores Calcutta, but this time not like an absentee Bengali but as a city resident. In personal accounts, shaped through deep sensibility he brings forward the impact of changes on Calcutta. If the author tempts to capture the loss of old symbols, he also tries to dwell on the replacement, which makes Calcutta functional in certain way.

The book opens the beautiful stock of imagination and facts, combing together. Amit Chaudhuri presents his meticulous take on this great city, which is chasing the course for eroding that tag. His interest in Calcutta is closely attached with the city’s diverse range of specialties, even if many of them have passed. Those old icons/edifices are under heavy strain from the strong wave of commercial globalization and as Amit says, it’s mimicking ones’ stature earned through long academic and intellectual exercises.

His apprehension is straight and makes high sense, when he compares Calcutta’s embedded urban jungles with the other Indian metro-cities-how these all are coming up planned and cornering anything traditional for targeting resources. This will remain unchallenged-as we read the interviews and other conversations of this book, we realise it. From petty businessmen, domestic helps to aged gentle couple, all are facing the severity of change.

By buying the ‘old French window’ from a scrapper and finding a place for it inside the home, Amit Chaudhuri secures a gateway to the world. A new world, which may be not too broad but it ensures the basic exchanges of ideas not under limit of any system or impression from outside. Unlike with that window, Amit Chaudhuri secures a new world for the readers through his latest book.
Earlier too, he has been writing on Calcutta but with his memoir, he is turning to the city with unexpected fondness and concern.

As scholar, he has lived a life away from partitioning compulsions, which enabled him for open confession that Jibanananda Das, not Tagore was his favourite poet. For the Bengalis, he also landed precious suggestion to curtail with the surviving mass madness for over-celebrated personalities or conventions. This is for making the cultural atmosphere clean and impartial.
With a remarkable memoir on Calcutta, Amit Chaudhuri has given timely impetus for the lively debates, which this city needs in urgency.

He spoke on all types of components, supposed to make Calcutta complete, much more than an old fading city-from Bhadralok to the ill tempered ‘music record seller’ of Park Street. Also in details, Amit Chaudhuri opens his anecdotal reservoir of East Bengal-this allows looking on Calcutta, as recipient of the migrants affected from communal clashes started at the time of India’s independence in 1947.

Like his previous works, the new one will also be in the memories of readers. This insightful book is a vital source for knowing the changing Calcutta and Bengal-as both are imminent. So genuine enthusiasts on India must read and keep with Amit Chaudhuri’s Calcutta: Two Years in the City.
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Rising Kashmir on April01,2013)

The network

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Fountainhead of Jihad: The Haqqani Nexus by Wahid Brown and Don Rassler, Hachette, 320p; Rs650 (Hardback)

The Haqqani network’s area of operation, the fountainhead of Jihad-Durand Line accidentally adjoins the international border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This part of the world is largely unexplored for the intellectual communities, living on its periphery or located distant. So, Wahid Brown and Don Rassler open new chances to look on a terrain, known for all the bad reasons.

At the beginning, authors examine the origination of Haqqani network from Southeastern Afghanistan and the role played by the Haqqaniya seminary in northwestern Pakistan in its mushrooming. The Haqqanis are rooted in both these countries and ensured a never ending conflict between them. Pakistan has been maintaining a closer relationship with the Haqqanis, once the direct American support for the Haqqani network ended in the early 1990’s.

Though as the book confirms, Pakistan never felt shy in tying up with Haqqanis. Its military support for the Haqqanis began in the 1970’s when Pakistan looked to Afghan Islamists for countering Moscow-leaning Afghan government-this way Pakistan started the proxy war with Afghanistan, which continues to this date.

The book gives detail in great deal about the base of Haqqanis-Zhawara in the province of Khost-also establishes CIA/ISI’s direct support to this deadly terror network in their opportunistic quest. In anti-Soviet days, the nexus among them was running high-further the support from Arab for anti-Soviet Mujahidin: ‘Abdullah’ Azam and Osama bin Laden made the ‘global Jihadism’ imminent.

The Haqqanis continue to support a group of regional and transnational militants from their hub in North Waziristan. The Haqqani network has survived for more than four decades, and this through a carefully balancing act, which ensured its prominence in nexus of violence. Also, these militants have kept them away from the command of Talibanis.

The Haqqanis have lived the tussle of contradiction with Taliban and other local/global forces playing the dirtiest game in Af-Pak regions. Since the US entered in Afghanistan to revenge 9/11, Al-Qa’ida and a segment of the Pakistani Taliban (in particular the Tehrik-a-Taliban Pakistan) are at war with the Pakistani state-still, Pakistan has to support the US in its war against Taliban and the TTP, as it’s caught in alarming spiral.

On the height of wildness, the Haqqanis appearing as a platform for the delivery of violence that serves their various interests, and also strengthen the Haqqani network’s strategic position in North Waziristan and Loya Paktia. One of the major plank of the nasty game is to limit the influence of India in India-Pakistan is quite determined for it, and so paying big price with embracing the unregulated stock of terror.

The Haqqanis are the natural ally in this covert war against India-the US is enabling a meantime engagement, but the real goal of these terror networks is much dangerous, than it appears in casual looking on their mode of action. The book provides otherwise a sensible analysis of the ground realities from world’s most difficult terrain, except missing the end results of Cold War and the stake of India in the trouble surfaced post1990.

The book could have better enquired about the impact of Afghanistan’s vandalism by British/Soviets/Americans/Pakistanis/Talibanis and Haqqanis on Kashmir-the root cause of Kashmir conflict, has bigger and diverse dimensions. Ofcourse, the role of Cold War was most atrocious among them-although, the realisation is still dim on this particular aspect and probably that prolonging the unease in valley. The book is a good read, as it opens the world of terror, with no superficial hype!
-Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in Rising Kashmir on April20,2013)