Thursday 19 June 2014

Book Review- The Accidental Prime Minister

The book is a informative read for the people who have just came out of their teens and missed the Prime Time news for cramming their notes or solving the equations. For people who have been actively following the current whereabouts will feel that Sanjaya Baru is stating the obvious. The book provides few insights in the functioning of highest offices in India. The author provides few pages of good information about the Indian Foreign Policy and 123 Nuclear deal but if you are reading this for understanding the topic of polity and IFP, the effort to result ratio is not satisfactory.
Despite claiming at multiple places that he is not a bureaucrat, the author sounds self righteous and self praising at many pages. Maybe he was least elitist of the lot!
The thought lanes appear narrow and the reader suffers by reading the same rhetoric again and again. Manmohan Singh is painted as a man who shied away from the active leadership when he had an opportunity to do so. But we never fully understand why, despite him being an introvert and shy.

But I would like people in their late teens and early 20’s to read it as it will make your current appetite to listen Prime Time News more fun and insightful. You will be able to see why Karat is so important in the Left Equation; why Manmohan didn’t do much to prevent the scams which took place right under his nose; why the opposition halts the Parliament proceedings; How does parties play with the word secular to meet their ends; what are the political backchannels government uses and Are Media houses really independent?


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