This book is a collection of a hundred essays, articles and adapted newspaper columns by Dr. Shashi Tharoor, the accomplished Indian Parliamentarian. Dr. Tharoor is a liberal, believes in political liberty, social freedoms and social justice. He believes that India is a land of plurality and diversity with vast economic potential. He is a strong believer in the need for political democracy in India to realize this economic potential. The book is a perspective on India in 2014, on issues that have consumed Tharoor’s mind in the recent past. The essays have been grouped in eight different sections under appropriate titles. Needless to say, the book will be of most interest only to people who are interested in Indian democracy, politics and culture. I found ‘Section 3’, called ‘The Legacy’, quite interesting to read. The first two sections on PM Modi and his policies were of the least interest to me because I don’t care much for Modi’s party or his politics. The other sections on Tharoor’s tenure in the UN and his vision for India were good to read without being exceptional. I would like to mention below a few passages which captured my interest.
In the essay, ‘Politics and the Indian Middle class’, Tharoor makes an observation on the attitudes of the middle-classes in India and the US towards politics and politicians. Most Indians, he says, accept, indeed assume, conduct on the part of politicians they would never condone in their neighbours. While fellow-citizens are held to middle-class morality, marital fidelity, honesty and adherence to law, politicians in India get a societal carte-blanche on lies, adultery, tax-fraud, dissembling and cheating. In the US, he says, the middle class for the most part lives in a sexually permissive environment, with divorces not being uncommon. Yet, they expect their politicians to be models of moral rectitude, punctuated by long-lasting faithful marriage. Hence, Tharoor makes the conclusion that Americans idealize their political leaders whereas we in India, disparage them! Perhaps, Tharoor should have added that the American media lampoons their politicians, including their President, a lot whereas ours in India is too afraid to take them on.
In the essay ‘India’s Obama Moment?’, Tharoor disagrees with the Indian middle class boast of our own ‘Obama Moment’ when the Congress party in 2004, headed by a Roman Catholic, elected a Sikh as PM and was sworn in by a President, who was a Muslim, in a country of 80% Hindu population. Tharoor says that only when a Dalit (formerly ‘Untouchables’) becomes the PM, India can claim to have its ‘Obama Moment’. I agree with him partially on this. I think he must give some more credit to his own party and the nation. After all, the most popular leader of the nation, Mrs.Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by Sikh militants in 1984. It shows great maturity on the part of the Congress party to elect a Sikh unanimously as PM within a short span of 20 years in 2004. It is such acts which give secular Indians hope for India’s future. Someone like Tharoor should be more encouraging of such acts and other similar ones at other times in India.
The piece on C.N.Annadurai, the erstwhile leader of the DMK party in Tamilnadu, is one of the finest essays in the book. Tharoor recounts the elements of humility, probity and discretion in Anna’s character that made him such a phenomenally popular leader in the 1960s in TN. He brings to our attention that Anna was unique in contemporary Indian politics as the only leader in any political party to encourage the emergence of a second line of leadership in his own lifetime! Things like subsidized rice and legalized ‘self-respect’ marriages without a Brahmin priest are Annadurai’s contributions to society. In passing, Tharoor also points out that K.Kamaraj, the Congress party leader and Chief Minister in the 1960s, had performed the incredible feat of visiting each of the 16000 villages in Tamilnadu, not once but twice!
On corruption in India, Tharoor makes a telling point that it is a middle-class pre-occupation when its biggest victims are in fact, the poor. He remarks insightfully, “..for the affluent, it is at best a nuisance. For the middle-class, it can be an indignity and a burden but, for the poor, it is a tragedy”. Quoting the Global Financial Integrity organization, he says that India has lost $462 billion in illicit money since 1948. Looking at these numbers, we can see that the Indian PM, Mr. Modi, was flying kites as usual, when he claimed that he will deposit 1.5m rupees in each Indian family’s account after unearthing all the black money. If he does that, he would cover only 20m Indian families. What about the remaining hundreds of millions of families?
There are a few essays in the book where Tharoor slips from his usual high standards and says things that are uncharacteristic of him. In the essay ‘Astrology and the aspiring Indian’, he tells the story of the British PM, Margaret Thatcher, being impressed by the mind-reading abilities of an Indian guru, Chandraswami. The guru prophesies to her that she will become PM within four years and serve for nine, eleven or thirteen years. After she becomes PM, Mrs.Thatcher tells the Indian High Commissioner ‘to keep the matter under wraps’. Tharoor remarks then that we Indians may be superstitious but not hypocritical. I thought this is a rather sweeping and arrogant assertion. In fact, he contradicts himself later in the book in another essay, ‘Prohibition in Kerala’, where he approvingly quotes his late father as saying, “India is not only the world’s largest democracy; We are also the world’s largest hypocrisy’. In the essay on ‘Frugal Innovation’ in India, it is a bit out of place to see praise for Tata’s Nano car and Datawind’s Akash tablet. By 2014, both have been considered as failed products by the consumers and the market. Looks like Tharoor’s editors are slacking! In another essay, he refers to ‘M.F.Husain as India’s Picasso’. Though Husain painted in a modified Cubist style, he has surely done enough to stand on his own merits without needing the prop of being India’s Picasso. It is surprising to see Tharoor, who has written so much on the damaging impact of Colonialism on the Indian mind, falling prey to such comparisons. In the essay ‘Flying while Brown and other joys of airport security’, Tharoor curiously makes the now politically incorrect usage of ‘air hostess’ repeatedly for ‘flight attendant’ or 'cabin crew' (UK). Though it is a minor issue, I am surprised that this also escaped the scrutiny of his editors.
Overall, I would say that the book is good in parts but not one of Tharoor’s better ones.