Reported By:
| Edited By: Gargi Gupta |Source: DNA |Updated: Dec 05, 2017, 02:09 PM IST
The purpose was to show how the Indian state has become the enemy of the Indian people, both rich and poor. I did it anecdotally because I find it very boring to read heavy analysis of things that are simple to understand.
I believe that we should have de-colonised governance after we became an independent country. The training of our bureaucrats remains colonial. Their allegiance is to the ruler, not the people. If you go to the small towns in India, there is always one street that is spotlessly clean. They have clean water, electricity – everything that the people do not. We have a mixture of colonial governance and democratic feudalism. The only people who've benefited from it are a small power group at the top.
Our English speaking politicians, and English speaking bureaucracy have been very disconnected from people who do not speak English.
Politics is about results, it is about policies. I don't think the policies have benefited India. We've had an economic dictatorship that has kept India poor in the name of socialism and political feudalism that has served as an instrument of repression. Which state would not be rich if it didn't have better policies? You take Orissa, which would be as rich as Bali in 10 minutes, couldn't it?
I am prepared to give him a chance, as are the people. It is not even two years yet. And he's up against an establishment that involves the media, intellectuals and leftist university professors, which has served the interests of the Congress. Modi has made all the right noises. We don't know how well he'll succeed. He's possibly the first PM to point out that India no longer lives in the villages. I think some of the Hindutva stuff has been very damaging. He should have stopped his chief ministers from the beef ban and all that hysteria. In Maharashtra, he should have concentrated on creating enough infrastructure for relief in Marathwada; instead you have this Bharat Mata Ki Jai rubbish.
I don't share that view. I covered many communal riots and found that Muslims were ghettoised and made to believe that they could only trust the Congress party. But they were massacred every time there were riots. And there were many riots. Secularism was a poisoned chalice.
I was very disappointed. I was a huge fan of Vajpayee. I hoped that he would change the awful colonial governance and dynastic politics that I blame for India being backward and poor.
Where was the need for him to show up for every funeral and sit with Sonia Gandhi looking disdainfully down at him? I was very disappointed in his time as prime minister.
He (too) is courteous – (though) I think he made a mistake by putting Sonia at the high table in the banquet for Obama. And all she's done since is attack him. When you defer to a family that in any case considers it its birthright to rule India, then you tread a very dangerous course.
I start the book with a tax raid most journalists believe was so because I was virtually the only journalist to criticise Sonia. I mention how she tried to get my column thrown out of The Indian Express.
In politics, there is never the end of any road. The Congress is our oldest political party and still stretches across the country. But they haven't been able to capture the interest of younger Indians. I think it'll be a while before they revive, but you can never say.
