RAJDEEP SARDESAI

2019: How Modi Won India by Rajdeep Sardesai;
Published by Harper India ; Pages: 392; Price: Rs 699/-

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Theodore White has established himself as the Chronicler of the Presidential elections in USA.He wrote-- The Making of the President 1960,The Making of the President 1964,The Making of the President 1968, and The Making of the President 1972, all analysing American presidential elections. The first of these was both a bestseller and a critical success, winning the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. It remains the most influential publication about the election that made John F. Kennedy the President.

The Indian counterpart is RajdeepSardesai,author of the best-selling book, “2014: The Election that Changed India.

Sardesai was managing editor of the NDTV network before he set up the IBN 18 network with channels like CNN IBN as founder editor. He was the city editor of Times of India at the young age of 26. He is currently a consulting editor with the India Today Group and anchors a prime time show on India Today.

He bagged the prestigious Padma Shri , the International Broadcasters Award for coverage of the 2002 Gujarat riots, and the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award.  He has also won the Asian Television Awards 2014 for Best News Presenter in Asia for the coverage of the 2014 general elections. He was also chosen as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in 2000.

Rajdeep Sardesai is liberal and moderate; he is a critic of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva world view. However, he recognises the party’s core strength and strong leadership. His margin was astonishingly accurate.

Sardesai has extraordinary talent and an awesome group of valuable friends in all camps. He possesses sharp critical talent, keen political acumen, sound analysis, and perceptive political sense. This book offers abundant proof .

Sardesai proves quite easily that the 2019 election was unarguably a truly TIMO — There Is Modi Only — election. The issue of national leadership was the main desideratum. The BJP proclaimed that the vote was for the Leader. The Opposition failed to offer a single candidate of stature anywhere near Narendra Modi. Voters perceived in Modi a Hindu totally dedicated to India’s development—a man who would lift the poor and downtrodden from the slough of despondency, a nationalist who will battle against enemies.

The election adopted a Presidential tone. It laid bare the limits of the Congress strategy of turning it into 543 local contests.

The second powerful weapon the BJP’s armoury was the election machine created by Amit Shah. Shah’s ideological clarity, his organisational skills, his ability to work hard become crystal clear. Shah transformed BJP into a monumental election machine exuding Success. Through membership drives, a database of its members and supporters, constant campaigns, and a robust structure down to the booth and even the level of electoral roll pages, the BJP was able to take its brand and message down to the roots. Shah also succeeded in geographically expanding the scope of BJP--- especially in West Bengal.

The BJP in election mode functioned not as a political party but as a ruthless corporate machine. Politics is a do-or-die business in which the minutest detail is meticulously scrutinised by pragmatic lieutenants.

The carefully planned campaign for marketing Modi, conceived more than two years back with the help of highly skilled technocrats, brings out the extent of planning and build-up of a multi-pronged communication network. After Shah took over as party president, the BJP membership shot up dramatically. It was 2 crore when Shah became president and is now around 11 crore. Call centres kept tabs of the personal details of every member: from voter IDs to mobile numbers and addresses. The data was fed into computers accessible to the party leadership. Shah boasted that with one SMS he could connect instantaneously to one lakh workers. Poll booth committees of between 15 and 30 workers were formed for some 8.63 lakh election booths across the country.

Six months before the polls the BJP organised 161 round-the-clock call centres for tele-marketing. The centres were provided a detailed list of the 22 crore beneficiaries of various government schemes such as Swachh Bharat, Ujjwala, the Jan Dhan Yojana, Awas Yojana, Ayushman Bharat.

Sardesai of course clarifies that BJP was the richest party in the election venture.

The other key component of the BJP’s 2019 electoral victory was the role of the government’s welfare delivery schemes. From gas cylinders to toilets, rural housing to bank accounts, the Modi government not only delivered benefits, but gave adequate publicity to advertise the achievements.

The BJP paid attention on consolidating both a majority and a majoritarian identity. This helped uniting Hindus — the goal of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — and overcome caste divisions. The BJP’s ideological commitment to remaking the state on Hindutva lines is quite deep and goes beyond elections. This has been visible in the past nine months, with the government using its electoral mandate to push changes in Jammu and Kashmir and amend the Citizenship Act.

The BJP benefited from the nationalist mood. The killing of paramilitary personnel in Pulwama had created national horror. The PM told the national security apparatus that he wanted visible action. With the air strike in Balakot, the party machine went into an overdrive — to portray Modi as the only leader capable of defending India’s interests and teaching Pakistan a lesson. The BJP may still have won in 2019, but Balakot did enthuse the cadre and provide a bump.

Another advantage was that Rahul Gandhi ran a confused, diffused and disoriented campaign. He was convinced of the effectiveness of the “Chowkidar Chor Hai” slogan, even though party elders tried to tell him it held little appeal for voters. Rahul Gandhi resisted giving interviews even to sympathetic journalists and was sometimes disdainful of his own party leaders. He still retains the odd man out image in the political space. His close advisers are from his social circle of left-leaning intellectuals, totally untouched by Indian reality.

Rahul Gandhi had a legitimate grievance that he was not fighting on a level playing field. The BJP whipped up Islamophobia and polarised the atmosphere. The BJP’s army of trolls filled the internet with toxic messages. A pliable media played along with the ruling party, conscious that the information ministry had a monitoring cell which kept tabs on who filed what. The Election Commission’s role was suspect. It raised no objection even to a NaMo TV channel opening up just two weeks before the election, without official permission. It meekly accepted the argument that it was a DTH advertising platform. India’s first multimedia campaign marketed the PM’s larger-than-life image everywhere: TV screens, mobiles, online, books, movies and billboards. Even before Pulwama and Balakot , Modi was in the driver’s seat, but after the Pakistan attack the narrative turned decisively in his favour.

India’s first multimedia campaign marketed the PM’s larger-than-life image everywhere: TV screens, mobiles, online, books, movies and billboards. Even before Pulwama and Balakot, Modi was in the driver’s seat, but after the Pakistan attack the narrative turned decisively in his favour. The ruling party did not shy away from taking the credit for the performance of our defence forces.

Sardesai has thoroughly studied the role of Media, especially select segments of the electronic media, which have proved stronger cheerleaders for BJP . According to him , the BJP astutely used the deepening penetration of the mobile phone to reach voters directly, particularly through WhatsApp and other forms of social media.

Sardesai’s work is an exhaustive study of the electoral battle and throws a flood of light on all parameters. With an alert and inquisitive reporter’s instinct and refreshing boldness, at a time when journalistic candour is fast diminishing, Sardesai provides fascinating insight into Shah’s systematic build-up of Modi over the last few years. A vigorous and stimulating account of a very well planned battle.

P.P.Ramachandran

22/03/2020.

3

KRISHNA MENON BY JAIRAM RAMESH

A Chequered Brilliance --- The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon by Jairam Ramesh ; Published by Penguin-Viking ; Pages 725 ;Price Rs.999/-

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It is an axiom that one Mehta does not like another Mehta; one Ganguly detests another Ganguly ;one Singh excoriates another Singh!.

So is the case with two Menons. K.P.S.Menon wrote of V.K.Krishna Menon--“ Krishna Menon could not suffer fools gladly. One cannot quarrel with that. But he saw more fools than there are in this world”.

Now we have a full-fledged biography of Krishna Menon by Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Sabha MP, ex-Minister and author of the remarkable book “Intertwined Lives: P.N.Haksar and Indira Gandhi”.

This monumental biography covers Menon’s life, from birth into a wealthy Malayali family, to early association with the Theosophical Society , to his long sojourn in London. He was a formidable man, soaring in the political life in England. A great contribution is the establishment of Penguin Books. There is no gainsaying the fact that he worked night and day for India’s Independence. He fought for it in the Lion’s den.

The book under review is a heavyweight—750 pages long and jam packed with information hitherto unavailable. Ramesh has traced, mostly through letters and personal notes the thought-process of a complicated personality. He had access to a fantastic wealth of material on Menon.

Menon emerges as a man enveloped in eternal conflict and covered in loneliness within him, despite permanently being under public glare .

According to Ramesh ,"Krishna Menon's achievements were gigantic, his failures monumental. His intellectual strengths were awesome, his emotional equilibrium pathetic. He was the delight of his crisis, the despair of his admirers. He reached dizzying heights of fame, plumbed to depths of notoriety. It is very easy to judge Krishna Menon. He has a long record of pluses and minuses. On what he accomplished, he commands plaudits. On what he blotched up, he deserves strictures."

More than the Chinese debacle that cost him his job, what Menon will be remembered for was his special relationship with India''s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

"That Nehru opened up to him like no one else was evident. He went out of his way to protect Krishna Menon from his own foibles and ultimately paid the price for it. This is part of Indian political history. But why Nehru continued to be loyal after accounting for their remarkable and intense friendship of almost thirty years is puzzling”.

That Menon almost single-handedly kept the flame of Indian freedom burning across the UK in the 1930s and 1940s is without question. That he played a crucial role in the transfer-of-power negotiations in the months leading up to the end of British rule in India is evident.

That he was a hugely impactful envoy for India in the UK between 1947 and 1950 can stand up to scrutiny. That he unravelled many knotty issues at the UN especially between 1952 and 1957 is also clear.

According to Ramesh , Menon did India proud at the height of the Cold War. "He argued India''s case with passion and eloquence. At a time when the Western powers were ruling the roost, he had the temerity and courage to take them on on his terms. But after 1957 or so, his tongue and his manner, barring occasional flashes of constructive engagement, created a negative global image for Nehru and India.

For years thereafter, the ghost of Krishna Menon lingered over both the substance and style of Indian democracy - needlessly argumentative and combative. And that ghost still lingers.

Menon’s years of glory were during the struggle for Indian independence when he mobilised support for the freedom movement in London. By the 1950s, he became a force to reckon with in international affairs with his solutions to the disputes in Cyprus, Korea and Suez.

Unfortunately his name is interlinked with one disaster -- India’s war with China in 1962. He was the one who lost us that war. This ignominous defeat led to his resignation from the Nehru cabinet. Thereafter he could never be an acceptable figure for most Indians.

Some of his negative aspects proved overwhelming factors. He was arrogant, acerbic, needlessly rude and for ever on the brink of a nervous breakdown. He was very close to Jawaharlal Nehru who trusted him and confided his innermost fears and doubts.

On the substantive issue of the 1962 debacle, the case against Menon is far from clear-cut. Within the army, the caricature view of him is that, he had come to power on the basis of a non-violent movement and therefore displayed utter contempt for the military. He mistreated generals, denied the army the resources and relied chiefly on diplomacy. He doubted the army’s continued British ethos . Ramesh proves that this is a massive oversimplification.

He was no enemy of the army . Ramesh quotes Field Marshal Cariappa who got along with Menon and there is no doubt that Menon was more comfortable with Earl Mountbatten (they were lifelong friends) and other important British figures than he was with most Indian politicians.

The Liberation of Goa was Menon’s operation, boldly carried out in the face of international opposition to a military action against the Portuguese.

The author highlights two key contributions of Krishna Menon during his tenure as Defence Minister. The first is that he "was the only person consistently arguing for a ''deal'' with the Chinese to resolve the border dispute", a task in which the two countries have been engaged for 17 years now and which was initiated during then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's historic visit to Beijing in 2003.

The other is his accomplishments in defence research and production that have endured and given India a great degree of self-reliance. Ramesh quotes Menon arguing for increasing defence spending and fighting to get the forces the equipment they needed: the INS Vikrant was purchased on his watch as were the MIGs that became so important to the air force.

The negative points. Menon was rude and arrogant with everyone, not just generals. He spent too much time on foreign policy when he should have focused on defence. Menon liked cliques and played favourites. Along with Nehru, he vastly over estimated flatterers such as General BM Kaul and could not handle proud and complex figures like General Thimayya. The action the army took against such officers as Thimayya and General Sam Manekshaw during his time is a low spot in the history of our defence forces.

Ramesh believes that if India had followed Menon’s strategy for handling the Chinese there may have been no war at all. He quotes Indira Gandhi holding this view.

The Chinese sincerely believed that their territorial claims were valid. We disputed this but the evidence provided by both sides was not conclusive. Menon suggested that the solution was a deal. The Chinese could build roads in disputed territories (perhaps through some lease arrangement) and India could gain access to disputed territory that China controlled.

This proposal was never officially minuted but most people concede that it existed. When Menon died, Indira Gandhi said, “Had the solution which he had proposed on behalf of India in the 50s for the India-China situation been accepted, a great deal of hardship, waste and suffering would have been avoided.”

Nehru provoked the Chinese by announcing that they would be thrown out; this, at a time when our army was not yet ready for a high altitude conflict.

However,there is no doubt that our forces were woefully under prepared and poorly led by generals, many of whom Menon had appointed. The generals themselves were badly divided and these divisions and a command failure contributed to the defeat.

The book is replete with anecdotes that join certain events in the history with certain personalities— all richly woven into the narrative without diverging from the story.The most pathetic portions of the book relate to the suicidal tendencies of Menon.

The book adds valuable insight into the available material on Krishna Menon.This is an important book and one that enhances the standing of Jairam Ramesh’s as one of the respected political biographers of our country.

P.P.Ramachandran.

15/03/2020.

SRINIVAS

Towards a New India by V.Srinivas; Published by Konark ; 

Pages 202; Price Rs 800/-

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The author of the book under review V. Srinivas is presently Additional Secretary to Government of India in the Department of Administrative Reforms. He was the Deputy Director at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Director General, National Archives of India and Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Textiles and Culture for seven years. He was the Chairman of the Board of Revenue for Rajasthan and Chairman of the Rajasthan Tax Board in 2017-2018. In 2017, he was awarded the Indian Council of World Affairs Book Research Fellowship for his first book, “India's Relations with International Monetary Fund 1991-2016”. He is a senior civil servant and this is his second book.

According to the author “ In my long years of experience in governance, the last five years have been quite transformational, because the pursuit of radical reforms has benefited millions of Indians in a manner in which governance has been taken to the doorstep of people through digital means.”

India’s welfare-state programmes have undergone a sea-change and there has been a massive digital transformation in the past quinquennium. The highlights of the programme are

i)the universal issue of over 120 crore Aadhar cards;

ii) opening of over 31.6 crore Jan Dhan bank accounts;

iii)the construction of toilets to serve more than 85 percent of our population.

A staggering achievement by any standards.

The book discusses in depth issues like healthcare for all, education and rural development, Jan Dhan Yojana, Ujjwala Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojana, Digital India, Skill India and Make in India, Social Inclusion, Fight against Corruption among others.

We have a first-hand account of the author’s implementation experience in a leadership role. India’s fight against corruption and the efforts to improve justice delivery systems have been graphically presented. It is not for the people but also by the people. It is this participatory process that distinguishes Governance from mere Government.

We are treated to a stirring saga of how lives in our rural areas are being transformed.

India is on the march to achieving inclusive growth and all round development that will lift crores of people out of poverty. India’s Social Inclusion programmes are comprehensive and their implementation is supervised by independent Minstries with dequate resorce allocations.

The strength and resilience of critical institutions of the Lokpal, GST Council and the Niti Aayog, along with the government's sponsored programmes, should enable the country realise its strategic objectives.

"Corruption impacts service delivery, when speed money is asked for registration of documents, sanctioning bank loans, amendments in land records, driving licences, and other routine services. Every form of corruption has an economic impact, and fighting corruption is an imperative need.
Srinivas highlights the role of cooperative federalism through the working of some of the constitutional institutions.The appointment of the Lokpal demonstrates to the world that India is not second to any nation in making its public administration clean and fair.
The strength and resilience of India's 3 critical institutions - the Lokpal, the GST council and the NITI Aayog, coupled with the government's numerous centrally sponsored programs should enable the nation realise the strategic objectives laid down in New India@75.
The Niti Aayog had released the strategy for New India@75 (in 2022) in December 2018. The strategy paper seeks to bring together innovation, technology, enterprise and efficient management, at the core of policy formulation and implementation, to ensure that development becomes a "jan andolan" (mass movement).

The qualitative changes in the centrally sponsored schemes remain a part of the New India@75 strategies. While the Niti Aayog has been a significant player in cooperative federalism, other institutions have emerged.
The GST Council, a constitutional body created under Article 279 A of the Constitution as a joint forum of the Union and the states, after 34 meetings has emerged as India's foremost federal institution, where decision making has been consensus driven and covers a diverse range of subjects.The Council is a permanent institution entrusted with the responsibility to make recommendations on tax rates, cesses and surcharges to subsumed under the GST, as also exemptions under GST.

It is essential to cull out some of the major achievements cited in the book. A few examples are given below.

Nagaon district of Assam, where 78 percent of the population is dependent on agriculture and most transactions were in cash, has been transformed into a locality with heightened awareness of cashless transactions.

In North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, Salma Khatun, a resident of Amdanga village, wanted to pursue higher studies and become self reliant. She was awarded the Kanyashree Scholarship, an incentive of the West Bengal government for appearing in the Madhyamik examination, and the money was deposited in the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana account. With the money, Salma plans to buy text books and study material to realise her dream of becoming a doctor.

In Bikaner, the first Open Defecation Free district of Rajasthan, following a campaign by the government, the women started pressurizing their menfolk to build toilets, to avoid the compulsion of having to wait for the sunlight to fade in order to be able to relieve themselves. They also highlighted the safety issues of venturing alone into the fields in the dark, as well as the health and hygiene issues related to open defecation.

This was all thanks to the massive counselling sessions undertaken by the district collector, who roped in all the gram panchayats to sensitise them of the need to build toilets. The Swachh Bharat Gramin Campaign in Bikaner covered 17 lakh rural population in 290 Gram Panchayats and 1,035 villages. On January 26, 2016, Bikaner was recognized as the first ODF district of Rajasthan and the second in India.

India is on the march to achieving inclusive growth and all round development that will lift millions of people out of poverty. The author’s present book brings this out with clarity .There have been several District level success stories in implementation of programs which have reduced social insecurities and improved economic well-being. The book gives a detailed and insightful account of an administrator's experiences in implementing the digitalization practices, improving justice delivery systems and in identifying the challenges for the civil servants in a 21st century India.

The book is of immense use to all interested in our nation’s development, especially students of economics, public policy and welfare economics.

P.P.Ramachandran

8/03/2020.

ROBIN MUKHERJEE

Who Blunders and How? by Robin Banerjee ; Published 

by Sage ; Pages 263 ;Price Rs.550/-

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Robin Banerjee is the Managing Director of Caprihans India Ltd.He has been nominated as the best CFO of India by the Business Today magazine.He received The Ethical Business Award from Rotary International. He is the author of three books on indirect tax.

The book under review begins by drawing a comparison between the famous airlines – Kingfisher and Indigo. Started around the same time, while Kingfisher shut shop due to heavy losses, the latter survived to raise tonnes of money.

Today when businesses operate in a world of cut-throat competition, innovation and adaptability to change is extremely important. Mistakes are inevitable; every business is tested for endurance.

The book is divided into 11 business lessons. Each lesson is further divided into subheads dominated by case studies of renowned brands.

Banerjee has tried to pen down the underlying reasons that lead companies into falling on the right or wrong side of business prosperity.

From quality compromise, family feuds and PR blunders to merger and acquisition crisis, debt traps and mangled business models, Banerjee delves into every facet of a business that determines its success and failure. Many big companies—famous brands, once loved and revered—often disappear into oblivion mainly due to their own follies. The chapters not only highlight the various mistakes made by big brands but also propose solutions and suggestions to every problem statement as a tailpiece.

The author focuses on the case of Kodak to highlight the classic mistake of ‘lack of innovation’ done by most corporates. In the fear of losing out on its lucrative ‘film based’ business model, Kodak failed to recognise the opportunities emerging in the digital photography space in 1975. Despite having the resources and the technology, the company did not prepare itself for a digital onslaught and called for its own downfall.

The heroes of this book are giants of the business world such as Samsung, Heinz, Pepsi, Flipkart, Kelloggs, Alibaba – Banerjee has picked real-world examples from every industry to expose the readers to different business models and allow them to understand the market upheavals holistically. The author is able to keep the reader spell bound as he explains simply the nuances of different business concepts and theories. Why do companies collapse is explained with great simplicity and garnished with practical examples. Banerjee achieves with ease his aim of enabling the readers to absorb the fundamentals of leadership and keep at a good distance the traps that result in business blunders.

Many big companies—famous brands, once loved and revered—often disappear into oblivion mainly due to their own follies. Look at the once seemingly unfailing Premier Padmini cars. In the unforgiving world of modern business they failed to adapt and perished.

Every business is tested for endurance and accomplishment but only a few extract strength and wisdom from their trying experiences. Even the infallible Nokia, BlackBerry, Woolworths and Lehman Brothers buckled. Companies such as Bethlehem Steel, Atari, Xerox, NCR and Mafatlal once considered as the great ones to emulate, all failed to live up to their repute.

There are a number of reasons for business blunders . To name a few causes--- compromising quality to cut costs, lack of professionalism in management, botched up mergers and acquisitions, customers being taken for granted, bad leadership, family squabbles, corporate fraud, unmanageable debts and numerous others.

Many famous, frequent and common mistakes are committed by businesses over time. The lessons learnt from this book should enable one to run his business with lesser hiccups and maximize returns.

The book is ideally suited for new founders just starting up a company as well as senior leaders who lead others. The author tells us how to convert failure into success. It can be a reference for those who conduct business and development training.

Robin Banerjee’s strong point is that he brings out clearly both sides of an issue, then seeks a synthesis on the issue.

This book is well-researched and backed up by a lot of examples. It was a real page-turner and quite an interesting read!

Rather than providing tools and tricks to manage your time just slightly better than you usually can, the book seeks to actively transform your perspective about what success and time management are entirely.

The book is a perfect blend that gives an insight into the factors that drive the success and failure of a business. An extensively researched book, it is an essential read for anyone who envisions leading the corporate world.

The singular praise worthy quality of this book is that it is conversational anecdotal and provocative and is guaranteed to make one introspective and emerges as a treasure to all connected to business—however tiny or big it is.

P.P.Ramachandran.

01/03/2020.