The Accidental Prime Minister - Sanjaya Baru

I never read any book about current Indian politician written by themselves or by others. I bought this book just to know why Congress is opposing this book- Curiosity made me to read this book.

After reading this book I realized that there was nothing new the book says about its subject - Mr.Manmohan Singh . I really don't understand the Congress party's opposition to this book .Yes , this book says that the real power lies with Mrs. Sonia Gandhi - every Indian knew this.  Instead the Congress Party should have used this book to portray the strong characters of Mr.Manmohan Singh. Of course, we all knew there is a Gandhi scion Mr.Rahul Gandhi whom the party sides with.

I am an accidental prime minister -Manmohan Singh

The author explains how the Gandhi family and his supporters took all the credits for Manmohan Singh's governance and blame him for all the failures. The author gives various examples for this including how the MNREGS started at Manmohan Singh's place . The book also says how Manmohan Singh kept himself away from Congress party politics. According to the author , Manmohan Singh should be given full credit for the nuclear deal with US and for almost bringing timeline for settling Kashmir disputes.

‘I dream of a day when, while retaining our respective national identities, one can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul. That is how my forefathers lived. That is how I want our grandchildren to live.’- Manmohan Singh

I always wondered why Manmohan Singh never resigned over his ministers corruption charges on moral grounds. Baru gives this "Dr Singh’s general attitude towards corruption in public life, which adopted through his career in government, seemed to me to be that he would himself maintain the highest standards of probity in public life, but would not impose this on others”  and  “Should he have resigned at the first whiff of scandal, owning moral responsibility for the corruption of others, instead of defending the government? Perhaps. Could he have resigned? Maybe not. The party would have hounded him for ‘letting it down’. It would have then accused him of trying to occupy the high moral ground and quitting in principle to avoid being sacked for not ‘delivering the goods’. When the horse you are riding becomes a tiger it is difficult to dismount” . 

‘There cannot be two centres of power. That creates confusion. I have to accept that the party president is the centre of power.’ Manmohan Singh, 2009

Baru's account gives an idea of how government works and how politicians use their power to do things and claims credit for others work. Very interesting. Some raised questions about the author's credential but no one concretely denied it. I hope those civil servants and politicians will come up with their part of the story specially Manmohan Singh himself.The book clearly explains to Congress Party that the two power centres of governance will not work. The irony is one of the honest Indian politician is leading one of the most corrupted Indian government ever! The blame should be on Congress Party and Gandhi family for not uprooting the corrupt ministers .

Good read!

The authors interview 

With Karan Thapar