DAMODARAMSANJIVAYYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

VISAKHAPATNAM, A.P., INDIA

PROJECT TITLE:
BOOK REVIEW WRITING

SUBJECT
ENGLISH

NAME OF THE FACULT

BEENA PUNJABI MAM

Name of the Candidate
Roll No.
Semester
GIRISH REDDY M
2017044
SEMESTER 1
 BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: ACCIDENTAL PRIME MINISTER:

MAKING AND UNMAKING OF Manmohan
Singh

AUTHOR: Sanjaya Baru

COUNTRY: India
SUBJECT: Politics

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sanjaya Baru is a political commentator and policy analyst, currently
serving as Director for Geo-Economics and Strategy at the
International Institute of Strategic Studies. Previously he had served
as associate editor at The Economic Times and The Times of India,
and then chief editor at Business Standard. His father B. P. R. Vithal
served as Finance and Planning Secretary during former Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh's stint as Secretary of Finance. Before he
became a journalist, he was a member of Communist Party of India
(Marxist) when he was a student at University of Hyderabad. He
became Manmohan Singh's media advisor and chief spokesperson, a
role in which he served from May 2004 until August 2008. In April
2014, Penguin India published The Accidental Prime Minister, Baru's
tell-all memoir about his time at the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). In
it, Baru alleges that the prime minister was completely subservient
to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who wielded significant
influence in the running of the Singh administration, including the
PMO itself. The book has sparked off a controversy, with the PMO
officially denouncing it as "fiction". Baru, however, has said that he
set out to show an empathetic portrait of the prime minister. And he
completely tried to portray the internal struggles which Manmohan
sing has under gone. The bestselling book has always been
associated with competent writing and competent writing has
always required an easy command of correct language and style.
The style of a writer is an involuntary and intimate expression of his
personality.

Review of The Book:

Prime Minister Manmohan singh once said he believed that history

would be kinder to him than contemporary media. He does not have
to wait for historians. His erstwhile media adviser Sanjaya Baru has
written a book that is not only kind to Singh but is effusive in its
praise for him. The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and
Unmaking of Manmohan Singh is by design a book meant to salvage
the reputation of India’s 13th Prime Minister. 

From economic policymaking to ending India’s nuclear apartheid,

Baru can find no fault with Singh. In the author’s eyes, Singh’s first
innings (2004-09) was outstanding; his second round, beginning
2009—by which time Baru had left the Prime Minister’s Office—was
full of trouble for Singh.

Unwittingly, however, the Manmohan Singh who emerges in the

book is at a considerable remove from his perceived image of an
apolitical and tactically naïve leader who landed the prime minister’s
job accidentally. Baru does not say so directly but throws enough
hints, scattered across his book, that show Singh in a different light.

Two are worth noting: Singh’s attitude and response to corruption

and his unwillingness or inability to quit as prime minister at the
right time. Both proved fatal to his image.

Consider corruption first. Singh’s reticence to tackle his erring

colleagues is not a product of his political weaknesses but one of
personal choice.

“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,” Baru writes in the book.

If this is true, it explains a lot about the nature of corruption in his

government. The attitude that Baru ascribes to Singh is one suited
to a civil servant—detached and aloof—but one that is unsuitable for
a head of government. As later events showed, it was corruption
that hit the United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) fortunes the most.
Singh’s passivity was certainly a reason why the problem acquired
such threatening proportions.

The second personality trait, his inability to quit when he ran into
rough political weather is equally complicated. In UPA-1, Singh
successfully used the threat of resignation to get the India-US civil
nuclear deal cleared past a sceptical Congress leadership. One
reason why that threat worked was the absence of a next rung
leader who could take over if Singh quit. By UPA-2, that problem had
been obviated: Rahul Gandhi was on the horizon. At that moment,
with one crisis after another hitting his government, Singh withdrew
his hand. After the nuclear deal, he never threatened to resign.

It is hard not to conclude that Singh used the threat to resign as a

strategic device. But having used it once, he knew it would not work
again.

Baru raises the question but chooses to defend his master. “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,” Baru writes . This is nothing more than an adroit
defence.

Had Singh quit when things began taking a turn for the worse, his
party and its leadership would have been in trouble and not Singh.
But he chose to linger on until his party came to believe that he was
a liability. The writer of The Accidental Prime Minister highlights
many such points when Singh could have taken the decision to go.
Baru ends by showing how Singh willingly chose a different course.

Criticism on Book:
The Book has received wide range of criticism, saying that It is an
attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to
gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gain. The
commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of a former
adviser. Baru’s reply to the PMO's charges was "I am amused. Baru
told, "most of the book is positive [about the PM]" and that he wrote
it mainly because Singh "has become an object of ridicule, not
admiration. I am showing him as a human being, I want there to be
empathy for him. But, I personally feel that the author had pen down
a true tales from the PMO period of Manmohan sing and he, being a
close associate to Manmohan sing made me feel that the narration
would be slightly fictionalised but, at a later stage I got connected to
the emotional aspect of the author on the role of PRIME MINISTER
being truly narrated.

Characters in the Book:

DR. MANMOHAN SINGH

Born {26 September 1932} is an Indian economist and politician

who served as the Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014. The
first Sikh in office, Singh was also the first prime minister
since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after completing a full five-
year term. In this book Manmohan Singh acts as a person who
follows his heart and in many circumstances where DR.Manmohan
Singh had chance to blow his own trumpet, but he did not do so. It
appeared as a promising character, but at the end he has to
undergo a serious criticism.

In the foreign policy arena, Singh can also point to a handful of

successes. He presided over a period of U.S.-India relations that can
rightfully be described as transformative. The landmark civilian
nuclear deal with Washington — the centrepiece of the U.S.-India
strategic partnership — effectively ended India’s 35 year “nuclear
apartheid “and provided the country’s nuclear program with much-
needed uranium imports. New Delhi skilfully navigated its bilateral
ties with the United States, Iran, and Israel while deepening relations
with countries throughout the Gulf and Southeast Asia. Despite
serious provocations emanating from both of its longest borders,
Singh avoided military confrontations with China and Pakistan. His
restraint following the devastating 2008 Mumbai terror attacks is
especially praiseworthy. This way he stands as a man with mixed
standards.

*Many characters are involved in this book.

FEW OF THEM

*Sarad powar

*Sonia Gandhi

*Rahul Gandhi

*sanjaya baru

LITERATURE:

www.livemint.com › Opinion 

www.tehelka.com/.../review-sanjay-barus-book-on-manmohan-singh-the-accidental-
prime minister
IMPROVISATION

I personally feel the book should have been pen down more realistic
and the author made me feel that he had some soft corner towards
the author of the book. I was a bit curious about Manmohan sings
personal life, but much of his personal life was not revealed. The
author was in a motion of showing sympathy more than stating the
facts as it. It would have been much interesting if the author would
have pen down more about foreign leaders influence in Manmohan
sings political life. Much internal details of PMO are not exposed, it
would have been much intensive if the way how Manmohan had
lead the officials. IF these improvisations would have been made this
political writing would have been more praiseworthy.