Late Book Review: The Paradoxical Prime Minister
It has been some time since I could pen to paper. But I have resolved to write something today. My writer friends tell me that it is, in fact, the discipline to write regularly everyday that makes or breaks a good writer.
While YouTube is filling up with late reviews of tech products of movies on OTT platforms, one area where late reviews are relatively less prevalent is the domain of book reviews. While some books are really fun to read the very weekend they are launched, others, much like wine, are better when some time has flown past (some others, I should confess, are much like stale fruit). I firmly believe that late reviews for books should be a thing. And this is my first attempt at it.
Very recently, I stumbled upon the Kindle unlimited service (which was on sale during Diwali). I quickly subscribed to it and started browsing through the impressive catalogue of books and comics (yes, comics!). On the politics sections, I stumbled upon Sashi Tharoor’s “The Paradoxical Prime Minister” and decided to read over the week. This is in part (in addition to the commencement of offline classes) the reason why I have not been able to put pen to paper during the last week. In this blog post, I shall attempt a late review of the book.
Before we begin, let me reveal my own subjective position here. When I was student of public policy (the subject I chose as my minor during my PhD days), one of my favorite professors, Dr. Rajesh Bhattacharya told us, “It is the duty of every public intellectual to serve as the ever-present opposition”. And for some reason, this stayed with me. Given that the BJP has been the ruling party for most of my life, I have been actively critiquing their follies. This, by no means, makes me a Congress (or any other party) supporter. If there is a change in power, I will definitely take up my intellectual responsibility seriously and critique whichever government is formed.
Since that part is out of my way, let’s get straight to the point.
I did enjoy turning pages on this book. On the pros side, the book was very well researched and presented many arguments against the prime minister. It does a quick job of providing the reader a quick recap of the pitfalls of the then (and now) government at the eve of elections. Having the benefit of hind sight, I think Mr. Tharoor was really hopeful that his own party would displace the BJP back in 2019 (which we know did not come to pass). This is, at least in large part, the issue that I have with the book.
The book really tries to paint the BJP in bad light. When reading the book, Tharoor does not come out as someone who has a balanced view on the matter. Clearly, he has vested interests, and may not want to ‘praise’ the prime minister. He wants to, in some way, tow the party line. It does need to be emphasised that in many ways, it was (and is) the weakness of the opposition that has served the ruling party power on a platter. While there is no denying the fact that the BJP has has poor track record as far as governance is concerned and has allowed idiots to voice out complete gibberish on prime time television, it needs to be acknowledged that there were some highlights. The Ujjwala Scheme and the Clean India initiative are but some highlights. The fact that these items did not gain sufficient attention, in my view, showcases that the paradoxical prime minister does exactly what the BJP has been doing all along. It tries to polarize, just in the opposite direction.
