Friday, January 2, 2015

2014- The Election that Changed India by Rajdeep Sardesai



Rajdeep, one of the most trustworthy and professional journalist in India (please don't judge him from the vicious twitter attacks!), book on the 2014 election is not really a discourse on the Election but rather an omnibus of the 6 month account and what preceded it.

Why the book is titled "The Election that Changed India" is not clear in the book. The Election results defined India's expectations and the simmering anger against Congress was put to forth. May be the title would have more apt few years from now when actual change (positive side, hopefully!) is visible on the ground.

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Any concerned and informed citizen would be well aware of the storyline and the prime characters, but what makes this book an very engaging read is the personal anecdotes of the author with the various colourful political characters across parties peppered right across the book. The account on what preceded the "Self Destruct" interview of Rahul Gandhi's interview with Times Now; and the author's incident relative to the "Cash for Votes" are some of the best pieces in the book. The section on the use of IT in Modi's Campaign is where the book meanders a lot - probably the absence of politicans in this front and virtually no resistance from Congress in this field lead to a bit of a drag.

The author really tries to just put the facts (incidents in this case) on the table and leave the judgement to the imagination of the readers, but fails to do so on some accounts. The photo-op of Amit Shah releasing the book was an endorsement that the accounts described in the book are true. 

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