Seventy years after Nehru's beautiful midnight speech - 'Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny...' - in Indian cities and villages millions survive on less than the bare minimum. Children are not in classrooms, women have nowhere safe to relieve themselves, and jobless men lie around in a daze. In cities, where initiative should flourish, a merciless state looms large over every common endeavour. The civilization that was India, that grand culture, has not found utterance again. Long years after freedom from the British, why do we remain suppressed? In India's Broken Tryst, bestselling author and popular political columnist Tavleen Singh chronicles the damage done. Here is the story of Surekha, who lives on the pavements of Mumbai's landmark Marine Drive with memories of crushing hunger. Of Ali, the idli seller who is forced out of his honest livelihood by cops and corporators. Of Sahib and Sardar, little boys torn from their mother on the criminal charge of begging. Of those nameless servants who do not have access to toilets even as they service the luxury apartments where Singh lives. From the very poor to the very rich, Tavleen Singh catalogues in bold, eviscerating detail the systematic unmaking of our sense of destiny. Can an Indian dream stretch beyond food and water, literacy, toilets, and in some cases just a document of identification? If not, what destiny?
Tavleen Singh began writing her weekly column in The Indian Express in 1987. It was history as First draft, written not in hindsight but as events unfolded. The column captured the country's mood every week. Debating the latest development with a reporter's eye and a columnist's insistence, Singh called out various political dispensations on their ill-conceived schemes and often too their scheming. Between 1987 and 2007, much as India changed, it also remained the same. The persistence of malnutrition, the systemic slackness in primary education, unsafe water and insufficient health care - Singh stayed with these matters even as they went out of fashion when liberalized, urbanizing India made rapid strides. In Political and Incorrect, Tavleen Singh brings the politician and the bureaucrat to the page with the same mix of wise, wry scrutiny as the terrible options they foist on India's poorest people. The shambles of infrastructure are described with the same vigour as a raucous political rally. Through Singh's clear lens, the aloof, arrogant leader is as familiar as the man next door, and the issues at stake accessible and clear. This expansive compendium captures neatly twenty years of India as they unfolded.
One of India's most influential columnists, and one not averse to controversy, Tavleen Singh was among the few mainstream 'Delhi' voices to see the Narendra Modi wave coming in 2014. In Messiah Modi, she details her early support for Modi the candidate, followed by a helpless disenchantment with Modi the PM and the cabinet he headed. She tells the story of his first term as it unfolded. From lynchings to demonetization up to Article 370, she gives an intimate account of her subject. In the 2019 verdict, and her own inability to get it right, she sees that she and her ilk have been swept to the margins of India; the masses of India speak in one voice, and that voice chants 'Modi'. And yet, there is a marked difference between her enthusiasm of 2014 and her acceptance of 2019 as she examines whether Modi delivered on the promises he made in his first term. Is he the messiah so many hoped he would be? This is Tavleen Singh's frank and forthright reckoning of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Tavleen Singh’s acclaimed and bestselling memoir begins in the summer of 1975 when, not yet twenty-five, she started working as a junior reporter in the Statesman in New Delhi. Within five weeks, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency, and soon reckless policies said to be authored by her younger son were unleashed on India’s citizens. In 1984, following Indira Gandhi’s assassination, Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister, fortified by a huge mandate from a nation desperate for change. But, belying its hopes, the young leader chose for himself a group of advisors, friends and acolytes just as unaware as him of the ground realities of a complex nation. It was the beginning of a political culture of favouritism and ineptitude that would take hold at the highest levels of government, stunting India’s ambitions and frustrating its people for years to come. A sharp account of these turbulent years, Durbar describes the Nehruvian era of Singh’s childhood, the Emergency of her youth and the political shifts that followed, bringing with them insurgencies, massacres, and crises internal and external. This remarkable memoir, vivid with the colour of election campaigns and society dinners, low conspiracies and high corruption, reminds us of this truth: that if India is to achieve a better future, the past cannot be ignored or forgotten.
6 June 1984: The Indian Army storms the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Called Operation Bluestar, the historic and unprecedented event ended the growing spectre of terrorism perpetrated by the extremist Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers once and for all. But it left in its wake unsolved political questions that continued to threaten Punjab's stability for years to come. How, in a brief span of three years, did India's dynamic frontier state become a national problem? Who was to blame: the central government for allowing the crisis to drift despite warnings, or the long-drawn-out Akali agitation, or the notorious gang of militants who transformed a holy shrine into a sanctuary for terrorists? First published two months after Operation Bluestar, The Punjab Story pieces together the complex Punjab jigsaw through the eyes of some of India's most eminent public figures and journalists. Writing with the passion and conviction of those who were involved with the drama, they present a wide-ranging perspective on the past, present and future of the Punjab tangle; and the truth of many of their'conclusions having been borne out by time.
6 June 1984: The Indian Army storms the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Called Operation Bluestar, the historic and unprecedented event ended the growing spectre of terrorism perpetrated by the extremist Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers once and for all. But it left in its wake unsolved political questions that continued to threaten Punjab's stability for years to come. How, in a brief span of three years, did India's dynamic frontier state become a national problem? Who was to blame: the central government for allowing the crisis to drift despite warnings, or the long-drawn-out Akali agitation, or the notorious gang of militants who transformed a holy shrine into a sanctuary for terrorists? First published two months after Operation Bluestar, The Punjab Story pieces together the complex Punjab jigsaw through the eyes of some of India's most eminent public figures and journalists. Writing with the passion and conviction of those who were involved with the drama, they present a wide-ranging perspective on the past, present and future of the Punjab tangle; and the truth of many of their'conclusions having been borne out by time.
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