Shashi Tharoor, the blue-eyed poster boy of Indian media has once again displayed his scholarly depth and breadth of experience through this book. The book is the last leg of his trilogy of which the first two were The great Indian Novel and India: from midnight to millennium.
Tharoor has touched the issues of contemporary social, political, economic, cultural and international relevance to India. The book is Tharoor's commentary on 100 issues from as varied a range as Freedom of Expression to Modinomics to the discussion on the presidential form of politics in India.
Typical to Tharoor's writing, each of these commentaries is filled with anecdotes or scholarly quotes or insightful observations which Tharoor brings out of his hat with his excellent analogical skills.
An avid Tharoor follower may find some lack of freshness or novelty because essentially these 100 topics are a compilation of various talks, essays, or editorials written by Tharoor in last 10 years. But his lucid and commanding language skills make it a light read.
It gives you enough material, anecdotes, and quotes which one can use for months to entertain colleagues or people around.
To dig deeper, Tharoor has made judicious use of facts and figure. His has used a personalized manner of writing wherein he describes incidents or issues by connecting them with his own administrative, political and social experiences. So in a way it could also be a good source of content for his autobiography.
The book is divided into eight sections. The first two sections revolve around Modi. The writing shows his mixed feelings towards Modi. He seems to buy his talks but wish to see this matching his actions. In this context, He has given some concrete suggestions on governor's appointment and criticized Modi's foreign policy for its U-turns.
He takes a leaf from history and discuss the issue of the War Memorial and legacy of Gandhi to list a few. In a typical Tharoor style, he says "Gandhism without moral authority is like Marxism without a proletariat." He invokes Swami Vivekanand's thought of "Atmano Mokshartham Jagad Hitay Cha" and Tagore's poem "Where mind if without fear and head is held high".
Further, he discussed Idea of India, where he discussed the relevance of democracy to India, paradoxes of India and many other relevant issues where he frequently quotes political scholars from John Locke to Hegel.
His breadth of knowledge is evident from his frequent quoting of various scholars ranging from Philip Corsby to W.B. Yeats to Rudyard Kipling (Whose he is not a fan) and many others. Describing Indian Culture, He termed India as a Thali where various sub-cultures are placed in different bowls, not mixing with each other but together they all make a very sumptuous meal.
He discussed issues of excellence and education in India. He describes 4 E's i.e. equity, expansion, excellence and employability in our education system. In the process, he touched on the tahzib of Stephans.
The list and range of topics covered in the book are very long and diverse. Every chapter provides some insights or case studies which overall makes it interesting and exciting read. Though at some places, he turns preachy but in the overall scheme of things it could be ignored. Overall, the book is bulky but it need not be read punctuation to punctuation and some familiar topics could be simply skimmed through.
A better title for the book could have been "Shashi Tharoor unplugged" as it gives us a window into Tharoor mind and tells us what he thinks of contemporary India. I wish I could have separately written all the poems, quotes, and observation which Tharoor has made using this book.
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