Dr Bimal Jalan, our former Governor and Member of Parliament was in town on 12th April to release his new book “India’s Politics : A View from the Backbench” The book which has been published by Penguin India and priced at Rs 300/- is the first book written by Dr Jalan which does not pertain to a topic related to Economics. I was escorting Dr Jalan during the time he spent at Bangalore. The book release was scheduled at 7.30 PM on 12 April 2007 at the Taj Westend Hotel. The list of invitees was quite long and impressive but owing to the first death anniversary of Kannada film star Rajkumar there were traffic jams galore all over the city and to make matters worse it started raining cats and dogs at 7.30 PM sharp, hence attendance was thin. Dr Girish Karnad was to release the book but he could not make it owing to the aforesaid reasons.
Most of the crowd which had assembled was of the ‘page three’ variety who were there just to be snapped by the media and to partake of the free drinks – I daresay. The moderator was one helluva ‘rude dude’ – Mr Suhel Seth who ruffled quite a few feathers with his ascerbic comments. He was brash, threw tantrums at regular intervals, cut down a wannabe media person to size and insulted a waiter for showing him drinks. It was fun watching all this drama unfold on the sidelines. I think Dr Jalan was not very happy by the lack of grasp of the subject by most of the audience (as most of them were dumb).
The book which I had a chance to browse through (we spent nearly three hours in the hotel) is very well written. It describes the complexities of the political system in India and the ills plaguing it. Dr Jalan advocates a code of conduct for multi-party coalitions which are the order of the day now. He has thrown up very pertinent issues which should be a cause of worry for every citizen of this country. He has also prescribed a ten point programme for political reforms that could make the Indian democracy more stable and accountable. The book has already been released in Delhi. The book is definitely worth a read. To know more about the author and his other works please visit http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/AuthorLounge/AuthorDetail.asp?aid=1687
Most of the crowd which had assembled was of the ‘page three’ variety who were there just to be snapped by the media and to partake of the free drinks – I daresay. The moderator was one helluva ‘rude dude’ – Mr Suhel Seth who ruffled quite a few feathers with his ascerbic comments. He was brash, threw tantrums at regular intervals, cut down a wannabe media person to size and insulted a waiter for showing him drinks. It was fun watching all this drama unfold on the sidelines. I think Dr Jalan was not very happy by the lack of grasp of the subject by most of the audience (as most of them were dumb).
The book which I had a chance to browse through (we spent nearly three hours in the hotel) is very well written. It describes the complexities of the political system in India and the ills plaguing it. Dr Jalan advocates a code of conduct for multi-party coalitions which are the order of the day now. He has thrown up very pertinent issues which should be a cause of worry for every citizen of this country. He has also prescribed a ten point programme for political reforms that could make the Indian democracy more stable and accountable. The book has already been released in Delhi. The book is definitely worth a read. To know more about the author and his other works please visit http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/AuthorLounge/AuthorDetail.asp?aid=1687
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