By

Chowdhury, Neerja

Serial

15508

Publisher

Aleph Book Company

Description

xxviii, 578 pages

ISBN / ISSN No.

9789390652457

Subject

1. Prime ministers of India; 2. Politics and government; 3. Prime minister's decision.

Summay

India’s prime ministers have taken decisions that changed the course of the country’s history. This book by Neerja Chowdhury, an awardwinning journalist and political commentator, goes beyond the news headlines to provide an eyeopening account of how some of the most important political decisions in independent India were taken. These are as follows: the strategy that Indira Gandhi devised to return to power in 1980, after her humiliating defeat post the Emergency in 1977; the errors of judgment that led Rajiv Gandhi to undo the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Shah Bano case; V. P. Singh’s implementation of the Mandal Commission Report to save his government which forever changed the face of contemporary politics; P. V. Narasimha Rao’s masterful indecision that resulted in the demolition of the Babri Masjid; the rapidly changing political scenarios that turned the avowed pacifist Atal Bihari Vajpayee into a nuclear hawk who greenlighted the testing of nuclear devices; and the mild and professorial Manmohan Singh, widely regarded as one of the country’s weakest prime ministers, who defied interest groups and foes within the political establishment to seal a historic nuclear deal with the United States—and upgraded the bilateral relationship to a new level.

Accession No.

15508

Status

Available

Category

Politics and Government