01940    a2200157   4500999001700000020001800017082001900035100002900054245007100083260003900154300001000193520127600203650015201479942001201631952013901643  c25743d25743  a9789353282981  a370.973bVEN-R  aVenkateshwar Rao, Parsa   aRajiv Gandhi to Narendra Modib: broken polity, flickering reforms  bSage Publicationsc2019aNew Delhi  a245p.  aFor the first time, the political story of India from the mid-1980s to the second decade of the present century is reconstructed through the first-person narratives of political leaders, revealing their inmost thoughts in their public utterances, offering weak arguments for their unforgivable lapses, speaking in eloquent terms of their achievements and sometimes showing uncharacteristic humility in what they said in their public speeches, in the Lok Sabha, in their blogs.

From Rajiv Gandhi’s confession about how and why he came into politics, Narendra Modi’s graphic description of his inner agony during the Gujarat riots, Vajpayee’s disarming confession about Nehru, Narasimha Rao’s stoic stance in a letter to his childhood friend, Advani’s confessions in the Lok Sabha about why television was pressed into service during the Kargil War, what emerges is a historical drama of Shakespearean range and an intensity which is more than what brilliant historians and acute political analysts can hope to achieve. The book shows that the first draft of history is found in the words of politicians in parliament and in the government. It captures the immediacy of history-in-the-making, and the palest platitudes of politicians that acquire rare poignancy.  aPolitics and government	vPolitical and social viewsvEducational changevPrime ministersvGandhi, Rajiv, 1944-1991vModī, Narendra, 1950-zIndia  2ddccBK  00104070aNASSDOCbNASSDOCd2019-12-26eOPg328.50i2019-12-20l0o370.973 VEN-Rp50556r2019-12-26 00:00:00v450.00w2019-12-26yBK