The Paradoxical Prime Minister by Shashi Tharoor

The Paradoxical Prime Minister by Shashi Tharoor
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Shashi Tharoor has put his whole heart behind the book. It is an election campaign for his Congress Party from him.

He has tried his level best to punch a hole in everything that the Modi government has tried to do and the Modi government has given him enough material to puncture them.

As one reads the book one gets the feeling that Mr. Tharoor expects Modi to lose the 2019 elections spectacularly. He would definitely have been surprised at the election results where his party was once again decimated and the people of India voted Mr. Modi back to power with even more majority.

In his eagerness to pull Modi down he has used some numbers without looking at the history. One glaring errors is India's rating in terms of freedom of media. He says that Indias ranking dropped precipitously to 140. If he looked up the site that he quotes he would see that India was ranked 140 even during the UPA reign.

While Modi has not crowned himself in glory. His silence in not pulling up the "cow vigilantes" and other atrocities in the name of religion, attempts to thrust Hindi on the South Indians not only switch off the halo around him, but also show how biased his thinking is.

At the same time like everyone Mr. Tharoor spews enough calumny against demonetization and implementation of GST. Demonetization was a daring move and GST was a good move. Yes demonetization was initiated early. The government should have pushed for ePayments and only after sufficient adoption of ePayment should the government have pushed for demonetization. And the second mistake was to print as much currency as was in circulation before the demonetization. The corruption in the banks was unanticipated by the government. This was unprecedented corruption of huge proportions.

Overall not a very great read except for those who are hardcore anti-Modi. If you are anti-Modi then do read the book, you will enjoy. If you are Modi bhakth then do not read the book as you may end up tearing it up or breaking your ebook reader. If you are like me who is neither then stay away from the book, you will get nothing. :-)

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