Please find enclosed the AI for Durbar by Tavleen Singh, this is
a Key Non-fiction title slated for November. It’s a revealing account of our
political past that holds crucial lessons for today’s India.
ISBN 13: 9789350094440
Category: Non-fiction
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: Hachette India
Format: Demy
Page extent: 324 pp
Pub date: November 2012
Special Indian Price: Rs 599
Rights: Indian Subcontinent
Selling Points
• A memoir that strips bare how dynastic politics started in India and
how it has affected our political heritage and democracy
• Covers the political events between 1975 and 1992, showing how Indira
Gandhi’s prime ministership passed automatically on to Rajiv Gandhi and how the
family gained importance in Indian politics
• Timely book because it describes how removed our leaders in Delhi have
been from the real needs of the Indian citizens and the paralysis in political
will, policy-making and reforms that has affected India so badly today
• The author is a well-known journalist who has covered Indian politics
since the time of the Emergency in 1975. She has also intimately known Rajiv
and Sonia Gandhi and other politicians like Naveen Patnaik, Vasundhara Raje
Scindia and various prominent businessmen, and so has a unique perspective
• Gives personal glimpses of key political figures
ABOUT THE BOOK:
A revealing account of our political past that holds crucial lessons for
today’s India.
In the summer of 1975 Tavleen Singh, not yet twenty-five, started
working as a junior reporter in the Statesman in New Delhi. Within five weeks,
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency, suspending fundamental
rights and imposing press censorship, and soon reckless policies said to be
authored by the prime minister’s younger son were unleashed on India’s
citizens. As the country suffered under the iron fist of an elected icon and
her chosen heir, Tavleen observed that a small, influential section of Delhi’s
society – people she knew well – remained strangely unaffected by the perilous
state of the nation. Before long, members of this circle were entrenched in key
positions in the Indian government.
In 1984, following Indira Gandhi’s assassination, Rajiv Gandhi became prime
minister, fortified by a huge mandate from a nation desperate for change. But,
belying its hopes, the young leader chose for himself a group of advisors,
friends and acolytes from the drawing rooms of Delhi, as inexperienced as him
and just as unaware of the ground realities of a complex nation. It was the
beginning of a political culture of favouritism and ineptitude that would take
hold at the highest levels of government, stunting India’s ambitions and
frustrating its people well into the next century.
Seasoned reporter and distinguished newspaper columnist Tavleen Singh’s
Durbar is a sharp account of these turbulent years. Describing the Nehruvian
era of her childhood, the Emergency of her youth and the political shifts that
followed, Tavleen writes of the birth and evolution of insurgencies in Punjab
and Kashmir, the blood spilt in assassinations and massacres, of crises
internal and external and the clumsy attempts to set things right. A remarkable
memoir, vivid with the colour of election campaigns and society dinners, low
conspiracies and high corruption, Durbar rewards us with this truth: that if
India is to achieve a better future the past can no longer be ignored or
forgotten.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Tavleen Singh is the author of three books, Kashmir: A Tragedy of
Errors, Lollipop Street: Why India Will Survive Her Politicians and Political
and Incorrect. She spends her time between Delhi and Mumbai and writes four
weekly political columns, in Hindi for Amar Ujala and Jansatta, and in English
for syndication and an exclusive column for the Indian Express.
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