Books

Messiah Modi: A Tale of Great Expectations

One of India's most influential columnists, and one not averse to controversy, Tavleen Singh was among the few mainstream 'Delhi' voices to see the Narendra Modi wave coming in 2014. In Messiah Modi, she details her early support for Modi the candidate, followed by a helpless disenchantment with Modi the PM and the cabinet he headed. She tells the story of his first term as it unfolded. From lynchings to demonetization up to Article 370, she gives an intimate account of her subject. In the 2019 verdict, and her own inability to get it right, she sees that she and her ilk have been swept to the margins of Ind......
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India's Broken Tryst

It was only after I became an adult that I began to ask questions about that famous "tryst". Why was the speech made in English? Was Nehru just a romantic or a real leader? And did he not know when he talked of the world being asleep at midnight that it was not midnight everywhere?' Even sixty-seven years after it became a modern nation state, democratic India has been unable to meet the most basic needs of its people. A dangerous mix of colonialism, socialism and statism has brought about this situation. India's people, both rich and poor, have been at the mercy of a political class whose motiv......
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Durbar: An up-close 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 a small, influential section of Delhi's society - people she knew well - remain strangely unaffected by the perilous state of the nati......
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Lollipop Street: Why India Will Survive Its Politicians

The intriguing title of the book derives from a crowded stretch of the highway from Mumbai’s airport into the city where a series of serve as advertising billboards; a wasted aesthetic gesture-and an expensive one-to make in an expanse of slum. Our politicians have a gift for the unless gesture. And these lollipops serve as a metaphor for many others that have been offered to gullible voters since independence. Thus politicians have come and gone offering promises of drinking water, school, health facilities, jobs and numerous other things to justify their election to power. But all they have left behind a......
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Political and Incorrect: The Real India Warts and All

The Real India, Warts and All is history as first draft, written not in hindsight but as events unfolded against the backdrop of a nation’s transformation. It captures the country’s mood and its politics over these two decades, and highlights the things that don’t change. Such as politicians and bureaucrats, and their self-serving ways. There is, besides, her take on subjects as different as freedom runs by Gucci Gandhians, Durbar intrigues at the centre of power and the religious divide in Gujarat. It is a record too of missed opportunities and misplaced priorities, so that some of the old eternals-he......
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Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors

Talveen Singh is a noted political columnist and television personality. As a correspondent she has covered political events in the subcontinent and troubled states like Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir for various newspapers and magazines including the Telegraph, Sunday, India Today and the Sunday Times, London. She is a recipient of the Sanskriti award for journalism in 1985 and the Chameli Devi award for best journalist in 1987. Tavleen Singh is the author of Kashmir; A Tragedy of Errors. also published by Penguin Books. She lives in Delhi with her son. ‘In the many years I have spent as a political j......
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