Review: Rogue Elephant: Harnessing the power of India’s unruly democracy by Simon Denyer

Simon Denyer takes a hard look at India’s soft underbelly. Pradyot Lal feels it has merit: Tehelka

Apart from writing of the “sycophantic, unmeritocratic air” of the Congress, Denyer has also discussed at length the man who has offered himself as India’s saviour: Narendra Modi. Quoting extensively from an interview that he had with Modi in 2012 and updating it with useful nuggets along the way, Denyer explodes some of the myths about Modi’s claims of having provided good economics and good governance and his references to the Gujarat riots are painstaking and elaborate. How the “saviour” has sought to project himself as a prime minister in spite of having presided over among the most dastardly pogroms in Indian history has been neatly brought out. The elaborate personality projection, the role of the RSS and the social media (and of the corporate houses) is among the highlights of the book. Modi’s “assault on secularism and the rights of minorities” and his “autocratic style” that threatens the very essence of what makes India great has not been missed.