India: Vinod Mehta on Sanjaya Baru’s The Accidental Prime Minister

Sanjaya Baru’s book, or “job application” as it is popularly being called, isn’t the first time he has applied for a job. A month or so before Congress came to power in the shock 2004 elections, Dr Baru wrote a strange article in The Indian Express eulogising Atal Behari Vajpayee and comparing him favourably to Nehru. Ironically, the job he eventually got was not in Vajpayee’s PMO but in the office of a Congress prime minister. From this position, between the years of 2004 and 2008 he ruthlessly embarked to implement his single-point agenda: create friction between Manmohan and Sonia.