Painstakingly researched, Star-crossed Indian 1966-2005, is a perceptional and opinionated look back at the political events of about forty years. Centred round the unpleasant Janata experience of 1977-79, it focuses penetratingly on the role of leaders who wrecked the first non-Congress Government at the Centre within twenty-eight months of its coming into being. Similar insight attends the repetition of the tragedy a decade later when the Vishwanath Pratap Singh Government 1989-90-the second attempt to form and run a non-Congress Government at the Centre-collapsed. The author’s thrust is that after Nehru, the leadership has consistently let down the country, by their inability to measure up to the situation. The 1975 ‘emergency’ and efforts to establish dynastic succession in a republican country; the failure of leadership repeatedly to live up to the expectations of the people, the malaise of political corruption are all taken in the author’s experienced stride. The book also sheds analytical light on caste riots in large parts of north Indian when VP Singh recklessly landed the country in a civil war situation to save his rickety regime. There is also focus on the 1992 demolition of the Babri masjid, the hateful campaign by outfits like the Vishwas Hindu Parishad for erecting an abode for Rama and the Godhra outrage, all scanned by an uncluttered mind. At another level, the volume bestows attention on foreign policy since Nehru’s time, defence strategy including nuclear non-proliferation and the politics of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the failure of leaders like Morarji Desia and Vishwanath Pratap Singh to run an on-Congress government at the Centre, and India Pakistan military conflicts from the 1965 infiltration of insurgents. The 1971 Bangladesh war and the Kargil back-stabbing are analysed in the light of low intensity conflict in Jammu and Kashmir
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