Vinod Mehta is a rare bird. An editor who is totally un-pompous and utterly unpretentious—that too in this age of in-your-face media arrogance. But precisely because he is so un-tight, he is neither tedious nor boring. He has produced yet another very readable book, not an autobiography, nor a formal political treatise but a string of organised ‘stray thoughts’ on the manners and morals of our republic.
Unlike the hardened editor, Vinod Mehta approaches his task with a carefully nonchalant air of an interested but uninvolved, sufficiently sceptical but not unhealthily cynical, distant but not remote, analyst. Yet he manages to give a rather insightful view of our netas and other licensed pretenders. The last three chapters on Modi, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and the Kejriwal phenomenon make some shrewd observations. The strength of the book is its overwhelming frankness.
And though he did not figure in this year’s Republic Day Padma list, Vinod Mehta in fact deserves a Lifetime Achievement Award for what he has to tell about the state of...
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