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My Friend Sancho

My first book, My Friend Sancho, was published in May 2009, and went on to become the biggest selling debut novel released that year in India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and had earlier been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.


If you're interested, do join the Facebook group for My Friend Sancho


Click here for more about my publisher, Hachette India.


My posts on India Uncut about My Friend Sancho can be found here.


Bastiat Prize 2007 Winner

Recent entries

I’m All In: Confessions of a Poker Obsessive

This personal essay by me appears in the winter edition of Forbes Life India. I feel the ground sway…

‘No Touching, Only Seeing, Okay?’

I’m amazed that India hasn’t yet woken up to the fact that Himesh Reshammiya is the new Govinda. I…

Vishwa Bandhu Gupta and Cloud Computing

If you thought Ponytail’s speech the other day was funny, wait till you see this: Vishwa Bandhu Gupta, former…

The Sadness of Dogs

The New York Times reports: A video of a dog apparently mourning the death of his owner at a…

‘That is Not a Lump, Mr Beck, It is a Blessing’

Huffington Post reports: Glenn Beck called Hurricane Irene a “blessing” on his Friday radio show, saying it would teach…

27 December, 2007

Dear Abheek Barman

Dear Abheek Barman

In an editorial article in the Times of India today, justifying Indira Gandhi’s centralization of power in the 1960s, you ask: “How would Indian politics - indeed, the Indian nation - look like today, if say, Morarjibhai or Nijalingappa had become prime ministers in the late-1960s?”

Allow me present to you a list of some of Indira’s achievements. 1969: Nationalization of banks. 1976: Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. 1976: Urban Land Ceiling Act. 1976 and 1982: amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act. 1975: The Emergency. And so on.

Mr Barman, surely you’re aware of the massive cost that these measures inflicted on our poor country. If so, let me ask you just one question: How on earth could anyone have been worse?

Regards

Amit Varma

* * *

PS: The Nehru-Gandhi Legacy of Shame.

Posted by Amit Varma in Economics | Letters | Politics | WTF

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