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Furrows in a Field

Release date: November 17, 2021
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Sugata Srinivasaraju is a bilingual journalist, author and columnist. He has editorially led behe... Read More

Product Description

Sugata Srinivasaraju is a bilingual journalist, author and columnist. He has editorially led behemoth regional-language print, television and digital news organizations in the last decade. For a decade and a half prior to that he was in prominent roles in English-language newsrooms across India. He has been a Chevening Scholar in the UK, and an ILI Fellow of the Aspen Institute in the USA.

Sugata's books include Keeping Faith with the Mother Tongue: The Anxieties of a Local Culture (2008), Pickles from Home: The Worlds of a Bilingual (2012), and in Kannada, Kittale, Nerale, Perale: Avasarakke Yetukida Maatu Baraha (2016).

H.D. Deve Gowda has been in public life for nearly seven decades. He started at the very bottom, as a member of the Holenarasipur Taluk Development Board and reached the very top as India's eleventh prime minister, in 1996. In between, he was an independent legislator, spent long years as leader of Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, had been an effective irrigation and public works minister, and finally, chief minister in 1994 after many missed opportunities. Even twenty-five years after he stepped down as prime minister, he has remained relevant in Indian politics. Despite this long, arduous yet fascinating journey that began in a poor peasant household in the plains of Hassan, there has been no comprehensive assessment of his life and work. This biography endeavours to professionally fill the gap.

The book's narrative is instructed by Gowda's rich parliamentary record, archival material and interviews conducted with people associated with him at various stages of his life. The layered narrative is further nuanced by Gowda's own voice, gargantuan memory, a close reading of the time when he made history and the currents of destiny that preceded it. Although Gowda has spent most of his years in Karnataka and has become a symbol of the federal idea, this book argues that the diverse national imagination and sincerity that he deployed as prime minister had magically lit up different corners of India.

When Gowda became prime minister, many people intuitively registered that our democracy had not been rigged or captured by elites and dynasts, and there was indeed space in our system to rise for a self-made person with no godfathers. It generated hope and continues to do so.

This meticulous and detailed account of H.D. Deve Gowda's very full life that spans nearly nine decades, provides a rich treasury of insights into the politics of India since Independence. Sugata Srinivasaraju has produced a powerful and resonant book. His writing is vigorous and expressive. This is a work of scholarly exactitude, critical sympathy and warm humanityA vivid and textured biography showing how Deve Gowda's agrarian roots and regional moorings shaped his brief stint at the apex of national power. Srinivasaraju illuminates a long life of struggle, with key insights into the complexities of caste, class and religion in Karnataka, and the contributions of the south to all-India politics. Furrows in a Field uncovers the green shoots of a generous federal alternative to the bigotry of religious majoritarianism and the dead end of secular uniformityH.D. Deve Gowda's short tenure as prime minister was not inconsequential. As chief minister of, and as a minister in, Karnataka, he made several contributions that have endured. As a public figure living for and breathing politics for almost six decades, he has carved out and occupied a distinctive niche. His commitment to the cause of farmers, particularly, has been legendary. It is only fitting that this remarkable man has at last found a biographer who does full justice to his life story. Through this extensively researched work, Sugata Srinivasaraju has made a major contribution to contemporary Indian historyH.D. Deve Gowda is one of the tallest leaders of India. I came in contact with him when there was extreme turmoil in Jammu and Kashmir, and he was prime minister. He had the courage and dedication to save the situation from going from bad to worse. He conducted fair elections, through which I came to government . . . Gowda is a committed secularist and stands by the ideals and principles on which our founding fathers based this countryThis fascinating biography of former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda demonstrates that outsiders could rise to power in twentieth-century India's democracy-and not by default, but because kisan politics was still meaningful then. This book does not only tell the life story of the most improbable prime minister of India, it also narrates the trajectory of the country over several key decades-with special references to Karnataka, a state whose rural countryside, too often obliterated by the shine of Bangalore, is apprehended here through one of its sonsThis richly illustrated biography captures the triumph of an unpretentious prime minister who had more grassroots experience than many of our more celebrated prime ministers. It is unfortunate that he did not survive long in the chair. Indian democracy would have been reassured and deepened if he had

Product Details

Title: Furrows in a Field
SKU: BK0454933
EAN: 9780670093434
Language: English
Binding: Hardcover
Release date: November 17, 2021

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