Book: The Great Unravelling: India after 2014
Author: Sanjay Jha
Publisher: Context
Price: Rs 599
The last time I met Sanjay Jha in person was when he had invited me to Mumbai to discuss my book on the Bharatiya Janata Party by a platform called AICC professionals that pulled off a very lively event in the months preceding the 2019 national election. The last time I shared television space with him was after he was suspended by the Congress for ‘anti-party activities and breach of discipline’ in July 2020. (He had written a critical article on the state of affairs in the party.)
Jha is one of the individuals who became known for being part of impossible television debates where he kept saying his piece in the face of ridicule and attack. At one point in the book, he writes: “we were like headless chickens, running from one TV debate to the other.” Anyone who reads this book must conclude that Jha is not like former Congress members who are secretly hoping to be recruited by the BJP. He is as distressed by communalism in the Narendra Modi age as he is frustrated by the failure of the Congress to offer a counter-narrative. He feels strongly about many things and it shows in the book.
This book is a racy account of the world that Jha encountered or observed, from the time he started to support the Congress to being recruited as a spokesperson for the party till his exit last year. It is full of anecdotes and starts with a Prologue of him arriving in Delhi — a city he does not like — to do his duty as spokesperson of the party on the day the results of the 2019 polls were to be declared. He wakes up at 4.30 am in a hotel full of dread, putting on a brave face for what was to be a devastating day.
The book is divided into six chapters that cover most of the phenomena that define politics and public life today. Chapter one, “Hindutva”, is more a chronicle of the hate than an analysis of the historic origins of the political forces that dominate nationally and the book does not pretend to be anything more than what it is: an easy read on contemporary times. Chapter two — on Narendra Modi — follows events as the author would have witnessed them and tells the story with anecdotes interspersed with the unfolding drama. Chapters on institutions “unraveling”, as the book’s title suggests, and the economy follow and they are loaded with information. Indeed, if there is a complaint about this book, it could be that it packs in too much in its pages.
The Great Unravelling: India after 2014 by Sanjay Jha, Context, Rs 599 Amazon
The best chapter, however, is on the media. It was Jha’s job to interact with TV channels and follow media trends; the benefit of the lived experience shows in the chapter titled “Media: The Republic of Hate”. It starts with a detailed description of the TV anchor, Arnab Goswami, and the author describes the personal/professional relationship that was built up. Jha says that at one stage he was “spending as much time with Arnab Goswami in his studio as with my wife”. Among other things, the chapter also analyses the story of how the anchor fine-tuned his aggressive style and began to dominate the ratings while working in Times Now. Eventually, the Sanjay Jha-Arnab Goswami ‘marriage’ would end over words exchanged in a live debate: read the book to find out why the controversial anchor felt offended.
The last chapter on the Congress begins with Jha learning that Rahul Gandhi would be giving an interview to Arnab Goswami and being worried about it. The author did not know why this anchor was chosen for this sought after interview in the months preceding the 2014 elections. There is a very interesting dissection of what happened to Rahul Gandhi, how he was unprepared for what followed, and details about pauses not working on TV. The minute he heard Arnab Goswami being polite to Rahul Gandhi, the author writes that he knew trouble would follow. The interview would decimate Rahul Gandhi and still haunts him.
The rest of the chapter describes the state of affairs in the Congress. No one can argue that the organization is in bad shape, the leadership question has been kept hanging, the party is a bureaucratic maze that gets nothing done on the ground, there is ideological confusion and more. Again, there are many anecdotes to illustrate the points the book is making. After the 2014 verdict, Jha writes, Congress workers were so demoralized that “they somnambulated their way in and out of thinly attended meetings”. It’s a devastating insider’s account of the party that should be doing so much more.
