A most misunderstood PM

Book review of Chandra Shekhar and the Six Months that Saved India

This much is true: That the prime ministership of Chandra Shekhar has never really got the attention it deserves. Though leaders like Sharad Pawar, PV Narasimha Rao, Pranab Mukherjee and R Venkataraman, and a clutch of bureaucrats, have described their experiences with India’s eighth prime minister, the seventh to hail from UP and the first to sport a beard (acquired by Chandra Shekhar quite by accident: he went to Jaipur on a student trip, was unable to find a barber and decided to keep the chinful of bristles, the author notes), there are few systematic accounts of the chaotic political