An officer and a gentleman

Thomas Jefferson once said, "Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom." In the case of Bhaskar Ghose's Doordarshan Days, it is the book itself.

While much is now being said about the open skies policy and the emancipation of the electronic media, very few people know that Bhaskar Ghose was instrumental in unlocking it all.

His were the keys that gave wing to the airwaves. His delightful new book is a journey of Indian television from its primitive pre-beta days to its glorious Prannoy Roy present.

Of late, every bureaucrat has woken up in the morning and discovered that aside from South Block in his system, he has a book in his belly. Most of these tiresome tales are dreary and chimpanzee-like, what with their chest thumping.

Not Doordarshan Days. It is a racy read that plots the genesis of change that was attempted by Rajiv Gandhi, who appointed Ghose and ejected him suddenly from near the Teesta to close to the transmitter.

The book begins at the commissioner's bungalow in Jalpaiguri and ends at PA Sangma's room in Shastri Bhavan.

It plots the journey of the electronic media from its one-man newsroom down to the role that politicians attempted to play in the selection of newsreaders.

It catalogues the remarkable serials that all of us were weaned on as well as races the trials and tribulations that face an honest man within the confines of the Indian political system.

It was tough. Bhaskar Ghose went through four information and broadcasting ministers. He went through much more in trying to convince reputed filmmakers to lend their gift to Doordarshan.

While most books are nothing but an ode to the writer's capabilities, Ghose is remarkably candid with his failures: the inability to accept bribes, for instance. Or the vitality of inexperience when it came to toeing the political line, so to speak.

The book is vintage Bhaskar Ghose: upright always, gentle right through. Yet, witty and emotionally candid.

It is also an up personal and close look at some names that we all knew yet knew very little about: the towering stature of the diminutive Gopi Arora, the vision that was Rajiv Gandhi and how that was sacrificed at the altar of office, the chameleon like change in the oh-so-polished KP Singh Deo.

The book is part history and part histrionics that force you to laugh as Ghose does in almost every chapter at himself and the system that he so assiduously tried to stand up to.

Ghose is both the protagonist and the storyteller of this remarkable read. The book, at one level, is about the triumph of unadulterated enthusiasm. At another plane, it is about the abject frustration faced by those who attempt to wag the dog.

He sums it up in Page 209 when says, "I was leaving something that had become foreign to me""a world where hypocrisy, deceit and dissembling were the order of the day, and where all that mattered was advancement, personal and political."

Bhaskar Ghose left Doordarshan soon after. In Doordarshan Days, he left us with the legacy of Indian television. Soon after, he ceased to be an Officer. To this day, he remains a gentleman. DOORDARSHAN DAYS

Bhaskar Ghose
Penguin Viking
Price: Rs 395; Pages: 238

DEEPENING DEMOCRACY
Madhu Kishwar
Rs 595, 332 PAGES OUP In this book, Madhu Kishwar argues against the demonisation of globalisation, before addressing what may be cast as a grand opinion tussle between genetic supremacism and general egalitarianism.

She takes a social rather than economic perspective. So she makes a plea for recruitment diversity in India, instead of examining possible failures of the price-signal mechanism in the job market (and the resultant sub-optimal allocation of resources) on account of deeply-etched rigidities.

Chapter 13 takes a scholarly look at familiar fissures between the tendencies of majority control and minority veto. The way this essay negotiates varying forms of nationalism, in particular, is well-intentioned""seen even in the few eyebrow-raisers.

She confuses a bride for a mother, for instance. She also proposes a revised plebiscite as an ostensible solution to the Kashmir crisis.

- Aresh Shirali