<b>Mihir S Sharma:</b> Second drafts of gossip

Very, very occasionally, it might be worthwhile to think about the world of books using the cynical toolbox of an economist. Yes, I know, introducing sordid issues like money and incentives into the purity that is publishing is almost blasphemous. Still, at least the search for motive, common to the legal and the economics profession, can at least sound suitably snobby, with a suitably literary phrase that dates back to Marcus Tullius Cicero: Cui bono? Who benefits?

You see, I am tempted by these distressingly material considerations, unworthy of the rarefied air of a books column, because it turns out that the books market in the past few months has been dominated by two books. Sanjaya Baru's The Accidental Prime Minister sold over 80,000 copies; Natwar Singh's One Life is not Enough sold over 50,000. (Unsurprisingly, Mr Singh is said to be contemplating a second book; an SMS joke doing the rounds suggests it will be titled One Cheque is not Enough.)

Now, it may be the case that these books were written and published because the authors thought they added vastly to the sum of knowledge about the world. Believing this is a peculiarity of authors as a class, a delusion that is one of that class' few endearing qualities. Certainly, Dr Baru has indicated to Sankarshan Thakur in The Telegraph that he has "been told by people who matter that my book is now standard reading for knowledge in how Delhi works." I'm sure that Dr Baru knows many more "people who matter" than most of us, so I will not question his statement - though I am puzzled why "people who matter" need knowledge of how Delhi works, since my experience suggests that you only begin to "matter" once you already know.

This points to the larger benefit claimed for these books by their writers, their agents, and their publishers. They are, we are told, a first draft of history. They are, as one is quoted as saying, "genuinely revealing and useful". Well, this depends. They are coloured, first of all, by being written by the kind of people who generally write such books. Without prejudice to the two individuals I have already mentioned, in general those who write tell-all books have a whole storehouse of axes that they have been waiting to grind. Second, books that are supposedly written by a trusted subordinate are, as T C A Srinivasa Raghavan perceptively pointed out on these pages, more likely than not to be a one-dimensional, severely limited view of the truth: "Whatever a subordinate may think of his closeness to the supreme boss, in reality the distance remains very great."

Put these together, and I am forced to an unpalatable conclusion. These books are not a first draft of history; they are, at best, a second draft of gossip. Giving them a more rarefied air than that would require a complete shut-down of one's logical faculties. As for whether they should be taken seriously even by historians a hundred years from now - well, that depends on the motives, right? Cui bono, remember.

The more immediate question is not about History - an appeal to which Mr Singh and Dr Baru share with the latter's mentor, Manmohan Singh. The more immediate question is about how we should view the news coverage of these books. In the United States, where slightly seedy and traitorous tell-all books are a feature of the political landscape on both left and right, it has long been understood that they are "written for the headlines". Cui bono: when publicity costs money, why not use those schmucks in the news media as your willing conduits to the book-buying public? The problem, of course, is that these books are like the summer blockbuster with the terrifically entertaining trailer: you have to pay Rs 500 to discover that you had already gotten all the good bits, free.

It is a feature of our newspapers, for various reasons, that if someone makes an Allegation, we determine if we will be sued for publishing it - and, if not, we happily publish it. Getting to the truth of it is, frankly, far less important. If someone says it, it is news - so why do any more work?

Thus, the final chain in our link of incentives: the news media. We get a cool story, without doing any work. The author gets to grind his axes, and call it History and Public Service. The publishers get a bestseller, without having to spend much on publicity.

The reason I write about this today is because I was at a book launch recently, of a book edited by Bimal Jalan and Pulapre Balakrishnan on coalition politics. (Not the most forward-looking subject. Generals, they say, are always preparing to fight the last war, not the next one. Clearly, people are writing for the last government, not this one.) At the launch was one Vinod Rai, a former government auditor; the next day, the Times of India reported, without further investigation, what he had told them about "pressure" put on him by the last government.

Mr Rai's book, Not Just an Accountant, is due to be released soon. (The title is accurate: he was not just an auditor but also a comptroller, and also apparently a general, presumably one fighting the last war.) I look forward to more saturation coverage.

More importantly, so do his publishers.

mihir.sharma@bsmail.in