A draughtsman of independent India

These days, we find Nehru and Patel blindly pitted one against the other, and the cracks within their relationship manipulated to augment partisan politics

The scope of V P Menon: The Unsung Architect of Modern India is vast. The author, historian Narayani Basu, introduces the reader, first, to a young boy “Kuttan”, and demonstrates how his defining character traits are evident from early on. Through short descriptions, a picture of Vappala Pangunni Menon or VP, as he is called through the book, starts to develop. We are told about his eidetic memory, his Machiavellian tactics that would harden over the years, and love for studying. We see how an incident from his boyhood days in Kolar, shaped his dislike of delegating work to others, and