HarperCollins to Publish ‘The Indian President’ by Ambassador K.C. Singh

is proud to announce the publication of

The book that examines the President’s role when authoritarian governments are voted in power.

The Indian President

An Insider’s Account of the Zail Singh Years

by K.C. Singh

A study of the institution of the President of India, this book is based on the author’s term as Deputy Secretary to the seventh president, Giani Zail Singh. In particular, it examines the President’s role when authoritarian governments are voted in power. Things are all the more challenging for a president with a popular prime minister who has an overwhelming majority, as happened in the case of Zail Singh and Rajiv Gandhi.

The book recounts how the guardrails painstakingly created by the first two presidents – Rajendra Prasad and S. Radhakrishnan – were partly resurrected by Zail Singh. Richly anecdotal and incisively observed, The Indian President makes a compelling case for why the Zail Singh years are crucial to understanding both the limits and the possibilities of the country’s highest office.

According to the author Ambassador K.C. Singh, “The President of India is constitutionally mandated to play a stabilising role in a maturing democracy with myriad conflicts of interest and views. Office holders swear to protect and defend the constitution. That oath has been historically inconsistently observed. The book deciphers the past to ensure. as the saying goes, that India is not condemned to repeat it.”

“The Indian President not only looks at the larger question of the power (and the lack of it) constitutionally vested in the office of India’s president, it does so using a specific presidency – that of Giani Zail Singh. Amb. K.C. Singh brings his experience as deputy secretary to President Singh to present an insider’s view of the years in which the former both tested and expanded the boundaries of his office. The Indian President ultimately foregrounds and debates crucial questions about India’s democracy and how it functions especially during tenures of elected governments with massive mandates, not unlike today’s,” says Swati Chopra, Associate Publisher, HarperCollins.

About the author:

K.C. Singh joined the Indian diplomatic service in 1974 and retired in May 2008 as secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs. Besides serving in Cairo, New York and Ankara, he was deputy secretary to the president of India (1983–87), and JS(XP) and spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs (1998–99). He was ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (1999–2003) and to Iran (2003–05). He is now a columnist and strategic analyst for national and international affairs.

Please direct queries to: Aman Arora at aman.arora@harpercollins.co.in