The Crown Prince, the Gladiator and the Hope

The political game in India has fundamentally changed – and in ways that are hard to pin down. The grand old party has collapsed, the crown prince has been vanquished. A right-wing government rode to power on the back of the unprecedented cult its leader has created around himself. The challenger, temporarily winded, has not lost hope. Senior journalist – and now political activist – Ashutosh has had a rare ringside view of modern Indian political history. When he started writing this book, the author was one of India’s most influential journalists. By the time the book was done, he had given up a career in journalism in favour of the rough and tumble of politics. The Crown Prince, the Gladiator and the Hope emerges from the lessons learnt in that ferment. Ashutosh also provides a keen personal account of what it takes to fight an election in India, how the media was manipulated to reap huge electoral dividends, and why Elections 2014 was an epoch-making one, the first real twenty-first-century election centred on modern sensibilities and aspirations. A compelling narrative about the state of politics in India in the twenty-first century, this is equally a hopeful book: one that believes the fight for a corruption-free nation is still on.