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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Democracy on the Road by Ruchir Sharma RUCHIR SHARMA. On the eve of a landmark general election, Ruchir Sharma offers an unrivalled portrait of how India and its democracy work, drawn from his two decades on the road chasing election campaigns across every major state, travelling the equivalent of a lap around the earth. Democracy on the Road takes readers on a rollicking ride with Ruchir and his merry band of fellow writers as they talk to farmers, shopkeepers and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, and interview leaders from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi. No book has traced the arc of modern India by taking readers so close to the action. Offering an intimate view inside the lives and minds of India's political giants and its people, Sharma explains how the complex forces of family, caste and community, economics and development, money and corruption, Bollywood and Godmen, have conspired to elect and topple Indian leaders since Indira Gandhi. The ultimately encouraging message of Ruchir's travels is that, while democracy is retreating in many parts of the world, it is thriving in India. Reviews. "For a quarter of a century, Ruchir Sharma has been doing in India what political pundits should have done in the US, UK and France to understand Donald Trump, Brexit and the gilets jaunes protestors: he has left the big cities and listened to voters in the mofussil or provincial parts of the subcontinent. Above all, the trips allowed Sharma to predict and understand the rise of the Bharatiya Janata party's charismatic Narendra Modi, the collapse and later revival of the Congress party under the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, and the enduring influence of regional politicians such as Nitish Kumar in Bihar and the late J Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu." — Financial Times. "Sharma's account of his travels offers a fascinating insight into the quixotic characters populating India's political landscape. Along the way, we meet mavericks and ministers, holy men and hoaxers. Sharma is a diligent, informed and sympathetic guide." — Prospect. "A high-speed, breezy drive through two decades of electoral politics" — Bloomberg. "Packed with nuance and detail of the many Indias that make India." — Vogue. Democracy on the Road: A 25 Year Journey through India. On the eve of a landmark general election, Ruchir Sharma offers an unrivalled portrait of how India and its democracy work, drawn from his two decades on the road chasing election campaigns across every major state, travelling the equivalent of a lap around the earth. Democracy on the Road takes readers on a rollicking ride with Ruchir and his merry band of fellow writers as they talk to farmers, shopkeepers and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, and interview leaders from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi. No book has traced the arc of modern India by taking readers so close to the action. Offering an intimate view inside the lives and minds of India's political giants and its people, Sharma explains how the complex forces of family, caste and community, economics and development, money and corruption, Bollywood and Godmen, have conspired to elect and topple Indian leaders since Indira Gandhi. The ultimately encouraging message of Ruchir's travels is that, while democracy is retreating in many parts of the world, it is thriving in India. Review Packed with nuance and detail of the many Indias that make India (Vogue) A must read in this election season! (Nandan Nilekani) A must, must, must and very 'mast' read! Insightful and deliciously wicked (Shobhaa De) An immediate must-read. A definitive one-volume on the modern India (Tom Keene, Bloomberg. Book review of Ruchir Sharma: Democracy on the Road. Currently, in seven phases from April 11 until May 19, 2019 some 900 million Indians are eligible to vote in the parliamentary election to constitute the 17th Lok Sabha. An excellent commentary to the election marathon in the world’s largest democracy comes from Ruchir Sharma, the Indian born chief global strategist and head of the emerging markets equity team at Morgan Stanley. In his new, at the same time entertaining and insightful book Democracy on the Road. A 25-Year Journey through India (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de), he brings to life India. He has been following at least one big regional or national election every year since 1993. Ruchir Sharma’s previous books include the international bestsellers Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles (2012; Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com) and The Rise and Fall of Nations (2016; Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com). In 1998, in order to call the next elections accurately, Ruchir Sharma suggested to his boss that they needed to get out on the streets and talk to actual voters. A key lesson, which would be driven home on every trip for the next 20 years, was that India is thinly diced between thousands of castes and hundreds of languages, many isolated in a pocket inside a single state, that India is better understood as many countries than one. The reality of the “Many” Indias is a source of great controversy, particularly among the nationalists who would like to live in a country united under one culture. Ruchir Sharma insists that there is no other way to think about India that can explain the way its democracy works, or why its elections are so full of surprises. Ruchir Sharma cites Hindustan Unilever’s CEO Sanjiv Mehta who told him that his company divides the 29 Indian states info 14 sub-regions, the 20 countries of the Middle East and North Africa into only 4, because its research shows, consumer tastes, habits and languages are far more fragmented in India. Ruchir Sharma compares India to the United States, itself a melting pot of immigrants from many nations, where a poll of just 1000 to 2000 randomly choses people can produced an election forecast with a relatively small margin of error. I would add that exactly that strategy did not work regarding Trump’s election; pollsters got the overall majority for Clinton more or less right, but the presidential election was decided on the state level. But that’s an other story, and Ruchihr Sharma is of course right that most of the time the US polls are correct whereas, in India, pollsters have to survey tens of thousands of people just to get a partial sample of its diverse voters, and yet their record for accuracy is dismal. There are too many Indias to capture in one poll, or one trip, which has made life on the road for Ruchir Sharma and the colleagues traveling with him endlessly fascinating and inspiring. The author states that, early on, he feared that the sprawling populations and scattered loyalities of the 29 states embodied more chaos than any one leader could ever govern effectively, but over time he came to realize that there is a way to govern India effectively: by letting its diverse states govern themselves, each under its own leader. India has so many parties because it has so many different communities, separated by caste, religion, tribe or language. And each one wants its own representative. Ruchir Sharma does not intend to paint a rosy picture of India. He is aware of its broken state and the endemic corruption but, in the end, he comes away with deep optimism that democracy works in India because, for instance, the voters toss out its governing class more often than any other country he knows. At the same time, he concludes that real powern in India resides with the political, not the economic class. And yet, for all their clout, in contrast to most Western societies, the odds are against Indian politicians holding on to their offices. India became a democracy when it was still poor. And the poor cherish the vote as a great leveller. Local issues often trump national ones, and very dramatically from state to state. Corruption scandals have lead to many electoral defeats, e.g. in the case of Rajiv Gandhi and the Bofors case. However, one of the supreme ironies of Indian politics is that corruption charges seem to hurt more than convictions. Voters are so sure that justice in India is loaded against innocents, they often look more sympathetically on leaders emerging from jail, e.g. Lalu Yadav. In other emerging countries, politicians may come back after a jail term, but rearely do lock-ups provide a career boost, the way they do in India. Studies show that jail time is like a badge of honor. Supporters praise the current prime minister Modi for raising India’s stature in the world. But Ruchir Sharma reminds readers that, more than once, Indian leaders—from Manmohan Singh to Chandrababu Naidu—lionized by the global elite from Mumbai to New York, have been thrown out be Indian voters who care more about the government’s impact on their daily life than about such cosmic concerns as India’s image in the world. Even a growth rate above the national level is no recipe for success. Inflation and droughts on the other hand are much more likely to have a negative impact. Community identity is still the key to politics in India. Community, family, inflation, welfare, development, corruption and money are the key factors for success identified by Ruchir Sharma. A candidate has to appeal to the complex mix of sub-castes, religions and languages in each constituency and state. Rarely does one community or identity define even 30% of the population. The “dominant” communities often include not more than 10% to 20% of the electorate, as for example is the case in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

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