Mandate Quotes

“that we have become a society that prizes opinion over fact, argument over discussion, and a fuzzy view of a possible future over a clear understanding of the past.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“The Prime Minister was told by his economic advisors that India was about to default on its debt repayments. India will never default, announced Chandrashekhar and pledged part of the country’s gold reserves to cover the debt.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“We may laugh now at the naiveté of the idea that nationalisation of industries actually benefits anybody. But it is instructive how the themes that Mrs Gandhi introduced to Indian politics in 1977 are still dominant in our political discourse. She painted the Syndicate as being in the grips of crony capitalists—and that is an idea that every party from the Left to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) recycles again and again. She spoke of ending an era of privilege, of breaking up cosy cartels and of sharing the national wealth. The very same ideas were to re-appear in one form or the other in the 2014 election.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“After the demolition began, the late Pramod Mahajan took Advani to a guest house. Later Mahajan told me that Advani was shattered and near tears. According to Mahajan, he said, ‘They have destroyed my movement.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“But Vajpayee was a realist. He had joined the BJP recognising that the party would never come to power during his lifetime. That did not matter so much to him. He had never been after power. Otherwise, he would have accepted Narasimha Rao’s offer, made in 1993, to join the Congress. He was happy sitting in the opposition and sticking to his principles.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“And with a single stroke of his pen, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed suspended the institutions of Indian democracy!”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“In 2004, India was doing extraordinarily well. The middle class had begun to look to the West for its reference points. Foreign companies rushed to invest in the economy. Commentators removed the old hyphenation of India-Pakistan and began a new one: India-China.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“Rajiv Gandhi was the first prime minister of India who had actually done something else with his life before joining politics.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“one reason why we see so many young people from the North East in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and other Indian metropolitan cities is because Rajiv Gandhi made the north eastern states feel like part of the Indian mainstream. And”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“Jagjivan Ram hated Charan Singh who hated the RSS which hated the Socialists. And, oh yes, everybody hated Morarji. á”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“So the great democratic experiment that was the Janata government began with a lack of democracy. JP and Acharya Kripalani said they would choose the next prime minister. They ruled out anybody from the Jan Sangh because it had the Right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS antecedents. They ruled out Charan Singh who was regarded as a difficult customer. But more significantly, they ruled out Jagjivan Ram, the leader of India’s Harijans, the man whose defection had swung the election for the Janata Party. Jagjivan Ram announced that this was part of the traditional prejudice against Harijans. And who knows? Perhaps he was right. In”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“it is instructive how the themes that Mrs Gandhi introduced to Indian politics in 1977 are still dominant in our political discourse. She painted the Syndicate as being in the grips of crony capitalists—and that is an idea that every party from the Left to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) recycles again and again.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“we have become a society that prizes opinion over fact, argument over discussion, and a fuzzy view of a possible future over a clear understanding of the past. A”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“To understand the real impact of changes in the national state of mind, one has to wait for at least a few decades.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“Passage of time lends perspective to one’s observations; perspective then leads to wisdom.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“I spoke with my father after reading this book and he wryly recalled the tremendous hope that his generation had had from the 1971 election. They really believed that “garibi” would be “hataoed”. Of course, nothing of the sort transpired.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“The ancients believed that the perspective one has on time and phenomena is related to one’s life-form. If you are a housefly (which lives for 15 to 30 days) and you are born during the Indian monsoon season, you would conclude that India is the land of unceasing rain. But if you’re born a human being (which I suspect is the case), you would know better. Passage of time lends perspective to one’s observations; perspective then leads to wisdom. And remember this: as the housefly is to a human being, a human being is to a nation.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE

“we have become a society that prizes opinion over fact, argument over discussion, and a fuzzy view of a possible future over a clear understanding of the past.”
― Vir Sanghvi, MANDATE: WILL OF THE PEOPLE