Habibullah

About the Book

A CANDID ACCOUNT OF RAJIV GANDHI’S PRIME MINISTERIAL YEARS.

On 21 May 1991, Wajahat Habibullah, then the commissioner of Kashmir (constituting the valley and the two districts of Ladakh), had returned home after inspecting a mysterious fire at Dalgate, Srinagar. Much to his dismay, there had been another fire, one that left him devastated: an RDX explosion in the south Indian town of Sriperumbudur had taken the life of India’s sixth prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

My Years with Rajiv is an endearing account of a friendship that turned into an administrative partnership, one that gave Habibullah an acute insight into Rajiv Gandhi’s political life. But equally, in this lucid memoir, recounting his years in the Indian Administrative Service, particularly at the Prime Minister’s Office, he walks us through the last three decades of the twentieth century-in many ways, the most formative years of Indian history.

Habibullah also seeks to demystify the workings of the Indian government and bureaucracy: the modernisation of the Nehruvian nation, the turbulence of the Khalistan years in Punjab, the introduction of grassroots policies aimed at poverty alleviation in rural India, the beginning of telecommunications services, the Shah Bano case, the opening of the locks at Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi, Indian interventions in Sri Lanka, and much else. In this, the author, a natural raconteur, is more than successful, telling the tale in his inimitably candid and self-effacing manner.

About the Author

Wajahat Habibullah (born 30 September 1945) is a former chairperson of the National Commission for Minorities. Prior to this, he was the first Chief Information Commissioner of India. He was an officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) of the J&K cadre from 1968 until his retirement in September 2005, having served in India and the US.