The Accidental Prime Minister:The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh

Manmohan Singh's doctoral thesis at Oxford on India's export trends and prospects in 1966 opened for him the doors of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and then the Delhi School of Economics which then had a global prominence with its faculty on board including Amartya Sen, Jagadish Bhagawati and Sukhamay Chakravarti. The prominence of this institution made him accept the invitation of K. N. Raj and decline the insistence of the head of UNCTAD Raul Prebisch to stay back. The book is useful to any ambitious scholar in building his/her prospective career to learn through Singh's ladder climbing and handling different positions with patience and unvocal efficiency. One can learn from the book how Singh got many different administrative posts in the government and finally made a direct entry into politics in 1991. The subsequent story is known to everyone. Equally importantly Baru attempts to present to the readers Singh's voracious readership and his belief in the correctness of his economic policies.