Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Conservative is not a fashionable label. Jaithirth Jerry Rao knows it. Yet,among the left-liberals who dominate the opinion space,the 57-year-old delights in calling himself a Burkean conservative,a gradualist who is horrified of revolutions.
The 1,000-word articles reveal something more Rao is one-of-a-kind conservative. Selected columns are now coming out as a book,Notes from an Indian Conservative,published by The Express Group and Rupa.
The book will be released at Crossword,Kemps Corner,Mumbai,on January 14,followed by a discussion between Rao,physician Dr Farokh Udwadia,commentator Harsha Bhogle and columnist Tavleen Singh.
Notes from an Indian Conservative has Rao effortlessly going beyond the economic and the political: there is le Carre and Kadanakuduhula raga,there is R K Narayan and V S Naipaul,and even concerns about growing plastic bags and dwindling pug marks.
People who disagreed with me politically enjoyed these diversions,and some even suggested that I was better off sticking to these topics, laughs Rao. The majority of hate mail came when he said,in a May 2005 piece,that Indira Gandhi can be our Dalhousie-putri (they both impoverished maharajas and nawabs) … and we can all be proud Macaulay-putras! But Rao considers it one of the advantages of a newspaper column,the discourse of which reaches a diverse set of people,unlike the Internet and blogs that are mostly chatrooms of the like-minded.
These days,the former Development Division Head of Citicorp has stopped telling people that he ever worked in a bank. The actions of a few have made it difficult for one to call oneself a banker or even an ex-banker! says Rao,who is now executive chairman of Value Budget Housing Corporation,a new company making affordable houses. He carefully chooses the epithets he would have instead: sensitive Indian,one irritated by talks of utopia. For validation,there is the Notes…
