As soon as I read that author is a Times's ex-journalist, I knew what to expect. Yet still, I decided to peruse this book to understand other side's point of view. Reading the book published in 2014 in 2024, of course gives me an undue advantage but also exposes (unfortunately expected) hypocrisy in the writing.

First of all, if you are expecting this book to provide new insights into Modi's life, you will be disappointed. This book is nothing more than complication of public sources, and even than of fairly popular ones, which any non-disinterested reader will know if s/he bothered to follow the life of once-in-a-lifetime politician like Modi. Even insights from interviews from Modi's inner circle are missing, though author does say that folks are scared of talking about him even off the records.

Overall, it's a decent read if you want to know biased anti-Modi view, but it won't be useful to form informed or correct depiction of the phenomenon this book claims to demystify. For instance, Godhra riots are portrayed from single lens blaming Hindus without even mentioning that one third of those killed were Hindus by Muslims. Sins of Congress or others are either not mentioned or mentioned in passing and washed over. The Congress party is credited for having apologized for 1984 - in which it actively participated - but BJP is blamed for not apologizing for 2002 - even when it's guilt (if at all) was of omission. That the then Congress governments in neighbouring states failed to provide police support is not even mentioned.

Author takes contradictory viewpoints in making his points. After laying out pages on history of Hindu-Muslim riots on Gujarat, and acknowledging the Modi's rule led to end of these riots, he goes on romanticizing Hindu-Muslim unity & coexistence in pre-2002 Ahmedabad.

Lot of bandwidth is spent in puncturing claims of Gujarat model, but good aspects are either mentioned in limited format or with caveats. Author acknowledges development of industries and businesses under Modi but calls out deterioration of environment as well with examples. Many conclusions are thrown without evidence and without contrasting what is happening in rest of India or other states e.g., poor labour laws in Gujarat.

Author's use of data reminded me of "lies, damned lies and statistics" and fails to pass basic sense check of any data comparison. For instance, low
Human Development Indicators in Gujarat are attributed to Modi but their trend over time is not presented. A good example of statistical manipulation is author's claim that many years during a period had growth lower than average, which is of course, a definition of average.

Admittedly, Modi probably did hyperbole in selling his Gujarat model, but given outright dangerous lies by others in Congress, they are can mostly be considered politician's boasting. Here again, lies and boasting by others are completely ignored and Modi is compared to an ideal non-existent theoretically best politician. Author's conclusion seems to be implied is that there is no Gujarat Model to be proud of which contradicts with his own write up in the first part of chapter. Author frequently shifts from absolute numbers to growth numbers and changes year of comparison for different dimensions as needed to show other states better than Gujarat.

For instance, one claim is that realised investment in Vibrant Gujarat was much lower than claimed. Of course, this is to be expected as any common-sensible person will know that not all MoU convert into investment. What is realistic comparison is this same ratio for other states, which is of course, not mentioned at all. It's likely that Gujarat was not number 1 in many things it claimed to be but then it was in top 5-10 even as per author's own assertions in the book, which is not a bad thing in a country of about 30 states.

In the later section of book, Modi's leverage of social media and great PR is implied to be a bad thing, but surely, it's not. That the book is purely one-sided view is glaringly obvious when you notice that articles and sources quoted as evidence are well known to biased e.g., Hindu, Scroll, P Sainath, Medha Patekar, etc. Blunders of his contemporaries and campaign of pure vitriol from opposition calling him choicest abuses are not even referenced. Modi being proud Hindu is somehow implied to be bad, even when every other leader has been explicitly anti-Hindu. Author's bias comes out openly when he misrepresented Modi's remark on pain of death to comparison with Muslims and dogs. At this point, I had pretty much given up expecting even truth from this book, even if one sided.

One benefit of reading in 2024 was that I could juxtapose author's claim from reality since then. What author claimed were empty threats to Pakistan or waste of money on Sardar Patel's statue have proven to be too utterly false with events of Balakot, Pulwama, Surgical Strike and article 370 in last 10 years! Tourism generated by Patel's statue has surpassed all expectations.

All in all, this book, in some sense did not disappoint me since that has been popular media narrative, and hence expected, and this book presented the same one-sided biased view supported by omitted information or outright lies. ( )