The book under review is the second part of the two-volume publication on the emergency period (1975-1977), but it covers only the 21-month period (November 1, 1974 to July 24, 1976) with focus on the run-up to the point when the democratic set-up was demolished and a loose autocratic rule put in place which had neither any purpose nor any well-defined ideas to defend the collapse of democracy. It has one introduction for both volumes. The first volume gives the blow-by-blow account of the events between November 1974 to august 1975 and the second one up to July 1976 that was two months into the emergency when the author quit the job. The book is not necessarily a continuing story of a tragedy with the Shakespearean sequence of ambition, hubris and fall but the honest intention which radiates through the pages, one is inclined to believe what the author says.
February 2007, volume 31, No 2