How Prime Ministers Decide

India's prime ministers have taken decisions that changed the course of the country's history. This book by Neerja Chowdhury, an award-winning journalist and political commentator, goes beyond the news headlines to provide an eye-opening account of how some of the most important political decisions in independent India were taken.<br>

The author analyses the operating styles of the country's prime ministers through the prism of six decisions of historic significance. These are as follows: the strategy that Indira Gandhi devised to return to power in 1980, after her humiliating defeat post the Emergency in 1977; the errors of judgment that led Rajiv Gandhi to undo the Supreme Court's judgment in the Shah Bano case; V. P. Singh's implementation of the Mandal Commission Report to save his government which forever changed the face of contemporary politics; P. V. Narasimha Rao's masterful indecision that resulted in the demolition of the Babri Masjid; the rapidly changing political scenarios that turned the avowed pacifist Atal Bihari Vajpayee into a nuclear hawk who greenlighted the testing of nuclear devices; and the mild and professorial Manmohan Singh, widely regarded as one of the country's weakest prime ministers, who defied interest groups and foes within the political establishment to seal a historic nuclear deal with the United States-and upgraded the bilateral relationship to a new level.<br>

Based on hundreds of interviews that the author conducted with prime ministers, key figures in the political establishment,

bureaucrats, aides, policymakers, and even fixers-the book provides remarkable insights that have been gleaned over forty years of high-level reporting on the national political scene.<br>

<i>How Prime Ministers Decide</i> is an unparalleled book about modern Indian politics which will change the way we view how prime ministers govern the country.