Corporate chieftain-turned-author Gurcharan Das, whose post-liberalisation book ‘India Unbound’ became a bestseller in a dozen languages, has turned to the Mahabharata in his new book ‘The Difficulty of Being Good: The Subtle Art of Dharma’. In conversation with Saritha Rai, Das discussed dharma, contemporary politics, and more.

What was the inspiration for the book?

My previous book India Unbound had concluded on the positive note that economic prosperity would extend. It was only later that I began to realise how horrible day-to-day life is for the average Indian. Every interaction with the state is fraught with moral failure. Twenty per cent of a rickshawallah’s earning is taken by the police as bribe. One out of four school teachers doesn’t show up in government schools but parents bribe to get their child enrolled even in such schools. Our ministers are caught on tape accepting bribes. India is prosperous but Indians cannot be happy until we have fixed our governance issues. That’s what drove me to the Mahabharata. I wondered if I could bring its insights to the ordinary person and make them aware of the moral failure that blankets us like Delhi’s smog. Could I capture the essence of civic virtue from the Mahabharata?

Your book is intriguingly titled ‘The Difficulty of Being Good’.

The idea of dharma has evolved through history and has now become a personal attribute representing qualities such as honesty and non-violence. A person’s conscience is his dharma, swadharma, a very liberal idea of ethical behavior. The bottomline is that every person is fully responsible for his actions.

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