If UPA 1.0 was about several ministers who wrote books — e.g. Kamal Nath’s India’s Century and Kapil Sibal’s collection of poems written on his cellphone — UPA 2.0 seems to have started off similarly.

A Roadmap for Agrarian Wealth Creation — Volume 1 of Minister for Law and Justice M Veerappa Moily’s five-volume Unleashing India — was released by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia this evening. The release was accompanied by a discussion on the book by Shashi Tharoor, MoS, External Affairs and K Kasturirangan, MP and former chairman of ISRO.

Moily — who writes in both English and Kannada — is also the author of three plays, three collections of poems and four novels. His most ambitious work so far is the Ramayana Mahaanveshanam, or the Grand Discovery of the Ramayana.

The book released on Friday looks at multiple aspects of Indian agriculture. The title appears to have been inspired by Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, which according to the minister, championed “free will, goodness, hope and idealism in the face of oppression”.

The book, which details possibilities for a rejuvenated India, “unbound and emancipated”, carries a foreword by BN Yugandhar, member, Planning Commission, who describes it as a roadmap “for getting out of the despondency and helplessness in our agrarian situation”.

Moily’s predecessor HR Bharadwaj too had authored a book before he demitted office: a 122-page, nine-chapter coffee table account of Indian philosophical thought over the ages called India: A Fellowship of Faiths.