India, a superstar, is it? - IndianExpress.Com

India, a superstar, is it?

Agencies

Posted online: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 1311 hrs IST

New Delhi, May 20:
She is known for taking 'politically incorrect' pot-shots at the who's who of politics, business, Bollywood and what not! As writer and columnist, Shobha De, dons the mantle of an author for the fifteenth time, she takes upon the task of debating whether India can yet be accorded the superstar status, or the failings of this nation are still too many to outnumber its achievements.

She doesn't spare anybody, including the national capital, going to the extent of calling it a ‘hydra headed monster’ that ‘remote-controls the rest of the country’ and ‘a symbol of the corruption and rot that have destroyed the image of India’.

However, she sounds a little soft on Raj Thackeray, not on the ugly 'migrant' debate he has stirred in India's economic capital, but on the average Mumbaikars' concern about the over-burdened condition of their city.

"Even though I am entirely pro-free movement, and condemn balkanization of any kind, may be Raj Thackeray had a point. Pity, he didn't make it convincingly enough. In the bargain he triggered off a national debate on 'outsiders in our midst'," she writes. Though she had no sympathy for Raj Thackeray and his movement, but an understanding of the issue he has raised, De claims.

"You have to be in Mumbai to understand the rage if there is any," De said, while in the capital to release her book recently.

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India, a superstar, is it? Agencies Posted online: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 1311 hrs IST New Delhi, May 20: She is known for taking 'politically incorrect' pot-shots at the who's who of politics, business, Bollywood and what not! As writer and columnist, Shobha De, dons the mantle of an author for the fifteenth time, she takes upon the task of debating whether India can yet be accorded the superstar status, or the failings of this nation are still too many to outnumber its achievements. She doesn't spare anybody, including the national capital, going to the extent of calling it a ‘hydra headed monster’ that ‘remote-controls the rest of the country’ and ‘a symbol of the corruption and rot that have destroyed the image of India’. However, she sounds a little soft on Raj Thackeray, not on the ugly 'migrant' debate he has stirred in India's economic capital, but on the average Mumbaikars' concern about the over-burdened condition of their city. "Even though I am entirely pro-free movement, and condemn balkanization of any kind, may be Raj Thackeray had a point. Pity, he didn't make it convincingly enough. In the bargain he triggered off a national debate on 'outsiders in our midst'," she writes. Though she had no sympathy for Raj Thackeray and his movement, but an understanding of the issue he has raised, De claims. "You have to be in Mumbai to understand the rage if there is any," De said, while in the capital to release her book recently.