Arun Shourie At 85, The Author Who Never Stopped Questioning India’s Established Narratives

Arun Shourie At 85: The Author Nobody On Either Side Can Claim

In 1981, a reporter working under Arun Shourie walked into a market in central India and bought a woman. Her name was Kamla; the purchase was the story, and the entire point was that it could be done at all. No charges followed, the intent having been journalistic rather than criminal.

Shourie turns eighty-five today, born in Jalandhar on 2 November 1941, and that episode serves as a fair introduction to his method. He piles fact upon fact until the subject has no room left to stand in.

Also Read: 5 Books That Challenge Everything We Think We Know About Modern India

The route was not an obvious one. He took a doctorate in economics at Syracuse in 1966 and spent more than a decade as an economist at the World Bank, then consulted for the Planning Commission in the early 1970s.

He began writing for the Indian Express during the Emergency, and in January 1979 Ramnath Goenka made him executive editor. Within three years, his investigation into the Maharashtra chief minister A.R. Antulay, accused of taking money from builders in return for releasing cement held under a…

Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle