Music of the Spinning Wheel by Sudheendra Kulkarni; Amaryllis Publishers; Price: Rs.795; 725 pp A journalist-columnist and occasional spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and currently chairman of the Ambani-funded Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai, Sudheendra Kulkarni was a prominent figure in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, which ruled in Delhi between 1998-2004. As special aide to Atal Behari Vajpayee, he played an active role in conceptualising and driving the prime minister’s Task Force on Information Technology, New Telecom Policy and the National Highway Development Project, among other enterprises of great pith and moment. Your editor is acquainted with Kulkarni but the relationship remained casual, because the chasm which separated BJP’s divisive hindutva ideology and this liberal and secular reviewer seemed too wide to be bridged. However after reading this book which deeply investigates the Mahatma and concludes that had he still been alive, Gandhiji would have been an ardent champion of the internet, your editor/reviewer quite obviously under-estimated the scholarship, research capability and argumentative capacity of the author of this extraordinary magnum opus. Mahatma Gandhi’s numerous warnings against adoption of the Western model of industrialisation, and his advocacy of the humble spinning wheel and village industries which was “at the very core of his economic, political and social agenda” aroused widespread skepticism, even scorn within post-independence India’s intelligentsia, intent upon modernising the country. It’s plainly evident that for Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, the assassination of Gandhiji in early 1948 (and death of the pro private enterprise Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in 1950) while personally distressing, came as a relief because he could freely implement his national development agenda, inspired by Soviet-style public sector-led industrialisation. Sixty-five years on, it’s equally evident that the Nehruvian economic development model has failed. While the population has tripled since independence — itself a failure of the world’s first family planning programme — the nation’s debt-laden, low productivity public sector enterprises are monumental failures which have transformed high-potential India into a nation of chronic shortages, persistent inflation, unemployment (120 million) and vast inequalities in income, education, health and social justice. On almost every development measurement index of UNDP, Unesco, the World Bank etc, contemporary India is among the world’s bottom ranked nations. Although Kulkarni doesn’t explicitly say so, the pathetic condition of the nation is probably the causative factor which prompted him to re-examine Gandhi’s life and message, especially the popular belief that he “was opposed to science, technology, machinery and modernity”. The outcome of the author’s rediscovery of the Mahatma is this brilliant work of scholarship, and advocacy of the intensified usage of the internet, which Kulkarni — an IIT-Bombay alum who understands technology — regards as a god-sent tech breakthrough with the potential to prompt a new science, technology and knowledge revolution to solve the most pressing problems of humankind in general, and India in particular. This opus which together with its narrative, notes and bibliography spans 725 pages is divided into five parts. In the first part (47 pages), starting…
