The Road Less Travelled

Ruchir Sharma’s newly released book Democracy On The Road is part-travelogue, part-insightful guide to the world’s biggest democracy and a colourful study of Indian politics (and politicians).

- Arun Janardhan

Scheduled to meet J Jayalalithaa during a campaign rally once, Ruchir Sharma and his band of intrepid journalists were told to wait. The pause turned out to last two hours because the then-Tamil Nadu Chief Minister was napping and could not be disturbed. On another occasion, at another rally, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, immensely powerful at the time, stood alone on a podium with just a pedestal fan for company because there was no one else present who had the stature to share the stage with her.

These are just a few of the stories from Sharma’s sometimes tongue-in-cheek book Democracy On The Road. As Head of Emerging Markets and Chief Global Strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, the New York-based investor writes more often on the subject of global economics (he’s also the bestselling author of The Rise And Fall Of Nations and Breakout Nations). But over 18 months ago, the US international relations magazine Foreign Affairs asked Sharma for a 10,000-word essay on India’s upcoming general elections. When he started writing, putting together notes from his trips with his “election caravan”, he realised he had enough material for a book, and kept going. This time, he says, “I wanted [to write] a book that my father or his friends or my school friends would like to engage with.”

Tell us about this group you’ve been travelling with for over two decades.

In February 1998, I became part of a group of journalists who’d go on the road to see what Indian elections were all about. The average distance covered on each trip was around 1,000-1,500km – or practically one lap around the earth.