One-of-a-kind Conservative,one-of-a-kind book

Conservative is not a fashionable label. Jaithirth Jerry Rao knows it. Yet,among the left-liberals who dominate the opinion space,the 57-year-old delights in calling himself a Burkean conservative....

Conservative is not a fashionable label. Jaithirth Jerry Rao knows it. Yet,among the left-liberals who dominate the opinion space,the 57-year-old delights in calling himself a Burkean conservative,a gradualist who is horrified of revolutions.

Over five years from October 2004 onwards he has,in his columns in The Indian Express,stated his singular case. He has called Mahatma Gandhi a conservative,praised George W Bush,criticised Alan Greenspan,asked Paul Wolfowitz to shut down the World Bank,said SEZs were the seamy side of crony capitalism and,despite his fondness for the Republicans,found in Barack Obamas victory the perfect Burkean moment.

The 1,000-word articles reveal something more Rao is one-of-a-kind conservative. Selected columns are now coming out as a book,Notes from an Indian Conservative,published by The Express Group and Rupa.

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The book will be released at Crossword,Kemps Corner,Mumbai,on January 14,followed by a discussion between Rao,physician Dr Farokh Udwadia,commentator Harsha Bhogle and columnist Tavleen Singh.

Notes from an Indian Conservative has Rao effortlessly going beyond the economic and the political: there is le Carre and Kadanakuduhula raga,there is R K Narayan and V S Naipaul,and even concerns about growing plastic bags and dwindling pug marks.

People who disagreed with me politically enjoyed these diversions,and some even suggested that I was better off sticking to these topics, laughs Rao. The majority of hate mail came when he said,in a May 2005 piece,that Indira Gandhi can be our Dalhousie-putri (they both impoverished maharajas and nawabs) … and we can all be proud Macaulay-putras! But Rao considers it one of the advantages of a newspaper column,the discourse of which reaches a diverse set of people,unlike the Internet and blogs that are mostly chatrooms of the like-minded.

These days,the former Development Division Head of Citicorp has stopped telling people that he ever worked in a bank. The actions of a few have made it difficult for one to call oneself a banker or even an ex-banker! says Rao,who is now executive chairman of Value Budget Housing Corporation,a new company making affordable houses. He carefully chooses the epithets he would have instead: sensitive Indian,one irritated by talks of utopia. For validation,there is the Notes…