About the Book

The country is reminded about JP today as never before. There is hopelessness and despair all around. Corruption has become a monster and people want change at all cost. Anna movement galvanized the nation against corruption but could not translate the support into an organized movement for social change. This book will guide and inspire those who want to become the instruments of change. It is a moving history about JP — how he came into the movement despite his failing health.

Noted poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar prayed to Lord Tirupati that the rest of his life be given to JP to lead the movement. Dinkar died in the lap of JP in Ramnath Goenka's house and thus was born the JP Movement. This book is about: The deep-dark period of autocracy (1975-77) in India. Those were months of draconian laws, extinguished freedom, Gestapo-type arrests, severe Press censorship, forced sterilization and abject surrender marked by terror of the minions and slavery of the elites that made India a fascist-type police state.

The return of the sunlight of democracy due largely to the defiance of a 73-year old Jayaprakash Narayan, a congenital democrat. The Emergency was not only the defeat of JP and his movement against corruption, inflation and misrule, but also of the entire population that loved freedom. The state power of Indira Gandhi lost whereas the moral authority of JP won. Vulnerability of India's institutions of governance and how effectively the President, Union Cabinet, Parliament, Supreme Court, Governors, State Assemblies, senior civil servants, police and intelligence agencies and the Press were manipulated by a dictatorial Prime Minister and exploited by her 'unprincipled' son. A new perspective on the movement in view of the classified papers accessed by the author.

About the Author

MG Devasahayam is an Economist-Administrator with a distinguished career spanning over four decades. He has first-hand experience in the working of Indian Army, Government (IAS), Public & Private Sector, Political System and Non-Governmental Organizations. He has worked closely with Mother Teresa and Jayaprakash Narayan, which he considers as the greatest achievement of his life.

During the Emergency [1975-77], when JP was imprisoned at Chandigarh, Devasahayam was District Magistrate of the Union Territory and as such was JP’s ‘custodian in jail’. During this period, he met JP almost on a daily basis and developed a warm relationship with him that sustained even after the Emergency and lasted till JP, the architect of ‘India’s Second Freedom’, passed away in October 1979. The author is a thinker, analyst, public speaker and writer. Several of his articles have been published in newspapers across the country and other prestigious publications. The thrust in his writing has been governance, reforms, resource efficiency and issues such as freedom, democracy and corruption.