What has altered is his thinking, Jaswant Singh said. "I was 30 years younger when I wrote the columns. So I am that much more experienced. I don't think I have rejected any specific political philosophy or view over the years... perhaps some angles of political thought I might have modified through experience and I presume learning," he added.
The BJP leader, who held the defence and external affairs portfolios during the two NDA regimes (1998-2004), looks back at the Bofors gun deal of the mid-1980s, saying "it was in a sense a precursor of the denigration of the institution of Comptroller and Auditor General".
"That's where the rot of a partisan of a political wrong first set in. But C&AG has not lost its credibility though it has been attacked politically. It is a national institution, and for heaven's sake, preserve it," Jaswant Singh said.
In his book, he dwells at length on the role that the CAG played in presenting uncomfortable questions to the government through its reports and observations - and at times stowed under the carpet by the government.
Then, the disparity between the urban and the rural becomes palpable in Jaswant Singh's descriptions of Indian villages. "India has not been able to bridge the gap between village and towns. The National Democratic Alliance in its six years introduced a measure of reforms PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas). It was successful as long as it was pursued. But as it was an NDA programme, its success was abandoned after NDA was voted out of power," he says.
