Walk the Talk: Decoding Politicians by Shekhar Gupta [Paperback]

In the fourteen years of NDTV’s Walk The Talk Shekhar Gupta has interviewed more than 600 stellar guests—an outstanding feature for one of Indian TV news channel's most respected shows is the wide diversity of its guests. These range from heads of state to national, regional and international politicians and public figures, from Indian and global film stars to Nobel Laureates, scientists, economists, sports stars (not limited to cricket), spiritual gurus, business tycoons, philanthropists and, of course, activists. This book focuses exclusively on political leaders and public figures.Many of these conversations are path-breaking and some are extremely rare. For example, leaders like Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao have never before engaged in freewheeling, recorded conversations in such detail. Others have broken new ground since—Narendra Modi, L.K. Advani, Pranab Mukherjee, Mayawati and even M. Karunanidhi. There are also global thought leaders and heads of state: David Cameron, Henry Kissinger and Pushp Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, among others. There is also the rarest of rare interviews with the former RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan.It was challenging to choose just twenty-five political personalities and voices to feature in this selection. And one criterion has been to try and pick those conversations that mark political shifts and change. Hopefully, these will help provide an understanding of recent political history and how we have reached the point we are at today, in the words of these very significant and interesting people.