If the final episode of domestic political drama involving the Trust Vote for the ruling party in India, grabbed your attention and if you found yourself debating on the issue of political ethics, the country’s progress, and the plight of India’s downtrodden masses, you surely will enjoy Snakes and Ladders by Gita Mehta. The author is a keen critic and in 35 essays she has given personal accounts of national events and a perspective portrait of life in India - then and now.
Her writing style is lively, witty and informative and the book follows a smooth pace - a wonderful mesh of distinct topics that clearly contain a pattern. From Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral to the National Emergency, from the rag pickers in Delhi to the sati in Rajasthan, from Congress demonstrators to the street booksellers - this book is a collage of India seen from various angles. Her insight is supported by facts about an India that we can vaguely remember but have been a part of. An India that struggled for independence, and an independent India that saw bloodshed, war, despotism, five-year plans, emergency, industrialization, computerization, and the rise and fall of political leaders and parties.
What’s interesting about Gita Mehta’s book is that it’s a book for all ages - those born in the 1970’s who paid attention to political names and incidents only for their General Knowledge exams in school; and those who saw India move from monarchial subordination to independence to a sudden era of confused progress and advancement! It’s a brave in-depth analysis of what goes on behind the façade of the largest democracy in the world. It’s a courageous inquiry into the reality of the political backstage!
Gita Mehta shows immense knowledge and even fondness 
for the folkways and history, its culture and politics, its ancient traditions and current concerns of India. To quote, the M.B.K. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine edition. “An Oxford-educated writer and reporter, Mehta presents a well-rounded picture of the multitude of cultures, civilizations and attitudes represented by the various areas in India. Snakes and Ladders engrosses the listener, peeling away the veils of myth and presenting an in-depth, educated picture of this important world culture.”
Incidentally, Patrick French’s review on the Book in `Sunday Times’, has pinpointed a number of factual errors, To quote, “Any work of this type is bound to contain a few factual errors, but Snakes and Ladders has more than its fair share. The Bengal Famine is timed a year early, the annexation of Tibet nine years late. Tashkent is located in Russia; the politician Rajmohan Gandhi is called “Ram Mohan Gandhi”. Ashoka’s wheel at the centre of the Indian flag is mistaken for a spinning-wheel (a symbol that was dropped in 1947). And it is suggested that, “in one of the most imperious grands gestes of the 20th century”, Mahatma Gandhi “insisted” that Mountbatten should remain as governor-general of free India; in fact, it was Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel who made the decision ¬ Gandhi played no part in it.”
Keeping in mind the above criticism, I still recommend this book, till the time you don’t make it course material for a test in History. I strongly endorse giving up a racy fiction or the next bestseller to read Gita Mehta’s Snakes and Ladders - an apt collection of essays about the economy, politics and history of India with all its ups and downs, highs and lows.
Gita Mehta is the daughter of Biju Patnaik, the most prominent political leader of Orissa and her younger brother Naveen Patnaik is presently the Chief Minister of Orissa. Mehta has produced and /or directed 14 television documentaries for UK, European and U.S. networks. During the years 1970, 1971, she was a television war correspondent for the US television network NBC.
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