Sanjaya Baru

Sanjaya Baru is an Indian political commentator and policy analyst, currently serving as Director for Geo-Economics and Strategy at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Previously he had served as associate editor at The Economic Times and The Times of India, and then chief editor at Business Standard. His father B. P. R. Vithal served as Finance and Planning Secretary during former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's stint as Secretary of Finance. Before he became a journalist, he was a member of Communist Party of India (Marxist) when he was a student at University of Hyderabad. He became Manmohan Singh's media advisor and chief spokesperson, a role in which he served from May 2004 until August 2008. In April 2014, Penguin India published The Accidental Prime Minister, Baru's tell-all memoir about his time at the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). In it, Baru alleges that the prime minister was completely subservient to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who wielded significant influence in the running of the Singh administration, including the PMO itself. The book has sparked off a controversy, with the PMO officially denouncing it as "fiction". Baru, however, has said that he set out to show an empathetic portrait of the prime minister.

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