A study of the institution of the President of India, this book is based on the author's term as Deputy Secretary to the seventh president, Giani Zail Singh. In particular, it examines the President's role when authoritarian governments are voted in power. Things are all the more challenging for a president with a popular prime minister who has an overwhelming majority, as happened in the case of Zail Singh and Rajiv Gandhi.

The book recounts how the guardrails painstakingly created by the first two presidents - Rajendra Prasad and S. Radhakrishnan - were partly resurrected by Zail Singh. Richly anecdotal and incisively observed, The Indian President makes a compelling case for why the Zail Singh years are crucial to understanding both the limits and the possibilities of the country's highest office.