Silicon and spy craft | Interview with Ramjee Chandran, author of For No Reason at AllPremium

Debut novel by Bengaluru journalist Ramjee Chandran delves into 80s silicon metal controversy with intrigue and elegance.

Bengaluru-based journalist and podcast host Ramjee Chandran’s debut novel For No Reason at All (Penguin Random House) is an engaging tale based on true events around the silicon metal controversy of the 80s. Politics, power play, lobbying, skullduggery, espionage and the hubris of a bureaucratic overlord, combine to create a quandary for the Indian prime minister and his advisers. Should they champion indigenous technology or rely on U.S. imports? Set largely in New Delhi, the pacy narrative is suffused with elegant prose, wit and a curious mix of characters. Edited excerpts from a conversation with Chandran:

A: The book is a record of true events that occurred from 1984-88. It is significant because it captured something that doesn’t easily happen in India — a product of scientific research actually made it to commercial production.

When two professors from the Indian Institute of Science went to Mettur to get a jar of hydrogen, a chance meeting with my former boss R.V. Ramani, the managing director of Mettur Chemicals, led to them figuring out they both had the same goals — to make silicon metal to meet the country’s photovoltaic needs.

A: Yes, I was. Mettur Chemicals was part of the Seshasayee Group, Chennai.

A: For certain things that I have said in the book, I need deniability. I need to deny that they were facts, mere fiction.

None of the skeletal part of the story is untrue. I may have exaggerated a few parts, I’ve dramatised certain facial expressions, ambience, and coloured between the lines; but the narrative I have threaded together is pretty much true. I have fictionalised a bit, given voices to characters to say some things.

The story itself, undeniably, is of national and international importance; the foreign intelligence and spying by the Russians, French and Americans is true. This story was on the front and edit pages of newspapers for the better part of two years, and was also subject to Parliamentary and CBI enquiries.