New Delhi, Sep 17 - Columnist and writer Gurcharan Das, author of best-selling 'India Unbound', has turned to the epic Mahabharata in his new book, 'The Difficulty of Being Good: The Subtle Art of Dharma', to answer an oft-asked question in this age of uncertainty -- 'why be good?'

'Every generation should go back to Mahabharata to find new meanings. The failure in governance and the daily corruption drove me to Mahabharata. I was also driven by the fact that there was a moral failure and fight between 'dharma' and 'adharma',' Das told IANS.

'Moral failure pervaded our public life and hung over it like Delhi's smog. One out of every five members of parliament elected in 2004 had criminal charges. A survey by a Harvard professor found that one of out every four teachers in government primary schools is absent.

'A World Bank study found that one out of every five doctors does not show up at the primary health centres and 69 percent of medicines are stolen. A cycle-rickshaw driver in Kanpur pays one-fifth of his daily earnings to the police as bribe,' Das said.

His new book explores the weaknesses in the characters of the epic and the ethical problems faced by Bhishma, Yudhisthira, Arjuna, Draupadi, Duryodhana, Karna, Ashwatthama and Krishna and the significance of the issues in our lives.

'I took an academic break to write the book. It took me nearly seven years. I went to the University of Chicago to study the Mahabharata. I read almost all the versions of Mahabharata, as much as possible in Sanskrit and the English translations to get a feel of the text,' Das said. The writer was introduced to the epic by his grandmother at the age of four.

After spending six years with the epic during the academic break, Das said he found that Mahabharata was also about how 'we deceived ourselves, how false we were to others and how we oppressed fellow human beings'.

The writer sees the contemporary realities of India reflected in the Mahabharata.