1991: How P. V. Narasimha Rao Made History

by Sanjaya Baru

Here is something that Rajiv Gandhi forgot to do as Prime Minister. He talked about taking India into the 21st century but forgot all about the present one and the opposition it may have to the future. P V Narasimha Rao and his finance minister Manmohan Singh got it just right. On the one hand, they sang praises about Nehruvian socialism. On the other hand, they took the country by the scruff of the neck and said move, or we all die.

‘The political leadership had access to all these ideas. The challenge was not in making announcements and implementing their recommendations. It was in creating the political climate in which they could get implemented.’

Expectations shape outcomes in a world of uncertainty. Expectations about the economy end up being self-fulfilling prophecies. If you expect tomorrow to be better than today, you take economic decisions that ensure that tomorrow is indeed better. If, on the other hand, one believes the future to be bleaker than the present, one ends up taking decisions and making choices that contribute to a less than satisfactory outcome.

‘Presiding at Lahore, Jawaharlal declared that he was “a republican and no believer in kings and princes”, but the succession from father (Motilal) to son seemed to send Jawaharlal’s mother Swaruprani into “a sort of ecstasy”, and there were admiring references to “a king passing on the scepter of the throne to his logical successor”. Gandhi, champion of the rights of the halt and the lame, the last and the least, had unwittingly launched a dynasty.’

No other national or even major regional political leader had till then so inducted a family member into politics and policymaking. Ideology-based parties of the political Left and Right were never touched by this syndrome. The elevation of Sanjay Gandhi to a position of unquestioned power heralded a new phase of politics in India wherein a political party leader’s family became the core of the party’s power structure. Following this precedent, most regional and caste- or community-based political parties have adopted dynastic succession as the method of leadership transition.

‘A finance minister is like the numeral zero. Its power depends on the number you place in front of it. The success of a finance minister depends on the support of the prime minister.’