Half - Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India

by Vinay Sitapati

Narasimha Rao backed them even when they disobeyed his commands—like Manmohan on devaluation, and Ramakrishna on the broker’s strike. It is even possible, though there is no way to tell, that Rao wanted his instructions ignored. The academic V.R. Mehta’s son remembers what prime minister Rao told his father when the latter was appointed vice chancellor of Delhi University. ‘Sometimes you will get messages from me. Don’t listen . . . You do whatever you think is right. But I have to call because there will be someone sitting with me who wants that.’

A senior CPM member remembers: ‘When I used to talk to prime minister [Rao] about liberalization policy, he would talk about Babri and secularism . . . He always did [it].’

Chanakya and Machiavelli not only advocated wicked means to achieve the common good, they also felt that the ruler should not attempt those ‘good’ policies that endangered his stability. They would have advised Rao to abandon liberalization—unpopular with party and Parliament—far earlier than he actually did. That P.V. Narasimha Rao was still able to cause (there is no other word for it) the most sweeping economic advance in Indian history is proof of his political genius, of course. It is also a testament to his idealism.

‘How do you make a U-turn without making a U-turn? That’s a special Narasimha Rao art,’ Shekhar Gupta asked him in retirement. ‘It’s not like that,’ Rao replied. ‘If you understand that where you were standing is itself in motion, the turning becomes easier.’41