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

by Vinay Sitapati

According to a government report commissioned by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, between 27,000 and 40,000 Muslims were murdered after the liberation of Hyderabad.43 The Indian Army stood by and in some cases even participated in the killings.

Those days, candidates would commandeer Mahindra jeeps from Madras. But few would be returned, and the company dared not ask. Before one of his election campaigns, Rao took 200 jeeps from Madras for the entire state. He returned them after the election. ‘The owner was shocked,’ Rao’s son-in-law remembers. ‘No politician ever did that.’53

The programme began in Telugu, but then shifted to the local language. Rao, who did not know Tamil, felt excluded from his own felicitation. He went back to his temporary home in Madras, pored over Tamil grammar books, and improved his reading by walking around the city, translating street signs. By the time he returned to Hyderabad, he was fluent in the language.66

The government had placed restrictions on local manufacturers and banned imported Swiss watches. To meet domestic demand, therefore, the government tasked the state-owned Hindustan Machine Tools, or HMT—established to build heavy machinery—with making precision wristwatches. The results were ungainly and unsightly, like many Indian industrial products of the time.

The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh at the time was K. Brahmananda Reddy. He was liked by local Congressmen, was from a landed caste and came from a coastal district. In the eyes of prime minister Indira Gandhi, these made for three arguments against him. She wanted someone whom she could mould, someone who would attract backward castes and landless peasants, and a Telangana man who could placate the region.

swore to end his relationship with Lakshmi. When the bureaucrat B.P.R. Vithal paid him a condolence visit that morning, he was told, ‘I will be a changed man.’19 Rao did not change, and, as chief minister, had lunch with Lakshmi on most days.

Narasimha Rao may have been an unfaithful husband but he was no hypocrite. He made no attempt to hide his relationship with Lakshmi, and the daily political gossip she brought was valuable.

Born as Nemi Chand Jain, Chandraswami was from Hyderabad and knew many Andhra politicians. Rotund,

He would seduce politicians with predictions, then provide them with contacts ranging from Britain’s Margaret Thatcher to the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.

Khasshoggi!!

He was sent to work at the Xinjian County Tractor Factory in 1969. Deng was woken up at six-thirty every morning and forced to read the writings of Mao. He and his wife would then walk to the tractor repair station where Deng performed manual labour.1 It took four years in the wasteland for Deng to find favour with Mao again.

As prime minister two decades later, his silence would be lampooned as ‘analysis until paralysis’ and ‘when in doubt, pout’. But as Narasimha Rao was learning in the lonely months after his removal as chief minister, silence was sometimes the ideal decoy to distract from radical action.

The one visit Rao made outside of New York was to the University of Wisconsin in Madison.24 The university, nestled among the cheese factories of the American Midwest, was famous for scholarship on India. Velcheru Narayana Rao is today one of the world’s experts on Telugu literature and early modern south Indian history.

As the historian Ramachandra Guha chronicles, ‘Thousands were arrested under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), known by its victims as the Maintenance of Indira and Sanjay Act.’

And so when Indira Gandhi ended the Emergency by calling for national elections in March 1977, she was trounced by a united Janata Opposition. The Congress won only 34.5 per cent of the vote and just 154 of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies.12 Indira Gandhi lost her own seat.

The diplomat Ronen Sen (later ambassador to Russia) remembers, ‘[The Soviets] even erased Indira Gandhi from their history books.’20 Upon her return to power, a peeved Indira first visited the United States before travelling to Moscow.

P.C. Alexander, then Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary, recalls that Zail Singh’s and Narasimha Rao’s names were both floated.26 But southern politicians, especially Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian parties, preferred a Sikh over a Brahmin, and Zail Singh was made President.

As darkness fell, armed Congress thugs fanned out from AIIMS hospital, where Indira’s body was kept, to meet local supporters and arm them with kerosene, knives and voter lists that located where Sikhs lived. A pogrom was being planned.

The next morning, the first Sikh was reported killed. He was to be one of an official total of 2733 knifed, burnt, shot or beaten to death in four days of mob fury.

Rao’s behaviour on these crucial days recalls the lines of Tacitus, the first-century CE Roman historian: ‘The higher a man’s rank, the more eager his hypocrisy, and his looks the more carefully studied, so as neither to betray joy at the decease of one emperor nor sorrow at the rise of another, while he mingled delight and lamentations with his flattery.’

Such an open revolt against his party would have meant political oblivion for Narasimha Rao, who had by now perfected the art of being a loyal number two.

In prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s new Cabinet, Rao was shifted from the home ministry to defence. It was an ever so subtle demotion, and Lutyens insiders noticed.

Ever the technophile, Rao bought manuals to read on his own, and within fifteen days, told the specialist he was redundant. Over the years, Rao would master two computer languages, COBOL and BASIC, and would also go on to write code in the mainframe operating system UNIX. Narasimha Rao’s love for learning had merged with his instinct for political survival.

Pranab left to form his own party.

1985

In 1990, when in the Opposition, Rao would write to the commerce minister, Subramanian Swamy, complaining that the electrolytic manganese metal from abroad was being allowed easy import into India under the ‘open general license’.75 Rao grumbled that this was hurting domestic producers. His complaint reflected economic protectionism at its worst. On foreign policy, ‘he had realized that the old shibboleths, that book, had become obsolete. He needed a new approach and vocabulary.’76 But on the economy, Rao would come to this realization only in the debt-ridden days of June 1991. By 1987, just as Rajiv’s star was on the wane, Narasimha Rao believed his was on the

Rao began to plan for a life outside politics. A life outside Delhi. Worried that he would soon be short of a place to stay when visiting the capital, he had applied to that genteel hospice for geriatrics in the heart of the city, India International Centre.

Rao also used his time to rent an apartment in Bombay, since the possible Rajya Sabha seat from Maharashtra would require proof of residency. To confirm to himself where he belonged, Rao sent fifteen cartons of books—recently moved to Hyderabad from Delhi—to his new home in Bombay.

Instead, he mouthed the platitudes of Congress socialism, promising that if they won the coming elections: ‘[The] Eighth Five Year Plan will be finalized . . . The welfare of kisans, khet mazdoors and workers will continue to be the main concern.’

. while we were hanging around the dead body in 10 Janpath, Pranab [Mukherjee] took me aside and told me that there was general agreement on my being elected C.P [Congress president] and it would be good to clinch it today itself, so as to forestall rumours of internal struggle etc.’

Alexander was a bureaucrat among politicians, and a politician among bureaucrats. An IAS officer from Kerala, he rose to

She also knew the players. Maharashtra chief minister Sharad Pawar, young and pushy, had access to the pockets of his industrialist friends in Bombay. But he had shown disloyalty to the family before, splitting the state Congress to become chief minister in 1978.

On 29 May, at a CWC meeting, Narasimha Rao was elected president of the 105-year-old Congress party. The decision was unanimous—i.e. once Sonia had decided, the rest fell in line. Rumours swirled that Rao, a heart patient, was only a seat-warmer for Sonia.

stark. Salman Khurshid, son of a Union minister and grandson of a president, was at the time a young politician contesting from Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh.

47 A few days before the results, Subramanian Swamy, a Rao supporter, says he chanced upon Sharad Pawar at a diplomatic dinner at the President’s estate on Raisina Hill. ‘I told him clearly to withdraw. I had intelligence dossiers on him.’

On seeing the news, Sanjaya Baru, then editor of the Economic Times, hurried to Rao’s house. The gate was open, unguarded. Baru drove his Fiat car inside, entered the bungalow, drew the living room curtain, and peeked inside. Wearing a white dhoti, white banyan and white slippers, Rao was seated on a sofa talking to a visitor. Rao noticed Baru, whose bureaucrat father he knew from their days in Andhra politics, and beckoned him to enter.

decisions. He was determined that S.B. Chavan, fellow devotee of Swami Ramananda Tirtha, be given a senior Cabinet role, ensuring at least one confidant in his inner circle.

Alexander suggested G.V. Ramakrishna, a bureaucrat who had worked in finance before, and was at the time the chief regulator of India’s capital markets. But Narasimha Rao, whose failure as Andhra chief minister had taught him to be conscious of caste combinations, rejected the name, saying, ‘The principal secretary and prime minister should not both be south Indian Brahmins . . . that would send out the wrong message.’26

The speech, drafted by Jairam Ramesh, showcased the rhetorical weapons that Rao had in his armoury. He had alternated between blaming the reforms on the crisis, placing responsibility on others, citing the interests of the poor, and linking reforms to the vision of a deceased leader.

Rao ensured that the substance remained untouched. Jairam Ramesh worked, instead, to add a longish preamble which linked the new ideas to the fundamental ideals of the Congress, Nehru and Indira Gandhi. It worked. When the Union Cabinet met again, on the morning of 23 July, those who had opposed the policy earlier were reassured by the addition of the preamble.

Scattered through the Arthashastra are a range of upayas (techniques) to prevail upon the enemy.2 These are sama, dana, bheda, maya, upeksa, danda—concessions, bribery, division, trickery, indifference, and finally, punishment.3 The ruler had to attempt conciliation when success was unlikely.

like Niccolò Machiavelli, Chanakya was a moralist, though in a complicated sense of the term. As the philosopher Roger Boesche puts it, ‘Machiavelli and Kautilya shared the ethical conviction that a leader may, and sometimes must, use morally dubious means to obtain a good end . . .’5

The BJP, communists and the Congress had their own complaints against liberalization. The BJP’s trader base welcomed delicensing, but was wary of foreign competition. The communists opposed both, while the Congress party was sensitive to charges of elitism that went against the grain of Nehruvian socialism.

Neither the prime minister nor Manmohan Singh had selected the man running it at the time. But G.V. Ramakrishna, the man who was P.C. Alexander’s first choice for principal secretary to the prime minister, would turn out to be a crucial reformer in the Rao era.

But that very evening, the prime minister took it to President R. Venkataraman, a mentor to Chidambaram. ‘He sent me this letter, and held a press conference before,’ Rao told the President. ‘Did he take your permission before the press conference?’ Venkataraman asked. ‘No,’ replied Rao. ‘Then accept the resignation.’30 Chidambaram was shocked. Even twenty-five years later, both Manmohan Singh and Montek Singh Ahluwalia are puzzled as to why Rao rid himself of a reformer.

As the political scientist Zoya Hasan puts it, ‘The primacy of secular politics and the need to contain BJP’s further expansion was one important reason why economic liberalisation did not face significant hurdles, even though the Congress lacked a majority in Parliament.’39

In January 1993, just a month after the flattening of Babri Masjid, the Narasimha Rao government unveiled a reform that would have normally infuriated the Left. The Reserve Bank of India—with a nod and a wink from the government—announced licences for private banks.

A co-founder of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani, remembers its initial public offering in 1993. ‘Four reforms that the Narasimha Rao government made really benefitted us. [The] abolition of the controller of capital issues allowed free pricing of public issues. We were able to price our own shares . . . It made a big difference. The entry of FIIs [foreign institutional investors] helped. The FIIs understood the new economy. We were able to present ourselves as ethical, transparent. They had an understanding of technology.’45 The liberalization of foreign exchange also made it easier for Infosys—earning in dollars—to expand. But the biggest boost that Narasimha Rao offered software companies was free advertising. As Nilekani says, ‘Just the fact that the economy opened up, was in the news, made foreign companies think of India. That helped us market ourselves to them.’

He visited the World Economic Forum in Davos twice, the first prime minister to do so.

Narasimha Rao made sure to talk to all three industry groups. But it was CII who were given pride of place, always invited to Davos, always accommodated in the prime minister’s aircraft, always the face that greeted foreign investors.

Narasimha Rao himself was sceptical. He told P.V.R.K. Prasad, ‘You don’t understand how dangerous this can be . . . anyone can install a device on his roof and see anything in the world. We have no control.’83

To show that he supported his socialist bureaucrats personally (if not policy-wise), Narasimha Rao decided to ‘gatecrash’ the engagement ceremony of Venugopal’s daughter, Anupama Priyadarshini, in 1992. Anupama was marrying the son of B.N. Yugandhar, Rao’s other left-leaning official. The groom’s name was Satya Nadella.