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

by Vinay Sitapati

Any semblance of inner-party democracy had also long been displaced by a ‘high command’ hand-picked by the Nehru-Gandhis. The conversion of the 106-year old party into a family enterprise had resulted in its ‘de-institutionalisation’.4 It had also diminished its regional leadership. Mindful of a glass ceiling above, state bosses either chose to leave or plotted in the shadows. A final feature of the Congress of 1991 was that the party ‘system’5—where ideological debate would take place through opposing groups within the Congress—had since been replaced by personality-centric factions squaring off at the state and Central level. These struggles involved very little principle; they were simply squabbles over patronage. This was the organization that Narasimha Rao inherited: absent in the periphery, bloated in the middle, hollow to the core.