Rao was also pragmatic enough to know the battles which he could not win. When the Opposition was livid that Manmohan Singh had allocated 100 crore rupees—then a considerable sum—to the newly formed Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Rao swiftly cancelled the grant, but only after Sonia Gandhi had also rejected it.95 When protests over the removal of subsidies threatened to upturn his entire agenda, he ordered Manmohan Singh to decrease the hike in fertilizer prices from 40 to 30 per cent.96 The technique of first increasing the price then rolling it back by a meagre amount, punctured the protests while
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