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

by Vinay Sitapati

Some months after the elections, Narasimha Rao was present in the room when Rajiv Gandhi told a friend that he intended to open up electronic and computer imports to India. ‘But the old guard in my party will not understand,’ Rajiv complained within earshot of his defence minister. Narasimha Rao said little. That evening, he called up his son, the engineer Prabhakara. The home computer revolution had only begun in the late 1970s, and computers were a novelty even in the United States. ‘You keep talking about this computer thing. What is it? Send me one,’ Rao said.45 The next day, Prabhakara sent a prototype to Delhi. Prabhakara also hired a computer specialist to teach his father. 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.

Narasimha rao's introduction to computers