Rao dies, reforms legacy lives

PV NARASIMHA RAO: 1921-2004

He was known as a "teflon" Prime Minister because no dirt ever stuck on him. But Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao, who once said with complete seriousness that not taking a decision also sometimes meant taking a decision, died here today, his legal slate wiped clean of all criminal and corruption charges.

Known as the father of Indian economic reform, Rao took a calculated political risk in appointing Manmohan Singh as finance minister and pursued Rajiv Gandhi's policies and legacies as best as he could, but fell demonstrably foul of his widow.

The ostensible reason for this was ideological "" the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the devaluation of the Rajiv Gandhi murder trial and the growing distance between 10, Janpath and 7, Race Course Road.

However, Sonia Gandhi kept up her appearances and chose to take the reins of the Congress into her hand only after it became clear after 1996 that the Congress was on the brink of disintegration.

It is well known that after Rajiv Gandhi was killed in 1991 in the middle of elections, and the Congress got a majority in the new Parliament, the search began for a consensus candidate and Rao was initially nowhere in the picture.

Sharad Pawar made a bid for the job but Rao's friends and associates did a god job of bludgeoning MPs into voting for Rao. The fact that PV had not contested the Lok Sabha election preparatory to winding up and retiring to Hyderabad was a quirk of destiny.

But Rao was an able soldier of the party and he consolidated his position rapidly. The Rao government began as a minority government but managed a majority, his detractors said, through fair means and foul. At least one of the cases of bribery against Rao in which he was acquitted related to this period.

He was frequently called "Chanakya" for his manoeuvring skills, but came under attack from his own party colleagues and Opposition leaders when his government pursued the "hawala" scam in which they were sought to be implicated. The scandal, however, finally met a judicial death but not until it had made him some implacable enemies like Madhavrao Scindia, for instance.

Some political decisions he took were plain bad judgment. Deciding to align with J Jayalalithaa just before the 1996 Lok Sabha elections caused such indignation in the Congress unit of Tamil Nadu that another veteran, GK Moopanar, and erstwhile lieutenant P Chidambaram, floated the Tamil Maanila Congress, a regional outfit that trounced the AIADMK in the 1996 elections.

If Rao left a legacy as prime minister, it was LPG (Liberalisation, Privatisation, Globalisation) with Manmohan Singh. Though lore has it that Rao warned Singh that he could take the credit for success but he would be alone if his policies met with failure, he nevertheless stood by Singh during the stock market manipulation by Big Bull Harshad Mehta, a scandal in which he, too, was implicated when eminent criminal lawyer Ram Jethmalani claimed that Mehta had brought Rs 1 crore in a suitcase to pay off Rao at his official residence.

Investigation could prove nothing, but the incident proved that India was still in the grey zone between coming to terms with an open, vibrant market economy and the old command economy.

It was hard to relate personally to Rao because of his inscrutability and his signature pout that never revealed what he was really thinking. Colleagues Arjun Singh, ND Tewari and Sheila Dikshit quit the party after Singh conducted a long polemic on secularism with Rao.

So badly neglected was the party that the Congress shed few tears when he quit the party presidentship in 1996.

But it cannot be denied that Rao was one of the more educated leaders in politics. He had a felicity with languages that few could rival "" he was reputed to be able to speak a dozen languages and could quote Sanskrit verses from the Gita without any difficulty.

Rao wrote a semi-autobiographical book called "The Insider" that describes the political career of a conservative revolutionary. "As an individual, I don't count for anything. People come and go, but it is the nation that counts," Rao wrote in an introduction to the novel which he said was a biography of the nation and not himself.

He presided over some of the most interesting years in India's recent history. In fact, he made history for India.