Whether you like him or not one thing is clear: no Indian Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru had impacted Indian society and economy so enormously as P V Narasimha Rao (1991-96). Yet on his 100th birthday on June 28 not only his party – the Indian National Congress – even the media and scholars almost forgot him. Barring a handful of articles in print media the public opinion-makers, perhaps for reasons best known to them, did not deem it fit to recall his achievements or even discuss his failures.
Though the country is still following the trend set by him and his hand-picked finance minister, Manmohan Singh (who later became the Prime Minister) yet the two men were overlooked and even derided and ridiculed by the same selfish as well as crazy middle class for whom they tried to do their best.
When Rao had to suddenly take over as the Prime Minister after Congress Party’s victory in the Lok Sabha election in May-June 1991, not only India, but even the world was passing through a tumultuous phase.
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in a suicide attack by LTTE militants on May 21 when the election was going on. The tragedy took place after the V P Singh government had in 1989-90 decided to withdraw the Indian Peace Keeping Force from Sri Lanka. The First Gulf War had ended only in February 1991 and the US-led force had snatched back Kuwait from Iraq, then ruled by a stupid dictator, Saddam Hussein. The war led to the repatriation of lakhs of workforce from Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other countries of the region.
The loss of remittance and rise in oil price led to the serious Balance of Payment crisis in India.
Internationally the Soviet Union was on the verge of disintegration and thus in the process led to the growth of US hegemony.
Unmindful of all these serious challenges the Bharatiya Janata Party, then led by Lal Krishna Advani, had only one agenda – the destruction of Babri Masjid. He and the entire Sangh Parivar was so engrossed in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that they were totally clueless about other developments taking place in India and abroad.
From hindsight it can be said that India was a bit lucky that it got a very crafty and tactful man as the Prime Minister at that very crucial phase of history. Now it can easily be argued that no other politician – cutting across the party lines – would have succeeded in pulling the country out of the morass.
Though Rao was a polyglot who could speak, write or understand several languages yet he was a man of few words. He would believe in the policy that action speaks louder than bombastic and meaningless speeches.
By adopting the policy that indecision in itself is a decision, Rao let Babri Masjid be demolished by thousands of supporters of the BJP. In that way, his contribution to the cause of Ram Janmabhoomi movement was much more than Advani and his company. Yet he was not credited for that rare ‘feat’ by the same forces of Hindutva.
Be it the Look East policy (the Narendra Modi government had only changed its name and made it Act East) or establishment of diplomatic ties with Israel, all these major initiatives were taken by him at a time when Non-Aligned Movement started becoming irrelevant. As the external affairs minister in Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi governments, his contributions in re-shaping the foreign policy of India were enormous. Mark it, Rajiv Gandhi became the first Indian PM to visit China in December 1988 after a long gap of 34 years. As Prime Minister too, Rao held the external affairs portfolio for two years.
Thirty years later Rao is still remembered for introducing Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation (LPG) immediately after taking over the charge in 1991. To overcome the Balance of Payment crisis, rupee was devalued. It is up to economists to judge whether his moves were right or wrong – and they have given their opinion – yet no one can deny the fact that all the Prime Ministers after him had to adopt this policy.
At the same time, it is being argued that in his own tenure of five years this policy did not yield the desired result and that was the reason why he was voted out of power in 1996.
But the other side of the story is that the policy of LPG at least stemmed the rot and put a brake on decline of the Indian economy. It is much after the ouster of Rao that his policies started giving results.
Yet there is another point of view which is hardly highlighted. That is the LPG would not have succeeded in giving results had India not been, by default, benefited by the advent of internet on the global scene by mid-1990s.
As India has a sizeable English-knowing population – thanks largely to the British rule – global Information Technology revolution benefited it much more than many other third world countries.
So in a matter of couple of years the IT revolution opened job opportunities for millions of youths, especially engineers, computer experts, MBAs, financial analysts, media professionals, etc.
It is the irony of history that all these global transformations started taking place a couple of years after the defeat of Rao and soon after the coming to power of Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP government, which on the economic front can at best be called a bundle of contradictions.
While the confused Sangh Parivar continued to debate and quarrel between swadeshi (indigenous or Indian) or videshi (foreigners), by the end of its tenure in 2004 the growth rate of India was much higher than what was during the Rao government – thanks largely to the global IT revolution.
It is still debatable whether the LPG would have succeeded had India not be a major beneficiary of global software revolution. But there is another opinion; that is, India became a favourite destination of the big BPO firms only because it had opened up its economy in 1991 and the previous Rajiv Gandhi government had started computerisation campaign.
Curiously, what is often overlooked is the fact that the LPG was not just an economic policy as it is generally viewed. As Rao was a real Chanakya, he with one stone hit several high-flying birds. The introduction of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation punctured the relevance of Mandal Commission recommendation which was implemented by the V P Singh government in August 1990. As per the report, 27 per cent jobs were reserved for the backward castes.
Though the implementation of Mandal Report might have helped OBC leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav, etc. politically consolidate their position the LPG, to much extent, cancelled out its socio-economic impact. The upper castes got big opportunity in private sector not only in India, but even abroad – and thus they bounced back.
But what the champions of LPG forget is that Indian economy was benefited by another development, which does not get its due. This phenomenon preceded 1991 reforms – that is the role of remittance. Not only is India the top remittance earner of the world millions of countrymen working abroad directly or indirectly help the growth of economy in several ways.
Besides, the job opportunity abroad, especially in the Gulf countries, to much extent, mitigated the problem of unemployment in India.
Here one need not forget that the Balance of Payment crisis started in 1991 just after the First Gulf War which rendered lakhs of Indians, who were working in West Asia, unemployed.
In cricketing terms, it can be said that Narasimha Rao played his innings as top order batsmen play in the first 15 overs in One-Day Internationals in which full advantage is taken as there is no field restrictions.
It was left up to Manmohan Singh, the finance minister during the introduction of LPG, to play a somewhat different role in his innings as PM. In 10 years, that is between 2006 and 2016, India pulled out 27 crore people from below the poverty line to above poverty line. Once again, the media did not give due credit to this achievement. Nor the party in power then deemed it fit to highlight it.
In contrast there is another set of politicians who have mastered the art of marketing the mess created by them.