Singh was a Jat farm leader of UP, whose grandson Jayant Chaudhary heads RLD. The grandfather gained fame in 1958 for opposing the forced co-relativisation of farms. UP politics was dominated by upper castes in the 1950s. The ambitious Singh sought to change that by fair means or foul. He spearheaded the ‘Aya Ram, Gaya Ram’ phase of politics when defectors kept bringing down governments for personal gain. Defections helped make him UP CM for brief periods in 1967-68 and 1970.
Once, a Bharat Ratna meant you were one of a very few great Indians. Today, it often means your name is being used for electoral gains. The year’s five awardees are L K Advani, Karpoori Thakur, M S Swaminathan, Charan Singh and P V Narasimha Rao. Of these, Charan Singh was the least deserving, and Rao the most.
Singh was a Jat farm leader of UP, whose grandson Jayant Chaudhary heads RLD. The grandfather gained fame in 1958 for opposing the forced co-relativisation of farms. UP politics was dominated by upper castes in the 1950s. The ambitious Singh sought to change that by fair means or foul. He spearheaded the ‘Aya Ram, Gaya Ram’ phase of politics when defectors kept bringing down governments for personal gain. Defections helped make him UP CM for brief periods in 1967-68 and 1970.
Singh was jailed with other non-Congress politicians in the Emergency. When Janata Party won the 1977 elections on an anti-Indira Gandhi platform, he became home minister and later deputy PM. But this was not enough for him. So, in 1979, he again defected to become PM with ‘unconditional support’ from Gandhi.
This was cynical, unprincipled politics at its worst. Voters had elected Janata Party on an anti-Indira platform, yet Singh cynically sought Gandhi’s help to overturn the electorate’s will. But his pleasure at becoming PM was brief. Gandhi withdrew her support in weeks, leaving Singh as the only PM who never faced a single session of Parliament. The main claim to fame of this Bharat Ratna awardee was to show that defections can make you CM, even PM, if you are unprincipled enough.
By contrast, Narasimha Rao was among India’s best PMs. He became PM in 1991 because Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, Sonia Gandhi refused to join politics, and party heavyweights opted for a lightweight who could be dispensed with when required. Rao headed a minority government – Congress was well short of a parliamentary majority and in constant danger of collapse if Opposition parties got together.
In 1991, India had run out of forex and gone to IMF for a humiliating rescue. Soviet and East European communist regimes had collapsed, so the socialist philosophy that propelled Congress for decades needed drastic modification. Rao presided over a bust government with a bust ideology.
This would have tested the strongest politicians. But Rao was a political nobody lacking a parliamentary majority. Bankruptcy obliged India to pledge its gold reserves. Yet, he had the intellectual capacity plus political craftiness to use the crisis as a launching pad to make India a miracle economy growing at 7%.
His masterstroke was to make Manmohan Singh, a technocrat, FM. Comprehensive economic reforms were necessary. Rao told Manmohan Singh, if you succeed, we will both share the credit for it, but if you fail, we will blame you entirely and sack you.
Opposition parties claimed that every new reform was being done on orders from World Bank and IMF, and swore to reverse these when they came to power. However, the reforms succeeded, and India averaged 7% GDP growth between 1994 and 1997. So, even though many other parties came to power later, all continued the same reform path chosen by Rao and Manmohan Singh.
Rao did not want to be called a reformer: that was politically risky, and so he claimed he favoured the middle path. The most dramatic, radical reform in 1991 was the abolition of industrial licences and the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act, ending the licence-permit raj in industry. This reform was announced by the industry minister hours before Manmohan Singh’s first budget. Hence, when the newspapers reported the budget plus delicensing, readers thought Singh was responsible for both.
Who was industry minister who initiated such a radical reform? None other than Rao. He also held the industry portfolio, but did not want to be associated with such a risky reform. His strategy worked. He evaded intra- party critics, yet succeeded in liberalising the economy.
Alas, Rao lost the 1996 elections and was convicted by a lower court (though later acquitted by a higher court). The party virtually ostracised him.
Critics accuse Rao of letting BJP destroy Babri masjid. But, today, we know that BJP had tapped into a deep religious vein that was ultimately bound to win. Babri masjid was destined to be replaced by a Ram temple sooner or later.
Sonia Gandhi agreed to head Congress in 1998 to prevent its disintegration. She led it to electoral victories in 2004 and 2009.
The Gandhis hated the fact that a non-Gandhi launched India’s economic revolution. It sought to erase Rao from party history. But, today, the Gandhis themselves are in danger of irrelevance.
Long after the Gandhi family fades from public memory, Rao will be remembered as the man who launched India’s economic miracle.
This article was originally published by The Economic Times on February 13, 2024.
