The Uncherished, Forlorn, Denigrated, and Pretermitted Legacy of the Lionheart P.V. Narasimha Rao

Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People's Republic of China (PRC), a stalwart and unfaltering Marxist-Leninist [a communist ideology] who promulgated the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the fountainhead of Maoism, and the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) capitulated to a heart attack on September 9, 1976. His economic policies were predisposed to that propounded by Karl Marx. But sooner or later, as all the Socialist-Communist-Marxist paradigms of economies around the globe came to naught, Mao's staunch anti-Capitalist and an idiosyncratic farrago of Socialist and neo-Capitalist policies too turned out to be an out-to-out fiasco.

His next-in-line inheritor Deng Xiaoping, who obtained the paramount Chairmanship by a pacifistic scuffle, was a veracious economic reformist. His policies were juxtaposed to that of Mao and were contemplated to ameliorate the fallacies of the Cultural Revolution. This transition epoch in Chinese economic history is known as the Boluan Fanzheng. It became the substratum of the groundbreaking and momentous program called Opening of China and later the quintessential factor of China's stupendous economic upswing and boom, and now, its hegemony.

Today, June 28th is the centenary of the Indian Deng Xiaoping called Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao, an erudite, perspicacious, detested, and cold-shouldered politician, who by a twist of fate served as the 9th Prime Minister of India and revamped the economic itinerary of the country perpetually by tackling and ironing out the 1991 Economic Crisis that too with a minority government and fallout within his own party, the Indian National Congress (I) and a vehement denunciation by the principal opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He inaugurated bilateral relations with Israel commencing the seminal Look East Policy, resuscitated India's nuclear programme, constructively handled and quelled the insurgency in Punjab, formulated adamant policies against terrorism in Kashmir, and unrolled fragmentary diplomatic channels with Taiwan, the Republic of China (ROC).

Born on June 28, 1921, in stifling British India in Vangara to an agrarian Brahmin couple, in the princely state of Hyderabad, which is now in the modern-day state of Telangana, Rao could confabulate in seventeen languages. The 85% Hindu-dominant princely state was swayed by the plutocratic Muslim Nizam, Asaf Jah Vll. In 1931, at 10, Rao was wedded to Satyamma, who would procreate and cherish 8 children in Vangara and remained nonchalant of his long-drawn but unspirited political career. After concluding high school in 1937, and given his marvelous first rank in the entire state of Hyderabad, Rao resolved to study further rather than cultivate rice lands. 1937 also marked political unrest and intra-communal strife in the Hyderabad state. Congress had grasped Madras and Bombay presidencies, both of which were contiguous with Hyderabad. This further exacerbated the anti-Nizam crusades in the state. In 1938, the seventeen-year-old Rao intoned 'Vande Mataram' with other Hindu students in his college in Warangal for which he was rusticated by the principal. He later went on to Hislop College, Nagpur, to pursue a Master's degree in law. He completed his law from Fergusson College in Pune of the University of Bombay. He also contributed articles under the nom de plume Jaya.

Rao remained a non-passive torchbearer of liberation during the Indian Independence Movement and enlisted in the Indian National Congress after Independence. On the other hand, the Government of India and the Nizam of Hyderabad had locked horns between August 1947 and September 1948. In Sep 1948, India's first Home Minister and Deputy Minister, the rock-ribbed Sardar Patel sent in troops to annex Hyderabad into the Indian Union. This made the 224-year-old despotic Nizam ascendancy succumb, and Hyderabad was manumitted. Rao had ferried munitions to groups engineering the Nizam's annihilation. As a reward, Rao was vouchsafed the post of president of the Karimnagar district Congress and given a ticket to contend in the first elections of the Republic of India. While he came off second-best from the Huzurabad constituency in the Hyderabad state, he was given a state legislature ticket from the Manthani constituency, an obscure battlefield for the despised Rao. He secured the seat adroitly and retained it for the next 20 years.

After fervent wrangling, Hyderabad state was furcated on the rationalization of languages. The Marathi & Kannada-speaking regions were encompassed in the newly formed linguistic states of Maharashtra and Karnataka respectively. And Telangana, where Rao was from – was incorporated in the Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh. In 1962, the forty-one-year-old Rao was bestowed a ministry in the state Cabinet. Rao launched as a minister by holding dual portfolios of law & information. In 1964, he was made minister in charge of Hindu endowments and temples to which he regulated and reformed adeptly. Amelioration of muddles had become the quirk of P.V.N. Rao. Three years later, in 1967, Rao locomoted to the ministry of health and superintended government doctors and hospitals. In 1968, when he was made the education minister of Andhra Pradesh, Rao proscribed private colleges and gave thrust to Telugu as the medium of instruction on all government schools.

His boss Indira Gandhi in the Centre was promulgating Soviet-style economic socialism in the impecunious country. Banks were nationalized, privy purses were annulled, state control over the feeble economy was emboldened, the Indian market was alienated from the global cash-rich market, and the license raj was in full swing. Indira Gandhi also passed anti-monopoly laws that curtailed the growth of companies and the public sector domineered the Indian economy. And intriguingly, the Andhra minister Rao affirmed his boss's menacing injunctions.

In 1971, he was made the puppet Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and enforced land reform stiffly, the renewed land reform was Indira Gandhi's bait to lure the penurious and lower castes to her party. Just after the 1972 Jai Andhra movement, on 10 January 1973, President's rule was foisted in the state and Rao had resigned as Chief Minister.

He had espoused Indira Gandhi in the genesis of the Indian National Congress (I) in 1978 and was instated in the Centre and conferred with sundry portfolios such as Home, Defense, and Foreign Affairs in Indira's and then in her scion Rajiv's "young" and "computerized" Cabinet. After being abominated by the Rajiv-led Congress, he opted to retire in 1991, but suddenly, events took an excruciating turn as the Congress President and ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was liquidated in a suicide bombing in Sriperumbudur, Chennai, in Tamil Nadu by Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), in reprisal of Indian Army's intrusion in the protracted Sri Lankan Civil War [1983-2009] waged by Velupillai Prabhakaran. Congress derived the largest number of seats in the 1991 General Elections and Rao was designated to lead the minority government's way in New Delhi without the succor of the felonious Nehru-Gandhi lineage. He nominated the non-political Oxford-trained economist, Dr. Manmohan Singh, as the Finance Minister, when I.G. Patel repudiated to take the charge. Soon after being throned, he had to tackle and avert the economic crisis of 1991 which made the country stand on the brink of bankruptcy and precariousness. The economic caliber of Dr. Singh and the political shrewdness of Rao had collectively ensued the liberalization & globalization of the Indian market. Foreign investments were opened up, domestic businesses were deregulated, capital markets were reformed, the fiscal deficit was abated, public sector was privatized and investment in infrastructures was augmented, and trade reforms and the regulation of the FDI were transfigured to open India to foreign trade. The FDI in 1995-96 pullulated from $132 million in 1991-92 to $5.3 billion. License raj was expunged and industrial regulation was rationalized. These reforms by the 'Father of Indian Economic Reforms' are a corollary of the Indian economy standing at an estimated $3.05 trillion (nominal) today and will pave the way for PM Modi's holy grail of $5 trillion by FY32.

Rao enlivened the national security and ballistic missiles programme, which eventually resulted in the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests. He supplemented the disbursement on the Indian Army, subdued Punjab, and Kashmir insurrection by instigating the TADA act, bolstered bilateral ties with the West, and confronted and sorted out innumerable impediments in his tenure such as the demolition of the Babri Masjid reportedly by the VHP. Allegations of bungling were made against Rao without attestations and he was disparaged by stooges of Sonia Gandhi in his own party. But later, the Liberhan Commission, after meticulous inquisition and investigation exonerated Rao.

Narasimha Rao's end was swift, the fall steep. He was encircled by legal cases almost immediately after he resigned as Prime Minister. Indictments of corruption were hurled at him. His party shunned him and his bequest, he was compelled to step down as Congress President. In his later life, he faced financial hitches, social adversity, and individual quandary. The ostensible scion Rahul Gandhi once told a senior Congress leader, 'That man is not a Congressman'. On 23 December 2004, Rao bid the endmost goodbye to his mortal body in AIIMS, Delhi, after being tribulated by a heart attack on 9 December 2004. Sonia's confidante, the late Ahmed Patel, sewed up that Rao's body was not cremated in Delhi but Hyderabad. In Delhi, his body was interdicted from entering the AICC building. In Hyderabad, television channels showcased visuals of Rao's half-burnt body, skull still visible, lying abandoned. Stray dogs were pulling at the funeral pyre. Such was Rao's indignity and discomfiture by the Congress party and Sonia Gandhi which bought opprobrium to the public's eye. And mayhap, karma might be penalizing the Nehru-Gandhi family and their private-owned company-cum-party for their mortifying deeds.

Narasimha Rao was candidly, indisputably, & emphatically the pre-eminent, optimal, and unsurpassable but minimal-idolized Prime Minister of India. Alas! the venerated 20th-century messiah has been airbrushed of our history books, but his name will always come inscribed in golden letters whenever there will be an unbiased discourse or tête-à-tête on India's rise as a superpower. The best homage to PM Rao would be to merely concede, confess, or acknowledge Rao's miraculous ventures to overhaul India's global image and domestic robustness. It takes centuries and millenniums to be Narasimha Rao, the half-lion.