BEING PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA - P V N RAO

Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao (P V Narasimha Rao)

Tenure: - 21 June 1991 To 16 May 1996. 4 Years 330 Days.

Party:-INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS

Family and Political Background:-

P V Narasimha Rao was born on 28 June 1921 at Lakkampalli Village of Narasampet in Warangal district, Hyderabad now in Telangana. Popularly known as PV, he completed part of his primary education in Katkuru village of Bheemdevarapalli Mandal in Karimnagar district. He completed Bachelor's degree from the Arts collage of the Osmania University. He went to Hislop College, now under Nagpur University, completed a Master's degree in Law. Rao's mother tongue was Telugu; he had an excellent command of Marathi too. Eight other Indian languages Hindi, Oriya, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Sanskrit, Tamil and Urdu plus English, French, Arabic, Spanish, German and Persian international languages he was able to speak fluently.

P V Narasimha Rao was an active freedom fighter during the Indian Independence movement and joined full-time politics after independence as a member of the Indian National Congress. He was very near for political retirement in 1991. Due to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi make him a comeback. Congress had won the 1991 election with largest number of seats. P V Narasimha Rao got the opportunity to become first person outside the Nehru-Gandhi family for Prime Minister.

Work Performance:-

Excellent....

P V Narasimha Rao’s tenure can be described as an Excellent period for India. When Rao became the Prime Minister, India was facing worst time after independence due to high fiscal deficit, higher defence expenditure, unnecessary subsidies (for Vote Bank politics), rising debt payments. Nation was on the edge of bankruptcy. When he became Prime Minister Forex reserves was only for 15 days, after these India had to declare bankruptcy. India began to rely on external funds which led to a cycle of vicious borrowing from foreign banks. In 1991, all hell broke loose and India had run out of forex. India had to airlift 47 tonnes of Gold reserves as a pledge to IMF for a loan which had led to Indians hanging their heads in shame.

It was sure, some serious and historical bold steps to be taken. Before him two options was there. First to open the economy and second was to follow Congress Party ideology.  Open up Economy means negligence of Nehruvian economy and he would have to face the wrath of his own party. If he wanted to keep his party happy, he had to allow the economy to collapse. Nehru’s economic model was oriented towards Licence Raj, red tape & bureaucracy leading to large scale corruption had resulted in 2-3% annual growth and the subsequent protection of such model by Indira Gandhi had led the nation into darkness and economic standstill.

In this fix condition, fortunately he chose to open up economy and he initiated reforms process. Dr. Manmohan Singh, a renowned economic professor was invited to form a committee to formulate reforms in the best interest of the nation. Complete freedom & support was given to Dr. Manmohan team and shielded the team from Congress party so that they could do their jobs effectively.

Within few months, the measures began to bore fruits and the economy began to recover. A significant part of the public sector was privatised, license raj was abolished leading to entrepreneurship & competition, state control & red tape was reduced and policies on foreign investments were modified to allow for more investments. Economic Liberalisation of India in real words showed its effect in many ways. IT revolution made India becoming the Knowledge Hub. Reverse brain drain happened due to opportunities began in India. India noticed high economy growth. All the above mentioned positive outcomes would not have been possible if not for the bold measures taken by PV who cared for the nation and not for his party. Due to these reasons, his own party has been ignoring and degrading him and even today does not want to give him the credit for his bold steps.

Rao also energized the nuclear and ballistic missiles program. He increased military spending and set the Indian Army on course to fight the emerging threat of terrorism and insurgencies. It was during his term that terrorism in Punjab was defeated.

Rao launched the Look East foreign policy, which brought India closer to ASEAN. The 'cultivate Iran' policy was pushed through vigorously by him. These policies paid rich dividends for India in March 1994, when Benazir Bhutto's efforts to have a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir failed, with opposition by China and Iran.

Rao's crisis management after the March 12, 1993 Bombay bombings was highly praised. He personally visited Bombay after the blasts and after seeing evidence of Pakistani involvement in the blasts, ordered the intelligence community to invite the intelligence agencies of the US, UK and other West European countries to send their counter-terrorism experts to Bombay to examine the facts for themselves.

Few credential steps:-

His cabinet included Sharad Pawar, himself a strong contender for the Prime Minister's post, as Defence Minister. He also broke a convention by appointing a non-political economist Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister. He also appointed Subramanian Swami, an Opposition party member as the Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade. This has been the only instance that an Opposition Party member was given a Cabinet rank post by the ruling party. He also sent Opposition leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to represent India in a UN meeting at Geneva.

Miss:-

Babri Mosque: - Members of the VHP demolished the Babri Mosque (which was constructed by India's first Mughal emperor, Babar) in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. The site is believed by Hindus to be the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama and is believed by the Hindu Community to be a place of a Hindu temple created in the early 16th century. The destruction of the disputed structure, which was widely reported in the international media, unleashed large scale communal violence, the most extensive since the Partition of India.

Corruption: - Like all former Prime Minister, he also failed to deal with corruption. On the contrary he has to face some corruption based allegations from which he came out successfully, later.

Tragedy:- P V Narasimha Rao, the most under-rated Prime Minister of India by his own party Congress due to his courage of putting nation benefit greater than party benefit. He should be credited as one of the makers of modern India. India changed image of snake charmers to a major IT hub is due to his bold economic reforms. India achieved political independence in 1947 but had to wait till 1991 for economic independence.

His own protégé Man Mohan Singh was in no mood to allot a site for his cremation in the NCR area to this former Prime Minister of the Nation when he died at Delhi in 2004. His body was flown to Hyderabad, and was cremated with full state honours there.

P V Narasimha Rao is the Forgotten Hero and architect of modern India.

Even after doing very well performance by P V Narasimha Rao as a Prime Minister, congress lost General Election in 1996. But on other side, no other party has got enough seats to form the government.  Bhartiya Janata Party emerged as single largest party but not in able to form the government alone. President Shankar Dayal Sharma invited BJP to form Government and Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the Prime Minister for the first time. But due to shortfall in majority and no other party came forward to support BJP, he resigned within 13 days.

Bhartiya Janata Party 161, Congress 140, Janata Dal 46 and Left Front 44. Other regional Parties got 100. This was the result of 1996 general election.

e-BOOK - BEING PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA