The Rao years | The inscrutable reformer

In retrospect, it was the Congress (I)’s darkest hour. Not even the sycophantic hosannas to the Emergency, its over-enthusiastic involvement in Sanjay Gandhi’s ruthless family planning drive or its strident defence of Rajiv Gandhi over the Bofors scandal could match this one moment of political madness. Sonia herself restored sanity, giving the 107-year-old party a semblance of self-respect and a chance to elect a man who was nothing more than a compromise candidate, a perennial also-ran with no popular base of his own.

Narasimha Rao knew 17 languages, but he didn’t speak much. That was the trait that got him the job. Sonia Gandhi was traumatised by husband Rajiv’s assassination and, a recluse herself, not initiated into the family vocation of her marital home. Taking over a minority government in stormy times was not an option. Someone who had never raised his voice as a cabinet minister under Indira and Rajiv—the classic, khadi-clad Congress amanuensis—seemed a safe choice. At worst, he would do nothing.'

Initially, that forecast seemed accurate, and everything about this septuagenarian from Andhra Pradesh began bothering Delhi’s power-watchers. As the first prime minister from South India, Rao anyway appeared foreign to those used to noisy bazookas from the Gangetic backyard. They couldn’t decipher his gnomic silences, and they read his infamous pout as prevarication.

As it happened, Rao did everything. With an attitude that would amount to audacious if it did not come from such a savant, he bodily lifted India from the groove it had been on for over four decades—35 years later, we are still on it.

The economic liberalisation of 1991 may have been an idea whose time had pretty much broken through the front door, but Manmohan Singh as finance minister needed a carte blanche—and cover fire. India’s mental axis was still attuned to the old socialist ways; even its foreign policy was wedded to ‘bloc’ thinking. His quiet ministrations undid all that inertia of habit. Even when they hounded him out with a hail of allegations, they hadn’t quite fathomed that he had already changed their world.