Book Review: 1991 - How PV Narasimha Rao made History by Sanjaya Baru

This slim volume by Sanjaya Baru seeks to revise the prevalent narrative that sees Manmohan Singh as the prime mover of the 1991 economic reforms and to shift the “balance of credit”, so to speak, in favour of PV Narasimha Rao.

By itself, this should not be a very radical claim. Rao was prime minister at the time and a momentous change in policy such as opening the Indian economy would have his imprimatur. That it should seem subversive is a fallout of the murky intra-Congress party politics that ensures Rao is today remembered, on the rare occasions that he is, for the (albeit many) lows of his regime such as the Babri Masjid demolition and the JMM bribery case.

It’ll surprise many, thus, that Baru, a journalist who was media advisor to Manmohan Singh, talks of Rao as the hero, not just of the 1991 economic reforms but also of other important about-turns, most importantly in foreign policy, when he recalibrated India’s commitment to non-alignment and established diplomatic relations with Israel. 

To be fair, by limiting himself to just one year in Rao’s tenure, 1991, Baru keeps out the messy stuff. As P Chidambaram, commerce minister in Rao’s regime, pointed out at the book’s launch in Delhi, Rao may have been a hero in 1991, but the narrative would have been very different.

Baru’s narrative also has a villain – the Nehru-Gandhi family and their coterie. He is scathing in his indictment, especially of Rajiv Gandhi for his short-sighted move to withdraw support to the Chandra Shekhar government in 1991 before it could pass the general budget plunged India into financial crisis.

Baru here finds one more reason to valorise Rao – the fact that Rao became the first non-Nehru-Gandhi to complete his five-year term despite not having a numerical majority in Parliament. Referring to Rao’s speech at the 1992 Tirupati plenary session of the Congress when he declared elections to the CWC – the first time in years – he declares this was the one time the party seemed to shake off the shackles of dynasty. It won’t endear him to the current denizens of the family or their loyalists, whom he’s already riled with his 2014 book The Accidental Prime Minister.

“I have nothing against Rahul or Sonia Gandhi,” he says. “This is not a personal vendetta. I come from a Congress family. My great grand uncle worked with Jawaharlal Nehru. My father was a Youth Congress leader who hoisted the first national flag on the Madras Christian College campus. The Congress is the party of the national movement, built by thousands and thousands of Indians across the country, over generations. And it has been reduced to a party of one family. To me, that is unacceptable.”      

Setting aside the political controversies, 1991... is a good read for another reason – it is a concise, lucid and a comprehensive analysis of recent economic events. With more than half the population of the country today born after 1991, such accounts in history are valuable as cautionary tales about how political exigencies can make or mar (as it often does) economic policy. It’s a lesson that can, and does, hold lessons for today’s times given how hard prime minister Narendra Modi has found it to bring in a second generation of economic reforms.  

Modi, feels Baru, would have done well to have learnt from Rao. “The lesson for every politician from Rao is that do what you want to do in the first few months, then you have five years to do damage control. Rao did all his hard policy announcements in the first month – the die was cast. I think Atal Bihari Vajpayee learnt it. He became prime minister in March and the nuclear tests happened in May. In my view, Modi wasted his first year in office. He paid the price for it – with the Delhi assembly and Bihar results.”