No national leader who achieved his scale of transformation worked under such constraints. He even lacked the charisma to appeal directly to the people. A usurper of the Nehru-Gandhi throne, Rao did not control his own party. Narasimha Rao worked in a fractious democracy and ran a minority government (the two before him and four after-all minority-lasted barely a year each). They were also carried out in the most trying of circumstances. The transformations Rao brought about were far from inevitable. They would have likely halted reform after the foreign exchange crisis ended in February 1992. But their instincts, and proclamations, were consistently against economic reforms or foreign policy changes. Tiwari, replaced him, they may have temporarily liberalized the economy in 1991.

Had Rao’s party rivals, Arjun Singh or N.D. It is unlikely he would have pursued meaningful change in his second term as prime minister. What would have happened if Rajiv Gandhi had lived on? The idealistic reformer of 1985 had malformed, by 1987, into a cynical politician. They had been unable to make use of these opportunities.įor more proof that India’s transformation was not ordained, consider the alternatives for premiership. Even the specific ideas for foreign policy and economic reforms had been put down on paper some years prior to 1991.įour prime ministers before Narasimha Rao had been presented with the right ‘moment’-in terms of favourable external winds, well-sketched internal ideas, and opportunistic crises-to renovate India.

Two Nehru-Gandhis had been killed in this decade, and violence in Punjab and Assam had already peaked. By the early 1980s, policymakers could objectively measure that welfare schemes were not reaching the poor, and India’s nuclear programme had progressed steadily. Foreign ministry mandarins knew that the Soviet Union was teetering since at least 1985, and India’s détente with the United States had first begun a decade prior to Rao becoming PM.

An IMF loan had been negotiated in 1981-82 but that had not jolted prime minister Indira Gandhi into liberalizing the economy.

Vinay sitapati half lion