Remembering P V Narasimha Rao
People refer to Manmohan Singh as the ‘Accidental Prime Minister’ a movie by the name too has been made but it is P V Narasimha Rao who is the first and original accidental prime minister. The year was 1991. It was an election year and the Congress’s prime ministerial candidate Rajiv Gandhi was campaigning with all his might, to the extent that he even ignored warnings that his life was in danger. As fate would have it, he was killed by a suicide bomber.
P V Narasimha Rao had already packed his bags and was ready to return to Hyderabad for a retired life and told all that he would immerse himself in books. But fate had other things in store for the battle scarred veteran, who was often referred as a ‘modern day Chanakya’. With the untimely death of Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narasimha Rao he was catapulted to the highest office.
For the first time in Indian politics, P V Narasimha Rao brought in an economist and made him the finance minister and the trio- P V Narasimha Rao, Manmohan Singh and Montek Singh Ahluwalia scripted the new economic reforms. India was never going to be the same again.
The new economic reforms opened India to the world, foreign companies who had run away, fed up with the bureaucratic delay (a company wanting to invest in India had to wait for months and at times years to get licence) were once again looking to India.
India owes it to P V Narasimha Rao for dismantling the licence raj system and removing restrictions on import and export. When he took over, the country was in shambles, dollar reserves hit rock bottom and India was surviving by pawning its reserve gold in the bank of England.
He pulled India out from the abysmal GDP growth rate of 3 per cent and put it on course. The accidental prime minister also paved the way for his economist-finance minister to later become the prime minister of India and accelerate economic reforms.
The man from Vangara village in Karimnagar never amassed wealth so much so, he gave away acres of inherited land to the government. He also played an important role in land reforms in the united Andhra Pradesh, knowing well his family too would lose large tracts of land.
When he passed away, his dead body was refused entry into the Congress party headquarters. The man who changed India by taking it forward from the brink of disaster, who was loyal to the party throughout his life found no place.
Today, the Telangana Government is observing year-long centenary celebrations. On June 28, 2021 he would have touched 1oo years.
Little known facts
- He learnt programming on his own. Went on to write code in programming languages Basic, Cobol and Unix.
- The National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986 was singlehandedly formulated by Rao as human resources development minister on his newly-acquired word-processor in a record six months.
- He could speak more than a dozen languages
- Translated Hari Narayan Apte’s Marathi novel ‘Pan Lakshat Kon Gheto into Telugu.
- Translated Hari Narayan Apte’s Marathi novel ‘Pan Lakshat Kon Gheto into Telugu.
- He worked as a journalist and wrote under the pen name Jaya Vijaya for Kakatiya Patrika in 1947.
- He left behind more than 10,000 books and are available at the Swami Ramananda Tirtha Trust in Begumpet in Hyderabad
