India's liberaliser leaves behind disputed legacy

Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who set in motion India's economic liberalization more than a decade ago, died on Thursday.

Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who set in motion India's economic liberalization more than a decade ago, died Thursday at a New Delhi hospital at age 83, the speaker of Parliament's lower house said.

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Rao, an astute and dour-faced politician, was prime minister from 1991 to 1996, taking office at a time when India's state-controlled economy was in deep turmoil with the state treasury facing near bankruptcy.

Rao was admitted on Dec. 9 to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences hospital in New Delhi complaining of breathlessness. He died there on Thursday, parliament Speaker Somnath Chatterjee said. He was hailed for taking the courageous decision to throw open the country to foreign investment despite opposition from allies and others.

Rao, whose famous pout was a cartoonists' delight, did not not contest the 1991 elections and had virtually wound up his establishment here reconciling to political retirement.

But fate willed otherwise. After Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, he became the consensus candidate for the Congress President's post that put him in the Prime Minister's seat after the elections.

He headed a minority government for sometime and later acquired a majority strength in the Lok Sabha under controversial circumstances which his detractors said was acquired through dubious means.

After he relinquished power in 1996, he went through a difficult period facing trials in the infamous JMM MPs' bribery case and Lakhubhai Pathak case.

While the lower court convicted him in the bribery case, the Delhi High Court exonerated him later. He was also discharged in the St Kitts forgery case.

One who earned the soubriquet "Chanakya" for his manoeuvering skills, he also came under attack from his own party colleagues and opposition leaders when his government pursued the "Hawala" scam in which they were implicated. The scandal, however, finally met a judicial death.

One black spot of his rule was the demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya in December 1992 and nationwide communal riots that followed.

He was Union Home Minister when riots erupted after the assasination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and even then he was blamed for "criminal inaction".

In 1993, a year after the securities scam, big bull Harshad Mehta created a sensation when he alleged to have handed over to him a suitcase with Rs one crore at his residence. It took a while for Rao to come out of the political crisis that the muck had left behind.

Not many expected him to remain Prime Minister for long, some even called him the "stop-gap" premier given his age, ailing health and lack of charisma and grassroots support.

Yet, confounding political pundits, the "meek inheritor" soon emerged as a "power player" and he was in splits watching one party split after another including Telugu Desam, Shiv Sena and Janata Dal.

But one scam after another made his government highly unpopular, culminating in defeat of the Congress in the May 1996 Lok Sabha polls. In September, Rao quit the post of the party President. After being chargesheeted in St Kitts forgery and JMM bribery case, he also gave up the CPP leadership.

After Sonia Gandhi took over the party reins he did not contest Lok Sabha polls.

Rao was back to what he did best -writing- and came out with an over 700-page semi-autobiographical tone, The Insider, released by his arch political rival but close friend and another former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

His true gift lay in putting across party ideology, and he played a key role in drafting the political, economic and foreign policy resolutions for the AICC session at Kamagatur Nagar in Chandigarh.

After emergency was lifted, he was one of the few prominent Congressmen who withstood the Janata wave and entered the Lok Sabha from Hanamkonda in 1977.

Politics, however, was just one of the many interests of this multi-faceted personality. A Sahitya Ratan in Hindi, Rao was fluent in several languages, including Spanish.

Taking a cue from the the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Rao was over 60 years old when he became a computer addict spending hours on his word processors when most politicians were not computer literate.

The word processors came in handy to draft the New Education Policy when he was asked to head the newly created Human Resource Development Ministry in 1986. The Navodaya Vidyalaya scheme was his brainchild.

Rao's Prime Ministership also marked an upswing in Indo-US relations after a summit meeting with the then American President Bill Clinton in Washington in 1994.

A science and law graduate from Nagpur University, Rao later lectured at the universities in the US and Germany. He always had a way with words.

A day before he was sworn in as Prime Minister, he said, "As an individual, I feel overwhelmed, utterly humble. But as repesentative of a great party, I feel like a colossus".

Known for his conciliatory manner and ideological firmness, Rao always held his own in any discussion without threatening anybody, making him a successful External Affairs Minister in Indira and Rajiv cabinets. His multi-lingual skills always came in handy.

After the 1992 Ayodhya demolition, he pacified Muslim clerics in chaste Urdu. Later, he was quoting slokas from the Gita while addressing the IAS probationers at his residence.