(Dr R K Chadha)
Two weeks from now India will be remembering two of its giant political leaders who sank their differences and decided to take the country on the path that led India to overtake their colonial master, UK to become the 5th largest economy. This happened in the 75th year of India’s Independence when the country is celebrating Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav to kick-start a journey of next 25 years, a period, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the Amrit Kaal, a term derived from Vedic literature meaning the beginning of the best and most auspicious time for the country.
P V Narasimha Rao, the ninth Prime Minister of India, who pulled India out of the debt default and economic collapse by introducing reforms and liberalization policies in 1991 will be remembered on his 18th Death anniversary on 23rd December and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was in the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on his 98th Birth anniversary on December 25 for not opposing these game-changing reforms. In 1991, when Narsimha Rao formed a minority government he was pulled out of a retiring mode and as an astute politician he put his best foot forward when he decided to bring in a non-political person and an economist Dr. Manmohan Singhas, as his Finance Minister and gave him a free hand to implement his ideas on these reforms. And as they say, the rest is history as India followed a trajectory that brought the country to this stage with successive governments adding their might in spite of political differences and minor hiccups.
This is to the credit of BJP that they never claimed for the pivotal role played by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, then in Opposition, in supporting the Prime Minister of the country in his effort to bring India out of this crisis. As the insider’s information goes, Narsimha Rao and Dr. Manmohan Singh realizing the grave economic crisis that India faced approached Vajpayee and apprise him of the situation and requested him not to make any attempts to topple their minority government, while they took drastic measures to pull the country out of the mess created by their predecessors.
Vajpayee simply said “Mujhe Kyna Karna Hoga Aap Bataiye”? (Tell me what you need me to do?). And as a man of his words, he quietly extended his fullest support keeping aside their differences and never once spoke about the precarious conditions of the country or criticized when the Nation’s Gold was mortgaged to London and Switzerland Banks for a brief period. Had he acted like a typical Opposition leader to oppose everything a government does, Indian history at 75 would have been different and economy would have been in doldrums.
Just for a moment if we fast forward to present times, can we find a single politician from the Opposition who can stand up with the ruling party, BJP in national interest while they bring in bills for nation’s growth, harmony and unity like Farmers Bill, Abolition of Article 370, Triple Talaq, CAA or the recent Uniform Civil Code in the Rajya Sabha, to name a few?
The answer is unfortunately NO. They have opposed each of these game-changing Bills brought by Narendra Modi’s government. On the contrary we find these politicians asking the government to provide proofs of the brave efforts of our army during Uri and Balakot strikes or while giving a ‘red face’ to pint size Chinese soldiers in Galwan valley in India’s Askai Chin region, which they occupied using their Salami Slicing policy from 1952 to 1964. The recent clash on December 9, 2022 between the Indian and Chinese troops at the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh is yet another example of the entire Opposition party’s desperation to corner the government before waiting for the Defense Minister to make a statement in the Parliament. The politics in India is touching a new low, today. You will not find a single leader from Opposition parties, be it Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banarjee, Sharad Pawar, Arvind Kejriwal, Nitish Kumar, Yadav sons, Aklesh Yadav, Asaduddin Owaisi or the Gupkar Alliance of Jammu and Kashmir, who will put nation’s interests before self.
Every one of us has to understand this while we go to polls next year. We know that no political party is perfect but we have to choose a party that has national interest at their core ideology. The economic ups and downs keep happening but we have to think of long-term interest of the country and march ahead as we are doing now. In my opinion the Nation should ever be indebted to both Narsimha Rao and Vajpayee for their magnanimity and love for the country that allowed India to overcome a period of economic uncertainty when Dr. Manmohan Singh, a Technocrat, handpicked by the Prime Minister, unleashed a series of reforms he promised in his budget speech that changed India, forever. I vividly remember 24th July 1991 the day that paved a new path for India’s economic policy. Next day, I waited anxiously for the newspaperman to turn up but then gave in to my excitement as I ran to a nearby pan shop that sells newspapers in the morning to know the details of the budget.
As I was reading the newspaper I had Goosebumps. I pinched myself to believe what I was reading as the slew of reforms was unbelievable. Dr. Manmohan Singh has changed the entire game. I imagined how people must have felt on 15th August 1947 when we got independence. I felt that once again we have become a young and a powerful nation ready to brush shoulders with world economic powers.
I read Dr. Manmohan Singh uttered Bismil Azimabadi Urdu couplet “sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai, dekhana hai zor kitna bazua katil mein hai” in his budget speech. He has announced the arrival of India on the world’s stage.
Later, I read an interview of Narsimha Rao, post budget, who narrated the sequence of interactions he had with Dr. Manmohan Singh before the budget details were finalized. He said, “He (Dr. Manmohan Singh) came to me with his radical budget proposals. I told him if this succeeds, we would have a new India. We will all bask in the glory. But if it fails, the entire blame will be put on you, to whom Dr. Singh readily agreed with a mysterious smile”. Continuing with his interview he further elaborated on what transpired between them. He said, “I told Dr. Singh, you are not a politician; a politician would have it the other way round. Anyways, go ahead, you have our support”.
This kind of trust between a leader and his chosen pupil tells volumes about the results that can be achieved with this kind of camaraderie between colleagues in a team. In Cricket parlance, if Narsimha Rao would have been the captain of the Indian Cricket team, then Dr. Singh was definitely thebest player in his team, a’ la Kohli! In all fairness to Narsimha Rao’s honesty, he gave the entire credit of reforms to the ideas of Dr. Manmohan Singh, which looks so common and acceptable today, but at that time they were not less than an economic revolution. This is the quality of a true leader who acknowledges and gives the credit where it is due. People may still have opinions and debates as to who was Numero Uno in India’s economic turnaround; one or two examples of reforms from Narsimha Rao’s interview that gave full credit to Dr. Singh will suffice to settle the issue.
The first case is of Customs, where he allowed for the first time the legal import of gold by the passengers and by the banks. All the imports of consumer goods were banned earlier and even a calculator or a video camera had to be smuggled, as it was not allowed, then. He, however, liberalized imports and reduced the customs duties drastically against the opinion of the then politicians and economists!
The second example is that, prior to 1991 one needed a Central Excise license to manufacture anything in the country that needed to be renewed from time to time. He introduced the concept of one time registration and declared that you have to just apply for registration before you start manufacturing. If department fails to act on the application, registration would be deemed to be granted within 7 days. This was a historic reform that killed the License Raj to the discomfort of most of the politicians in the country at that time. It is ironic that a man who as a Finance Minister may not find a parallel in India’s post independence history failed as a Politician when he became the Prime Minister of India in 2004. Though, Dr. Manmohan Singh showed a few sparks of brilliance during his tenure as PM when the country’s GDP growth crossed 10% in 2006-07 and when he signed the 123 Agreement with USA opening the way for nuclear fuel supply to India he did not prove himself an assertive Prime Minister.
In the hindsight, Dr. Manmohan Singh as a Finance Minister can be compared to our present day Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar, another Technocrat whose contributions in bringing India on the world stage cannot be compared with any other minister in post Independence era. A country can progress only when their Prime Ministers or Presidents make right decisions in nation’s interest keeping aside their hunger for power and self-interests. After all, in democracies decisions are always political unlike in countries ruled by kings as in most of the Middle East or by Military juntas in other places. Both are a form of dictatorship governance.It is to the credit of late Narsimha Rao and our present Prime Minister Narendra Modi who brought two brilliant technocrats, Dr. Manmohan Singh and S. Jaishankar into the Indian political system to create a magical combination that is there for the world to see. The only absentee is an opposition leader of the character and caliber of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The search is still on but chances look bleak looking at the present crop of politicians in the country.
