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Friday, Dec 24, 2004

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A master tactician who left his opponents speechless

By Vidya Subrahmaniam

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and others paying their last respects before the mortal remains of P.V. Narasimha Rao in New Delhi on Thursday. — PTI

CHENNAI, DEC. 23. A decade ago, on December 8, 1994 to be precise, a leading newspaper front-paged a scoop on P.V. Narasimha Rao's health. Headlined, "PM may be more unwell than he looks," the report alleged that Mr. Rao had been diagnosed with emphysema, a lung complication linked to increased chances of a heart attack, and said the Prime Minister had been advised to "undergo a heart bypass surgery in the next three months." The newspaper went on to suggest that Mr. Rao's medical condition was serious enough to cause him to curtail his official engagements.

Mr. Rao breathed his last this Thursday, a whole 10 years after he was judged too unwell to carry on with his prime ministerial duties. And after living life to the full, experiencing equally the thrill of fame, name and fortune and the ignominy of losing it all. The resilience was typical of the man.

Mr. Rao had once before been written off, on the eve of the 10th general elections in May 1991. The Congress,of which he was a key member and whose election manifesto he had authored, did not press him to contest that election. Yet only two months later, he was to find that far from leaving him alone, cameras were to record for posterity every faltering step he took — physically and metaphorically.

Mr. Rao had reconciled himself to a quiet, non-controversial life surrounded by his favourite books — he would tell reporters not to waste their time on an old man who was out of it all — when destiny beckoned, and pushed him right into the thick of action.

Unlikely Prime Minister

Mr. Rao ought to have been the last man to fill in for the youthful Rajiv Gandhi, and not only because he was well past his prime. He just was not prime ministerial material, or at least not so in the sense his predecessors were, barring perhaps Morarji Desai who, like Mr. Rao, was perceived to be severe, distant and altogether lacking in charm. These failings showed up even more glaringly when compared with the attractions that the Congress' First Family seemed to offer — from the common touch of Nehru through the imperious elegance of Indira Gandhi to the boyish charm of Rajiv Gandhi.

Rare breed of politicians

However, Mr. Rao's scholarship and intellect made him a rare breed of politician; yet the very qualities that set him apart from his colleagues put him at a disadvantage when it came to courting the masses. Nor was Mr. Rao's career studded with spectacular milestones. Far from it. He had a troubled tenure as Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and did not particularly shine in any of the portfolios he held in the Governments of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi (he was the Home Minister during the November 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom).

As if this baggage was not enough, Mr. Rao also had to contend with the stressful circumstances (in the backdrop of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination) of his elevation to Prime Minister, his party's lack of a clear majority in Parliament and the insurgency in Punjab, not to mention the near-bankrupt state of the economy. His Government had the look of a loser. And yet, Prime Minister Rao was a revelation. In place of the expected diffidence, there was a boldness of approach that left his opponents — both in the Bharatiya Janata Party and within the Congress — speechless. In one sweep, the combination of Mr. Rao and Manmohan Singh dismantled the licence-quota legacy of the previous Congress governments, unmindful of the charge that the duo was fulfilling a mandate dictated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The BJP was upset for a different reason: Mr. Rao's Congress seemed to have stolen its liberalisation plank.

Mr. Rao also proved to be a master tactician. He held elections to the Punjab Assembly and evolved a consensual style that saved his Government from premature death. However, as it often happens in politics, successes carried the seeds of failure.

The lack of a clear ideological vision (his opponents accused him of pandering to soft Hindutva) meant that he would stand a mute witness to the collapse of the Babri Masjid.

The shame of December 6, 1992 was a personal blot that Rao could never erase; the brutal act also alienated the minority community from the Congress and polarised the polity to the subsequent advantage of the BJP.

A survivor

Belying all predictions, the Rao Government survived its full term. Yet along the way, Mr. Rao had transformed — from a Prime Minister celebrated for keeping a statesmanly distance from worldly concerns to a Prime Minister totally immersed in statecraft. The scandals were quick in coming — the Harshad Mehta suitcase episode, the Lakhubhai Pathak case, the bribery charge relating to the purchase of votes from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha Members of Parliament, the St. Kitts affair, land allotment irregularities and so on.

Mr. Rao was India's first non-Gandhi family Prime Minister to last an entire term.

Yet, he was also India's only former Prime Minister to be convicted for corruption (he was later acquitted in the JMM case and discharged in the St. Kitts forgery case).

The Congress's exit from power was inevitable as was Mr. Rao's departure from the rough and tumble of Congress politics.

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